The Foresight Institute are continuing their series on the Singularity – it’s fascinating stuff, it really is.
I would guess — and this is blatantly a speculation, albeit a fairly well informed one, that the “secret trick” of AI will fall in the next decade. That means that the 20s will see robots not just as good as humans at specific, well-defined tasks, but able to learn new tasks the way humans do.
Please remember that AIs won’t necessarily be autonomous robots — most of them will be like having a secretary built into your computer (although I imagine that in the 20s having a robot butler will be a status symbol for a while).
Oddly enough this was addressed in 1977 in the comic 2000AD where a disobedient robot called “Call-Me-Kenneth” rebels against human authority leading to the “Robot Wars.” This was set in 2099, whereas singularians see it happening within fifteen years. I can’t help but think of Walter the Wobot, but watch out for the Heavy Metal Kids!
