Computers and robots will become intelligent and will change society. This is a tale of the forced evolution of computers and robots by means of scientific research, technological design and engineering, so that they are able to learn, to interact with people and the environment, and to become conscious without necessarily turning out to be human-like. Creating Artificial Intelligence is the toughest challenge that technology has ever confronted. However, there is no doubt of achieving this goal of developing AI in the near future. The question is, will it will surpass human intelligence? No matter what the answer is, smart computers and robots will be increasingly more important in our lives. And they will bring along social, political and economic consequences. A timeline will show you when to expect these paradigm changes.
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The year is 2080, strong AIs evolved rapidly into superintelligent machines, luckily the most intelligent of these machines incorporated
‘friendliness towards humanity’ as its primary meta-motivation. Their friendliness, ethical motivations and commonsense knowledge compelled
them to control and take over lesser AIs lacking these traits. The world is different, maybe too different. AI friendliness took the form of respect for individuals; the social standing of each person had no meaning to these intelligent machines. Finally, there is equality under AI; friendly machines protect our individual rights. This new condition means freedom to grow inside your mind, in intelligence and strength of personality, experiencing and becoming what we could only dream before. The technological marvels that superintelligence has created support these freedoms. Only the laws of physics and respect for individual rights restrict these machines. This new state-of-affairs has been condemned socially, ethically and theologically, and predicted to result in failure or to have terrible consequences. The power structures: governments, religions, bankers and the very-rich are understandably among those that are angry. However, protesters are free to disagree; they only have to respect the rights of everybody else. This is only a reminder that a machine with higher-than-human intelligence is unpredictable. It could evolve and decide about anything in the way its thoughts, guided by its motivations, compute as optimal. 
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Vignettes Less than half a million years ago, early proto-humans could not be expected to do better than all those animals with poison spikes, sharp teeth or acute hearing. These proto-humans had a less than ordinary physique, no particular strengths except for a slight mental advantage. Yet in a blink of an eye in the timeframe of evolution, these soft-animals have changed the face of the earth, moved mountains and discovered the secret code of life in DNA. Now, what can an advanced AI, with a superior mentality, with access to all the knowledge of humanity and to all its resources be capable of doing? Half a million years ago, an outside observer would have expressed disbelief in the fast-track ascent of human civilization. Now we know of several ways whereby a superintelligent AI could arise, what we cannot imagine is what such a super-being may do. * * *
What will take place in a future that includes AIs? This is as difficult as predicting in 1950 about a future with widespread cellular and smart-phones.
Walkie-talkies and computers were known to exist, just a little bit of imagination should have lead us to this idea. Yeah, sure!Moreover, the future is not only about AI, it is genetics, nanotechnology, material sciences, solar power, super-batteries, global warming, lack of jobs, immense increases in productivity, politics as usual, social unrest, the poor and the rich, global corporations, the military, the economies, the known unknown and the unknown unknown. Preview: Practical Artificial Intelligence:  |