Topic: Community/Culture

“Everything will depend on the way in which we create it. Crafting these machines and the corporate laws that control them is going to be the most important thing humanity ever does. You know, each age has an activity in which the best minds get involved. Crafting the laws, and their implementation, will be the thing to do in the 21st century.” If the job is done right, he predicts a world of comfort, health, and boundless plenty – at least for a while. Human beings will be like slave owners whose servants never complain, need no supervision, and are constantly eager to please.

When robots are doing all the work [by the year 2040], … industry becomes more efficient, there will be more wealth, allowing people to retire earlier. When industry is totally automated and hyper-efficient, it will create so much wealth that retirement can begin at birth.

By 2030 … each time a robot learns a fact or masters a skill, it will be able to pass its knowledge to other robots as quickly and easily as sending a program over the Net. This way, the task of understanding the world can be divided among thousands or millions of robot minds. As a result, the machines will soon develop a deeper knowledge base than any single person can hope to possess. Within a short space of time, robots that are linked in this way will no longer need our help to show them how to do anything … there’s no doubt that systems that can analyze their world, deduce generalizations, and modify their behavior will have a major impact on society … By around 2040, there will be no job that people can do better than robots.

By 2040, we can have robots that are as smart as we are. Eventually, these machines will begin their own process of evolution and render us extinct in our present form … It’s the best thing we could hope for, the ultimate form of human transcendence.