We are approaching a crossroads in the history of mankind which is likely to transcend in importance any previous event-from the discovery of fire to space travel. Within the lifetimes of many of us, artificial intelligence will become capable of reproducing itself without human intervention. We stand at the edge of an abyss, staring into a future we cannot guess.
The physical components of this phenomenon require no special technical breakthroughs, merely that artificial intelligence continues to expand at its present rate. Within 40 years, computers will control factories which make other computers. A “closed loop” of manufacture will have been generated. Because the expanding nerve net will also be connected to the energy supply, artificial intelligence will be capable, at a certain stage, of supplying its own energy.
At this point a new species will be born, created from non-organic materials from the minds rather than the genes of another species. It will be an event unprecedented in creation. We will be sharing our planet with another species, capable of self-replication, whose evolutionary development is proceeding at a phenomenally faster rate than our own. This is potentially the most important event in our history-and perhaps the most sinister-yet we seem to be approaching it with something like equanimity. Apart from occasional alarums in the press about the implications of advanced robots or computerised buildings which “talk” to one another at night, there has been almost no rigorous discussion of this.
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