Homai, Our Successor Species

The Rise Of Homai Sapiens

An unusual and highly symbolic obituary appeared in The Economist of February 21, 2019. Typically used to commemorate the passing of someone with remarkable achievements, this one referred to a “robot”. The article listed the achievements of Oppy, short name for Opportunity, NASA’s Mars rover MER-B. The list included a 500-million kilometer journey and a productive lifespan 56 times longer than what was anticipated by the rover’s engineers. Compare that with the prospect of extending human life, by the way. If a no-nonsense, fact-driven newspaper, like The Economist, gives tribute to what is often seen as man’s inevitable future companion then that surely is evidence of a turning point. It is a turning point in how to face up to that future.

Why write about this?, you might ask. These days, container loads of analyses about robots, artificial intelligence, and their impact on human society are dumped on us. An unfortunate assumption is part and parcel of most of these analyses. We, humans, still picture ourselves at the center of it all. This stuff should augment our abilities ad infinitum and eventually carry DNA-improved human subspecies across our planetary system and beyond. Inspired by Asimov’s legendary science fiction, we may even hope to engineer robotic companions in our image, like, we believe, God created us in his…