'What is your name?' 'jeff nordahl.' 'IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS!!!':
> Can someone please explain their motive for creating an AI in the first
> place. What would you use it for?
Eliezer has a Very interesting reason for why we would want to build an AI on his website:
http://singularity.posthuman.com/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
At the risk of oversimplifying his position, (which is actually quite lengthy and worth the read, whether you agree with it or not,) the purpose of building an AI is to build something smarter than us, so it can tell us what the real meaning of life is. Analogies to Douglas Adams' "Deep Thought" machine in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are not far from the mark; except that we DO know the question we have in mind.
It should also be noted that "uploading" is just a special kind of artificial intelligence; many people see that to be the most likely way they'll manage to live forever.
http://www.extropy.com/faq/upload.html
Drexler argued in his book, Engines of Creation, that we'll probably need artificial intelligence to figure out how to program nano-assemblers to do interesting things.
http://www.foresight.org/EOC/EOC_Chapter_5.html
Alexander Chislenko has argued that with the coming of intelligent agents and their infiltration into the economy, we'll move into what he calls a "hyper-economy," bringing greater wealth/utility to all.
http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/articles/
Good luck!
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings