Huh, you are goddamn right about the most popular day. However, Today i finished part 2 of my fiction that is about an AI developer that creates an AI with the frame of his dead wife. Now i think how to write it to sound realistically possible ... And i thought about that a lot. For me AI is just extension of ourselves, we create it we put the threshold on his capabilities. The problem is that it's hard to predict our own behavior (Many people can, like psychologists, and con- artists- this is what they do for living). The scary thing about most people is that they think those who develop an AI play god. And movies and books like the matrix or terminator are looking possible to them. Yet they never heard of The Three Laws or known as Asimov's Laws.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

We already see some semi bots that do amazing stuff, take for example the advertising bots, that track you, your friends and your friend's friends, just to collect information which enables the traders to sell you what you need/ want/ desire... I've seen some if this stuff and i can say they are very clever.
AI is not Threat for us, we are Threat for ourselves...
I think people are scared cause if we create AI after a short period of time soaking information for our world it will say -you are goddamn stupid! Why would you destroy your habitat over a paper and dead dinosaurs?