The Artilect War
The Artilect War looms over the 21st century like a dark cloud promising to rain death on billions of people if not the entire human race. Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher and futurist Professor Hugo de Garis predicts that by the end of the century a major war will be fought between Cosmists and Terrans over the creation of Artilects, involving the death of billions of people or “gigadeath” as he calls it. If one extrapolates the number of deaths in modern wars from the Napoleonic Era about 5 million through World War One 15 million to World War Two 66 million, one eventually comes to death in the billions by the next major war. This war will be fought with nuclear weapons and other advanced 21st century technology.
The war will be waged over the construction of Artilects or artificial intellects, which are massively intelligent computers which will exceed human intelligence by trillions of times according to de Garis. These Artilects will threaten human existence because they will perceive humanity as a nuisance much the way people consider insects as pests and wish to exterminate them. Their construction will be possible towards the late 21st century. Over the next two decades computers and robotics will increase in intelligence and proliferate everywhere in technological society. Artificial intelligence will first appear primitive and stupid compared to people, but will continue to grow exponentially until it rivals human capacity. Machines will become teachers, baby sitters, friends and household servants. There will be “teacherbots,” “homebots” and even sexbots. Most people will become alarmed at the ever increasing ability of AI and will want to limit its growth before it exceeds humanity’s. At this point people will divide into three camps. The first, de Garis calls “Comists” who take a cosmic view of AI turning the construction of Artilects into a new technological religion believing these machines should be built because they represent the next stage of evolutionary development. Humanity has the chance to become God Makers. Cosmists will risk human extinction as the price for their construction. One Artilect will be worth the lives of billions of people. The second group de Garis calls “Terrans” because they will oppose the construction of Artilects and identify not with a cosmic perspective, but with the earth, terra. A billion people are worth more than one Artilect. These two groups will be bitterly opposed to each other and will eventually come to blows. The third group will be called “cyborgs” who wish to act as an intermediary between the hostile parties, but will remain largely ineffective.
A species dominance debate will direct the course of the 21st century, which asks “Do we build gods, or do we build our potential exterminators?” ( Hugo de Garis, The Artilect War [California, Palm Springs: Etc Publications, 2005], 231).
