Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Vision of the Computer-Dominated Future

- I think that what we're doing now is in a sense, creating our own successors.

We have seen the first crude beginnings of artificial intelligence.

It doesn't really exist yet at any level because our most complex computers are still morons, high-speed morons, but still morons.

Nevertheless, some of them are capable of learning, and we will one day be able to design systems that can go on improving themselves, so at that stage, we have the possibility of machines which can outpace their creators, and therefore, become more intelligent than us.

It's perfectly obvious that the development of such computers would restructure society completely.

They would clearly remove much of the mechanical, if you can use that term, the routine work, which of course, has taken so much of the time of the human race, and they're already doing this in many ways because our society now would collapse instantly if the computers would run it were taken away, and these are very simple, low-grade computers, and this of course raises tremendous social and philosophical problems, not just a question of displaced people.

What will they do, what will the people who are only capable of low-grade computer type work, what will they do in the future?

There's a much profound question of what is the purpose of life, what do we want to live for?

And that is a question in which the intelligent computer will force us to pay attention to.

(bright subtle music)