Introduction: The prize essays

Abstract

What is the future of humanity likely to be? And will there be one? Who can tell whether a bright future awaits us or a doomed one? More importantly, who can arrange it to be the way we would like it to be? In 1993, the computer scientist and science-fiction author Vernor Vinge wrote: Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive? (Vinge, 1993, p. 11) Remarkably enough, those 30 years will elapse within the next two years. However, Vinge’s forecast has already been shown to be inspired by fiction rather than science. More recent expert opinion has shifted the coming of super-intelligence to decades, even centuries to come (Muller, and Bostrom, 2016). Thus, the claim concerning the end of “the human era” due to this particular agent of the human future—technology—deemed by many as the decisive one, may not be so urgent and, given other existential threats like global warming or nuclear war, perhaps not exclusive either. So long as “the human era” lasts, there is still a chance for humanity to focus on the most important issue—the issue of control—in order to keep super-intelligence and humanity compatible (Russell, 2019).