It boggles my mind. I've been trying to write a sci-fi novel for more than a decade with plausible / believable tech but it's so hard to imagine what things will be like in another 50 years, let alone 500, beyond smartphones evolving into implants or an intrinsic AR.

I don't have anything specific, but treat your search engine results like a rabbit hole, and you're bound to find something; even Yahoo or BuzzFeed articles have a source article which they're bound to cite, and which will probably be hosted alongside other similar publications.

There's also that "arxiv.org" (sp?) website which publishes research papers and experiments submitted by the scientists conducting active studies.

Magazines and forums / blogs, insider knowledge (i.e. working in or knowing someone who works in the field), and the like, probably. There are likely dozens of publications but one that's been around for a while and isn't trying to sell you anything will typically be most reliable.

Maybe try searching for 'leading "___" companies' (fill in the blank) and using the names of top results, or their websites, to search around for blogs or document archives.

NASA does release papers etc, and I believe CERN publishes things directly as well.

It's sad but this is pretty much where I'm at.

Between all the misinformation--political, product plugs, ignorance, lies--and the fact that we can't even be certain of history, because it was written by the victors; or that seemingly innocuous things like the dismantling of a ship can be a cover-story for far darker things; the people in power, who benefit from the status quo, have no motivation for change, and gain nothing in sharing the truth.

But they can just throw money at problems until they disappear, so what can any one person do? I'm not at all saying that it's something I'd like to see. But I don't believe anything short of a bloody revolution can change things the way they are now.

Hollywood, mostly.

People also forget, or aren't aware, or simply don't consider the wide range of code structures than can be categorised as AI. The code controlling opponents in video and computer games; the assistants in smartphones, apps, SmarterChild, etc. are all valid AI and still a far leap from organic thought.

I think it's such a sticky topic because, even if we can't prove it's 'conscious' (which we also can't exhaustively prove it's not), something that can think form organic thoughts (i.e. not pre-programmed), that can believe it's 'alive' and assert as such, would be unprecedented. There would be people advocating for rights. There would be people insisting they're still just products. I don't think it'd be some messy breakdown of society like in fiction, but it'll be another tender nerve to stack along with all the other social issues humans have.

I personally agree with you and don't think we'll see true AI, at least not any time soon; maybe in some far-flung future with quantum computers, if we survive long enough without throwing ourselves back into the dark ages. Even so, the thought of a machine intelligence that can truly learn and adapt itself faster than we can blink definitely spooks me, though it'd only really be spooky if they had access to networked autonomous robots. Otherwise they're just a big scary monster trapped in a box which anyone can turn off.

But you also have to keep in mind that making slaves is exactly what some people would aim to do.