Humans Need Not Apply

I get more and more frustrated by all the machines I see and have to interact with. I wonder. Are machines going to become more important than humans, even replace them soon? Stephen Hawking, the current darling of the media in the science world, has said  that robots, powered by artificial intelligence could overtake humans in the next 100 years. Well, if he's right there is good news in that I won't be around to see it. Already I see how humanity has bee degraded  by the advent of the computer chip. We humans live more comfortably than ever, but we have traded much of what makes us human in order to accommodate all the conveniences that machines offer us.

Hawking points out how fast machines evolve, and that artificial intelligence has some big advantages over human intelligence.  His view is that humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded by machines. Hmmmm Already, I see how cell phones have imprisoned and emasculated a large number of humans, who seem helpless without their "cells".

Others feel that machines won't take over because they could not have any desire to do so. And those who think that robots won't take over worry about a different scenario. They are more concerned about humans directing intelligent machines to do malevolent things. It's the evil that men do thing. We already see how machines are tools of evil. If you don't believe me, just turn off your computer virus program and see how long it takes before the evil hacker will use your machine to gain profit from you. Whatever happens one thing is certain. Over nearly the entirety of earth's history, threats to humans have come from nature. But now the worst dangers to us come from us. Maybe those annoying cell phone addicts who drive us crazy are the canaries in the mind that tell us of worse to come.

Surely, machines have made life easier for us. But have they begun to spoil us so much that their importance will grow so large that one day in the future the machines won't need us any longer?