Theory of evolution suggests that all species are related and gradually change over time. Everything, every living being that we've known and yet to know have all evolved from a single cell. Survival of the fittest doesn't imply that the fittest destroys all that is not its equal. Fortunately that's why we still see the many organisms around us today because of the importance of their existence to maintain the balance in the system.
Imagine if humans could photosynthesise and create their own food and oxygen using the sunlight. The role of trees, forests and everything depending on it would have been extinct at least a couple of millions of years ago. We have left the trees only because we still depend on them for one thing or another.
What happens when we evolve to something that doesn't have to depend on anything that we depend on today?
Genetics would help us for a few hundred more years but the future belongs to a fitter generation that may only remember humans as humans remember the neanderthals and even deny any relation to such inferior species.
Robots, Humanoids, Cyborgs!
Neuroscience and Robotics has seen a phenomenal growth in the last few decades. We have the technology and intelligence to build machines that could build machines better than we, humans could.
Factories crowded with thousands of humans are replaced with millions of tiny robots and few humans to push a few buttons and monitor readings.
Wars fought with millions of soldiers are being fought with a few hundred guided drones with the intelligence to acquire target more efficiently than soldiers who spend half their life-time on rigorous trainings.
Only our politics, morality, ethics and fear of armageddon between humans and the superior machines has prevented us from handing over the full control and freedom to machines to be what their potential would allow them to be.
Because there is a difference ethics, politics and morality among the people of different groups and countries sooner or later one country tying to dominate another will end up creating the machines that could evolve to be better than the creators. If we could create killing machines with Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence and allow them perform better than humans, we could also create machines that would learn to survive on its own.
Today, the richest in the world could be considered the fittest and through the theories of evolution will continue to survive. The rest of the world are not extinct yet only because the fittest still needs the rest of the world to survive and maintain its position at the top of the peak. Without the poor faction that spends its life toiling away in factories and fields with a hope to make the future of its offsprings, the rich faction cannot exist.
Likewise, machines will need humans only till the time they are dependent on machines. Once they evolve above that humans will be an inferior species and will have to learn to coexist without claiming the special status or go extinct.
We've only cracked the atoms and we already possess the potential to destroy continents and send out probes to other worlds and spies into the interstellar space. One or another of our next discoveries will help us evolve beyond the weaknesses of humankind as we know it today.
If humans created superior machines that replace humans, is that not Evolution?
(Inspired by the thoughts of Yuval Noah Harari and Carl Sagan's thoughts and writings.)
