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101 MacGowan and Ordway predicted 40 years ago that intelligent machines (which they called automata) could come to dominate their biological creators, perhaps gradually circumventing the limitations imposed on them by humans. Once they became independent of the productive support of their creators, the automatons probably would abandon the human race and emigrate to greener astronomical pastures.*° According to artificial intelligence pioneer Hans Moravec, what awaits us is a postbiological world in which the human race has been usurped by its own machines. If we cannot beat them, we might join them. Humans could seek to improve their own intelligence and durability by augmenting their brains and bodies with artificial components and eventually would transfer themselves entirely into computers—a technique that has become known as “mind loading.”*” Another artificial intelligence pioneer, Ray Kurzweil, foresaw computers exceeding human intelligence within a few decades. Willing humans would have their brains scanned, uploaded to a computer, and then would live their lives as software running on machines. Kurzweil later warned that the inherent impossibility of restraining intelligence means that the strategies that we devise now cannot absolutely ensure that future artificial intelligence embodies human ethics and values.** A superintelligent machine could be the last invention that humans need ever make, speculated Rees. The most likely and durable form of life may be machines whose creators had long ago been usurped or extinguished. This transition could extend the lifetimes of societies made up of such beings. Although a naturally evolved species must inevitably become extinct, declared cosmologist John Barrow and physicist Frank Tipler, its machine descendants need not ever become extinct themselves.” Minsky envisioned advantages to our evolution into machines: immor- tality, colossal intelligence, the ability to experience a wide range of abstract and concrete phenomena that are beyond the reach of humans. A techno- logical society could convert itself into creatures that may be able to harness the power of the Sun and travel to other stars. Each intelligent species may reach a critical threshold where it will have to make a choice between this future and others.” As wonderful as biology is, proposed Arthur Clarke, it may be just a means of producing the true masters of the universe. Our mechanical off- spring may pass on to goals that will be wholly incomprehensible to us. Beginning as tools through which humans can explore and humanize the cosmos, machines may develop independence and become the alien.” We may be assuming too much. One can envision cultural and political resistance to the idea of creating brains superior to our own, particularly if we fear that they might escape our control. Frank Herbert, in his science fiction novel Dune, envisioned a “Butlerian Jihad” leading to a ban on making machines with brains like ours (there was a Butler, who raised alarms about the Industrial Revolution in England). Fear of Machines