Robots that can think 10,000x faster than humans.
James Lovelock is looking forward to humanity being overtaken in cleverness by its computer progeny. This will usher in the end of the “Anthropocene” – the era in which humans became able to make large-scale alterations to the planetary environment – and the beginning of the “Novacene”. The new age will be marked by the unpredictable marvels to be unleashed by robots (or “cyborgs”, as Lovelock prefers to call them, but of a purely electronic sort) that can think 10,000 times faster than we do, and will program themselves and their descendants in ways that will be beyond all human understanding.
James Lovelock is an independent scientist, environmentalist, and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system.
In his new book Novacene, James Lovelock says the creation of AlphaGo was the start of a new kingdom of life that will create and think for itself. He’s optimistic that this new kingdom of life will want to keep us around like we keep plants in gardens.
Will robots take over humanity?
Lovelock refers back to his Gaia hypothesis as the saving grace, because the machines will realise that they need organic life to keep the planet at a habitable temperature. (Even electronic life could not survive on an Earth that veered into runaway global warming.) So, Lovelock argues, it will suit the robots to keep humans around.