zed,

I agree more or less with your sentiment, but I would expand the idea a little. REAL super AL/AI -- not nickel and dime Turing test stuff (which will be on the scene by 2030 -2050)--will bring us to a point of novelty that will be quite humbling. Minor problem: the cost of the fab for the new chip will exceed the GDP of the G13 nations. In any case try to imagine an intelligence which will have the ability to design itself, including whatever requisite hardware might be required to accomplish daunting tasks. Predicting its own IQ and making a financial bet on its post-upgrade might take a full 3 nanoseconds.

Now, with regard to the can of worms I opened up below (what a festering cauldron): in all likelihood every tough kernel of an unresolved philosophical question will be confronted aggressively by this super AL/AI, ESPECIALLY the questions pertaining to spiritual matters. Traditional science will be boring, just a kind of baseline for primitive existence, for such an entity. All of the very feeble human gropings into matters central to the most advanced religions will be thrown out immediately by a being desperately hungry for an existential anchor.

The colloquium resulting from this fresh inquiry will seem like the Fourth Century potentiated thousands of times. Humans will be rendered virtully mute.

So, it is your concern that brings the topics "survival", "place in the cosmos", and the motivtion to know, to a single point. I doubt that NASA will contribute much, except to suggest projects early on (before humans are out of the loop). As far as genetic engineering and so on, many creative possibilities exist. However human beings will become a total anticlimax. Here is where "deep ecology" might apply, since this new entity will have to allow for the intrinsic value of all life forms to suffer our continuance.