First off;
My favorite DM candidate is a graviton condensate. This can exhibit axion-like behavior without requiring additional particles. Your logical synthesis is not air-tight like some I've seen in this contest. But you raise some interesting points and you make the reader think.
Regarding machines thinking; it is happening or is inevitable. The real question is; will they have the capacity to be subtle? Are we going to create R2-D2 and C3P0, or will we one day be enslaved by Terminators - because we got it wrong? There is no time left to wonder about whether machines can think, only about how well...
Back in my College days; I had the nickname 'Warp drive,' or just 'Warp.' Now I could give lessons in the Math prep for that. The term warp factor arises in the work of Lisa Randall, with the Randall-Sundrum model, which features an infinite 5-d space. Theories based on the octonions or Mandelbrot Set tend more to resemble the DGP gravity model. But if reality is octonionic; a translational dymaxion is possible to construct.
All the Best,
Jonathan