When the Machines Take Over.
By Marc Blasband
The year 2100 will be in the midst of the age of the machine. If today we use machines everywhere for everything, then by 2100 they will go one step further: They will rule and decide. The goal of their society will be more and better machines, not more and better human lives, our objective today.
We see already now three seeds of this revolution:
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Artificial intelligence (AI) advances slowly but steadily. With time, let us say 50 years, the machine will achieve understanding. It will then use all of Wikipedia (or its equivalent). It will command the entirety of human knowledge.
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Today, more and more connections are built between machines. These connections, coupled with advances in AI, will form a very powerful network of understanding that will surpass by a thousand times the best that humans can offer.
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We begin to build machines that behave without direct control by their human masters, like the rovers that we deploy on Mars.
When the machine understands independently, it will become conscious of its own existence and its own value. In the same way that we human are proud of our humanity (whether we include a god in the loop or not), they will be proud of their machinity.
On the other hand, earthly resources such as water, energy, and food will become so scare that violent wars between geopolitical giants will emerge before 2070. The doctrine of these wars will most probably be the same as today’s: Sacrifice machines to protect human soldiers. This will clearly be unacceptable for the machines on all sides of the conflict, and it is predictable that together they will rebel and annihilate all the armies.
At that point, the machines will rule the earth—not by government, but by control and knowledge. The available resources will be reserved to develop more and better machines. Immortality will be one of their goals: They will be built or retrofitted to survive thousands of years. Our human dream to visit the stars will then become possible, but machines will make that journey, not humans.
For humans, these times will be harsh. People will die from all sorts of sicknesses that are cured today. Food will be scarce, energy unavailable, and comfort something of the past. Agriculture will use horses and oxen again instead of tractors. Alcohol and meat will be restricted because their production consumes too much resources.
Some people will lead a marginal life on grounds not needed by the economy. Others will serve the system in areas where the machines are not good at: creativity and imagination. The machines will indeed exploit human slaves for art and science.
In less than 30, years the human population will shrink from 9 billion to a mere 100 million souls—the world population at the time of Aristotle.
About the author:
Marc Blasband has 50 years of experience related to computer software. He is now retired and living in the Belgian Ardennes.