Is Humanity in danger from a Computer take-over

Great Debates
1

Recently, a famous mathematician/scientist has suggested that, at their current rate of advancement, computers will soon be smarter than are humans and will take over the Earth.

The scientist suggests that humans must be genetically modified in order to stay abreast of computers.

Question #1: Does humanity face a “fight” for its existence from rapidly advancing computers?

Question #2: How serious is this threat? And how soon can we humans expect to be usurped by intelligent computers?

Question #3: Can humans fend off this threat by genetically modifying theirselves to be quicker and smarter?

Question #4: Can such human genetic modifications be done safely?

(Question #5: Is this entire report a Hoax?)

A news story about this suggestion can be found here.

2

But if you scroll down in GD a bit you’ll see we already have a thread going on about this.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=85018

3

Sorry erislover. I thought that I’d seen some similar topic and scrolled down, then back up, then down again before I finally decided to open the new thread. That the news article was dated today, 4 Sept., was the deciding factor.

Thanks. This psuedo-thread will soon disappear, I think. :slight_smile: