The topic of a new book edited by John Brockman. Here's an < ahref="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5254203" target="_blank">interview with him from NPR, with some little phone interviews with some of the contributors.

Richard Dawkins chimes in, saying his selection is that if there is life elsewhere in the universe, he believes it is the product of Darwinian evolution. When asked by the interviewer if his statement denies the existence of god, he said, "No, my statement doesn't, but I do." He then went on to basically restate the logical fallacy of the argument by design, that if there is a god, he would need to be enormously complex, and then that raises the question of where that enormous complexity came from. The universe, he said, starts out chaotic, and in certain circumstances particular areas stabilize, and through evolutionary processes complexity arises from simplicity.

Anyway, one thing I believe but cannot prove is that inorganic artifacts can achieve and exceed human-level intelligence. But we're working on it.