Technological Revolution Threatens to Leave Humanity Behind

A strange world is emerging from crises both engineered and natural. Economic turmoil has resulted in even more concentration of wealth. Tensions between governments and their constituents are reaching an explosive crescendo. Meanwhile, a technological revolution is happening that threatens to reshape humanity forever. New tools of genetic manipulation will allow generations to be crafted to the liking of those before them – without their consent. Mankind will be confronted with complex legal, political and even spiritual issues.

In an April 2000 article for Wired magazine, Co-founder of Sun Microsystems Bill Joy warned that in the future, human beings may become obsolete. Joy quotes a passage from Transhumanist leader Ray Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines. The quote says in part that the elite see humanity as “superfluous” in the coming technological era. In response, the elite decide to eliminate the burden of useless humans.

“Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite.”

Only on the next page does Joy reveal that the mysterious quote was in fact from Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski. Regardless of his reprehensible acts, The world that Kaczynski described 15 years ago is rapidly coming to reality. Because of advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics, jobs that were once held by human beings are now manned by automated systems. Many scientists are predicting that by the year 2025, 30% of jobs will be taken by robots. Recent news headlines demonstrate that this trend is already well underway.

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

‘Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don’t know.’ – Steve Wozniak, Apple Founder

Despite predictions of A.I. displacing humans 10-20 years from now, recent headlines are showing us that it may happen much quicker than anticipated.

As the South China Morning Post recently reported, China is building a fully robotic manufacturing plant in Dongguan. The current workforce of 1,800 individual humans is set to be cut back 90% to only 200. The rest of the work will be fully automated. As the Post reports, “By 2016, up to 1,500 of the city’s industrial enterprises will began replacing humans with robots.”

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