AI and the End of Humanity

Darwin was probably one of the most influential figures in human history. This book interprets and challenges his writings and those of a vast number of other evolutionary biologists. It also looks at the path from interstellar dust to intergalactic colonisation.
By explaining what Darwinism actually implies about both natural intelligence and non-natural, machine, intelligence, the author presents us with not the extraterrestrials of our dreams but the extraterrestrials of our nightmares.
The Great Silence continues as apart from cosmic dinosaurs, the other extraterrestrials will be cannibalistic, homicidal, very xenophobic, and genocidally annihilistic. Truly terrifying. E.T. stay home!

Although the book claims it is a work of popsci, I found the material to be well beyond what would be expected in “popular science” – readable by anyone with a high school diploma. Indeed, many concepts were well into, and assuming knowledge of material covered in college-level science courses.

Although the title references Artificial Intelligence, the first half of the book was about biological evolution. It started off rather dry, but I stuck with it. It became quite interesting, even if somewhat speculative, once it got to machine intelligence and (future) evolution of that - as might have already happened on other planets. Indeed, a review of the mechanisms and theories regarding evolution were a requirement to understand the possible evolution of machine intelligence – especially when intelligent machines begin designing even more complex intelligent machines.

The book does an excellent job of laying out, according to various biological and sociological theories about just why it is that the late Stephen Hawking, among others, have said that we are far more likely to encounter extraterrestrials like “The Borg” than “ET” – anything, probably mechanical, having killed it’s socially-involved biological creators as extraneous to their mission, would have no more concern for human life than we would for an anthill. Indeed, even if we were to run across a super-rational, intellectual, benevolent race of aliens, who might be evolutionarily a billion years ahead of us, might not appreciate us as we do ourselves.