If humanity wants to survive and survive as a species, then it is extremely necessary for it to settle in space. It is extremely important for us to go and master the planets, both neighboring to us and in other systems. - This is how the thoughts of the world's leading scientists regarding the preservation of the human race sound.
This task is actually important and its priority is undeniable, says Professor Stephen Hawking, supporting the idea of space colonization. An English astrophysicist, explaining the motives of this global goal, indicates a number of reasons why it is necessary to go to other planets and populate them as quickly as possible.
It may be that we do not even have a couple of hundred years left to find a way and opportunity to settle on other planets, Hawking lamented in a recent interview with Big Think. If we do not do this, our species is threatened with complete extinction.
Humanity is doomed if it does not leave Earth
It will be quite difficult for us to avoid a global defeat in this century, while even not looking into the more distant future, Hawking worries in his eerie foresight. - According to Hawking, the only chance to survive and survive as a species is not to sit in a crowd on Earth, but to spread as quickly as possible in space. After all, the inhabitants of the Earth are waiting for troubles and risks from several disasters:
One of the disastrous scenarios of a disaster is built by a person with his own hands. For example, our activities are causing climate change in a radical way, killing the world's population with tornadoes and hurricanes. Nuclear weapons are being improved and the development of biological weapons is being stimulated. All this lays a deadly face under the foundation of life.
The only source of life we know today - our home planet - can easily destroy the cosmic factor. For example, a large asteroid that collided with the Earth will not only burn out most of its inhabitants in seconds, but also put the survivors beyond the brink of survival, making the planet unfit for life.
Promotional video:
In addition, according to the reflections of the supporters of the idea of "space distribution" - the inhabitants of the Earth are facing the threat of a possible invasion of aliens, which by the way was repeatedly warned by astrophysicist Hawking. An aggressive alien from outer space, possessing and armed with the incomparable power of technology, can freely capture the planet and seize its resources for sole use.
Recently, theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking has observed that either we will colonize space in the next two hundred years and build habitable units on other planets, or we are facing the prospect of long-term extinction.
Professor Hawking emphasizes that the greatest danger to human existence is technological potential, which causes damage to the environment, as well as an exponentially growing population and a load on the Earth's resources. The human race should not have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet, the astrophysicist explains.
It is vitally necessary for us to have a backup plan for preserving ourselves as a species, and it consists in settling humans on other worlds. Similarly, NASA historian Roger Launius, senior curator at the Smithsonian Science Nest's National Air and Space Museum, believes that humans need to leave Earth.
However, leaving the planet and starting to colonize space is easier said than done, since human biology must adapt to extreme space environments, which translates into serious changes in the body.
For a human being, as a biological being, there is not a single opportunity to survive for at least one minute in space without significant technical assistance. If people set out to colonize the planets, to subjugate their resources in full, as happened on Earth, then this will require the next stage of human evolution, a number of scientists believe.
Does this mean that we should become cyborgs or a machine with a biological brain, or is space exploration just a dream of humanity? Most likely, the researchers of the problem are confident that a person does not need to change his body to the state of "Robocop", since we need to entrust the primacy in the study of star worlds to spacecraft equipped with artificial intelligence.
- We do not undertake here to consider the problem of the survival of humanity in the future. We can only note the need to spread in space - this is a really important and necessary step. However, we are now interested in something else, how this can actually happen, especially with the participation of artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence, the future of evolution
In this case, we are not talking about populating a neighboring planet of its own system. The predictions of research scientists are looking to deep space, when the first thing that is required is thorough reconnaissance, which can be very effectively carried out using robots controlled by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Although if a person is to go to other planets and settle there, then to some extent he will become a multi-planetary species. In turn, this means that a person still changes, that is, one way or another evolves.
The development of full-fledged AI is, according to some estimates, a matter of only a few decades of the near future. The exponential growth in computer power means that even consumer-grade computers will have all the capabilities of the human brain by 2040, observers of the information technology industry note.
When we create true AI, it will very quickly surpass human capabilities. “This is what many scientists see as a threat to AI, fearing in all seriousness that intelligent machines can create their own techno-intelligent civilization.
Speaking of full-fledged AI, we are talking about the possibility of adapting to a situation, its right to self-determination, which in essence creates a direct branch of its own evolution of artificial intelligence. After all, if we create a machine with the intellectual ability of one person, then the successor of AI may be smarter than all of humanity put together, the researchers note.
Each new instance of AI will be created with the sum of knowledge and useful acquisitions of its predecessor. Machines only need two primary resources to live: energy to operate, and materials to maintain or develop a structure.
Moreover, note that AI can evolve on evolutionary timescales much faster than a biological organism. How can this end for a person, that's an interesting question, isn't it?
Does this mean that in the end AI machines or complex cyborgs will explore space and satisfy human needs, preparing a foothold on planets for settlement? Or, in the event of such a development, the script shown in the movie "The Terminator" awaits a person?
This is an extremely difficult question, with an answer from the very future, however, many notice that Azimov's Three Laws of Robotics have not worked for a long time (it is appropriate to recall here combat platforms with pseudo-intelligence).
Artificial intelligence and space
Intelligent machines are much smarter and infinitely more durable than the biological intelligence that invented them. Intelligent machines will in some sense even be immortal, or at least indefinitely until they are repaired. A huge plus lies in the fact that they do not need to exist in the biologically hospitable Goldilocks zone, where attention is now focused in the search for aliens.
After any society acquires technology to create Artificial Intelligence, it inevitably goes to study and explore space. Because the iron AI surpasses its meaty creators in terms of survivability in hostile environments and is not afraid of space speeds. For example, Shostak even comes to the conclusion that if we meet with an alien civilization, we will probably first communicate with intelligent machines.
If not cars, then future space travelers will be cyborgs
The idea of using cyborgs for space travel came about in the last century, when 50 years ago, Manfred Klines, Chief Scientist at the Dynamic Simulation Laboratory and Nathan Kline, Director of Research and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, wrote an article titled Cyborgs and the Space.
Changing the functions of the human body to the requirements of an extraterrestrial environment would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for it in alien comic systems … in a word, the authors' idea is repeatedly encountered in fiction genres: the creation of an artifact organism on a biological basis, where it is easier to adapt the organism to the environment, than the other way around.
Even if it can be logically explained and become technologically feasible, the use of cyborgs nevertheless quickly becomes a religious and ethical dilemma. It really raises deep ethical, moral and perhaps even religious questions that have not been seriously addressed,”points out Roger Lonis.
Grant Gillett, professor of medical ethics at Otago and bioethics at the University of Otago Medical School in New Zealand, says one of the dangers that we can face when working with cyborgs is that these creatures can cease to be human. Since we do not understand the nature of the cyborg, we can create a psychopath reinforced with the iron power of technology.
Currently, space agencies do not spend a lot of time and resources on research in the field of creating a cyborg, although of course this situation may change in the near future. “If our goal is to become a man of space, then it is likely that it will force us to reconsider the attitude towards such a thing as reengineering people,” says Roger Lonis.
In other words, we may be faced with a situation where we have no choice but to send cyborgs into space. Because cyborgs do not have explicit restrictions on the duration of their existence, they are more resistant to overload and disease, therefore, they can easily dominate as a cosmic intelligence. In this scenario, this is the "winner-take-all" case.
Really … if one day we create a cyborg and then send them on a space mission for reconnaissance, can they be considered as future humans, or will there be a distinction between "us" and "them"?
