COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ZOE WILLIAMS IN THE GUARDIAN
They don't, at least in the long term.
The coming of robots is effectively the next stage of
evolution.
I suspect, on any of the many worlds out there in the cosmos
with life, that the ones capable of reaching or communicating with us are
likely robotic. They have no interest in us.
The entire great saga of evolution seems to me to be about
the emergence of intelligence, of the universe becoming self-aware.
Humans are just one long step in the great effort, and they
have no more long-term future purpose than would dinosaurs.
That's hard for us to swallow, given our huge egos.
The real difficulties will be in an interim period of maybe
a century in which robots do take virtually all the work and begin reproducing
and improving themselves.
Will they be hostile to us the way we were to, say,
Neanderthals?
Or will they tolerate us the way we do chimpanzees?
In any event, there definitely will not be room for seven
billion or so of us with all our pollution and demands and murderous
stupidities.
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