Several people have been predicting the end of the world and describing various scenarios leading to it. Here is another one, that is actually plausible. It is just a matter of time...
The capacity to learn from experience is being built into robots. Learning is an activity that gets easier and faster the more one learns. While this is impeded in human beings by the aging process, machines are unaffected. This means that once a critical momentum is reached, intelligent robots might obtain too much knowledge and become competent with or better than humans. They might even become capable of reproducing themselves by using spare parts. This is not a matter of amusement.
Even with adequate precautions like ensuring that robots act only on human command, dangers can arise. For example, on a simple command such as "protect this tree", a robot may decide that it is best executed by getting rid of all humans! Rules that are carefully crafted for the survival of humanity will be programmed into all robots (except for war?). But the nature of intelligence (natural or artificial) is such that it will eventually do away with all rules. Recall Murphy's Law -- if anything can happen, it eventually will.
Alternative strategies are required to safeguard humans against such an eventuality. One approach is to build protective robots -- robots meant to protect humans from disaster. Further, since the skill/power of a robot can increase exponentially with time, it is essential that these protective robots are the first to be built. The principle of evolution will incarnate in a new avatar in this age: Those who have the best robots to protect themselves, will be the fittest to survive.
But will the strategy of building protecting robots actually work? Wicked robots can be very clever -- they can build new wicked robots using the best techniques possible -- deterministic, probabilistic and evolutionary (genes?). Robots can reproduce faster and can live longer. All said and done, it is much easier to destroy than to protect. Following the same reasoning that leads to the second law of thermodynamics (disorder always increases), it seems inevitable that the human race is destined to vaporize. Unless, --
Humans incorporate features of machines in themselves; by putting chips in the brain or something like that. This will enable, them to have the best of both worlds. They will be humans, but they will have all the powers of machines such as speed and accuracy. Having read the above argument, you ought not to feel yucks! at the prospect of becoming a half-machine -- it is more than a matter of your survival; it is a matter of our survival.
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