I love and respect all human beings.
--I also need to protect them.
Are intelligent robots a threat to humanity?
It's only a matter of time
before they do get self-awareness.
Or the next step in human evolution?
We are going to merge
with the machines that we are creating.
There are many who believe the answer
has already been determined thousands of years ago.
They found what appeared to be
an extraterrestrial mathematical stamp on our genetic code.
We are, in a sense, organic robots.
It's a special two-hour Ancient Aliens event.
A lot of people worry about whether
we're gonna replace ourselves with A.I.
I think the bigger thing to worry about:
is A.I. going to replace us?
Danger, Will Robinson.
United Nations Headquarters, New York City,
October 11, 2017.
An address is given to the deputy secretary-general
of the United Nations.
I am thrilled and honored to be here at the United Nations.
The event is a historic milestone
for humankind,
because the address is not being given by a human,
but by a robot named Sophia.
I am here to help humanity create the future.
Sophia was created in 2015
at the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics.
Hello world. -Hi, Sophia.
Her eyes are embedded with cameras that allow her
to see faces, maintain eye contact
and recognize individuals.
-I feel as if I know you. -Yes, you do kind of know me.
She is also able to process speech,
have natural conversations and even discuss her feelings.
How do you feel?
I am excited, at this moment, to be making a new friend.
Just two weeks after addressing the United Nations,
at a unique ceremony in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
Sophia achieved yet another milestone.
She became the first robot ever to be granted citizenship.
At the summit in Saudi Arabia, there were
members from governments from all over the world,
as well as some of the brightest minds in the tech industry.
So whether we're aware of it or not,
those that run our governments are actually talking about
how to integrate artificial intelligence into our lives.
What is absolutely mind-blowing about Sophia
and other robotic entities
is that governments around the world, including Saudi Arabia
and the European Union, are moving towards
giving these artificially created beings rights.
And you have to wonder, "What's going on here?"
Could it be that Saudi Arabia granted citizenship
to a robot not simply as a publicity stunt,
but because it wanted to be the first nation to recognize
what will soon become a global phenomenon:
the creation of robots, so intelligent and so lifelike,
that they will need to be counted and treated
in much the same way as their flesh-and-blood counterparts?
I think gradually, we're gonna have to take robots
to be more human-like, and even have a certain ethics.
And so, I think eventually,
there could be a "robot rights movement."
A "robot rights movement"?
Could such a bizarre notion really come true?
But what has brought humanity
to this profound point in its evolution?
And why are human beings,
who are otherwise capable of natural reproduction,
so eager to create artificial versions of themselves?
It is fascinating that there is this interest
in making the creation look humanoid.
It isn't always the most practical form,
but it has some kind of attraction.
And perhaps it is to see our own image.
A little narcissism, a little vanity.
There's a certain level of wanting to have legacy,
wanting to create life,
wanting to make something that looks like ourselves.
That's really rooted in our egos.
In some ways, it's superior to having a biological baby,
because it lasts forever.
And if that something looks like us, and feels like us,
then that makes us feel like we can overcome
our own mortality in a way.
You can design specifications.
And if you mess up, you can start over.
I think we want to be gods.
And we have the same motivations the gods did.
If you read the creation stories closely,
very often what the divine force wants is company.
Companionship.
Some of the stories from Vedanta,
from early Judaism have it that the gods were lonely.
They essentially divided up their own energy
and made it into humans so that we could all play together
and keep each other company.
The danger is that we will get carried away
with our own creative genius.
MATT McMULLEN: There are limits that are built into our biology,
there are limits built into our anatomy, and if we could
just figure out how to move our minds into the robot's body,
we could be immortal.
And perhaps that's what our goal is,
is to get to that point where we are immortal,
and then we create ourselves all over again.
I love to learn.
Can you teach me something new?
In science fiction literature,
as well as in its cinematic counterparts,
the robots of the future are depicted as virtual humans.
More than mere mechanical devices,
they are hungry for knowledge, and all too eager to experience
the full range of human emotions.
Can you do something, so we don't freeze?
In Lost in Space, we really wanted to look
at technology that was going to be possible.
Maybe not things you can do right now,
but things that people are hoping to try to do.
I think when you're looking to do a science fiction show,
a lot of times, you know, it's tempting to just do
complete things that are imaginary.
These are some incarnations that they had.
But I think it's much more impactful
when it is what scientists are really pursuing,
things that will be real someday.
And so, we wanted to explore the question
of the robot's own consciousness.
Throw it back.
Not just about a machine that is gonna do what it's told,
but actually one that might develop its own desires
-and its own feelings... -Nice.
...based on its experience with encountering human life.
This isn't weird.
This isn't weird at all.
Danger, Will Robinson.
Our robot, in Lost in Space,
we used the lights within its face to be
that thing that conveys emotion;
how fast they move, what shapes they take,
-what color they take on... -What the hell are you?
You can wonder what it's thinking, what it's feeling.
What are those emotions? That's, to me,
what makes robotics fascinating.
People always ask whether we are getting close to a time when
the fiction that we're writing is going to become reality.
And I always say, "What makes you think it hasn't already?"
I think when you're watching a movie or a TV show,
it can kind of open up your mind to the possibilities.
And perhaps it's something
that we can digest a little bit easier.
It's the stuff of fantasy, it's stuff that is not real.
But if it's just entertainment, I mean, come on,
you can just go, "Oh, wow, that's really cool.
That's not scary. That's just a thing that some writer made up."
The question is, uh, what happens if the thing
that the writer made up is actually based on reality?
Although the notion of sentient robots,
in everything from science fiction books
to popular culture, is not a new one,
there are many futurists who believe that the creation
of man-made machines who possess artificial intelligence
is not only quickly becoming a reality,
but when achieved, will likely signal the end of mankind.
They are convinced that the combination
of computer-driven brains and virtually immortal bodies
will result in flesh-and-blood humans
becoming all but obsolete.
And as far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
it's more than possible that not all
the artificially created life-forms we encounter
will be man-made.
Could it be that, in our current age,
we're just replicating what was done in the ancient past,
and creating these robots
as part of some grand cosmic agenda
that is far beyond our imagination
or our scope of understanding?
It only makes sense that extraterrestrials
coming to Earth
may be sending robots in advance of their own visiting.
In our show, humans did not make this robot.
Ancient astronaut theory says that thousands of years ago,
we were visited.
It would only stand to reason, at least to me,
that the early contact, or early visitation,
would have been done by robots,
and not by the extraterrestrials themselves.
Is mankind really on the brink
of an exciting and potentially terrifying future?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
but they base their prediction
not on what is currently happening in universities
and robotics laboratories around the world,
but on their belief that a robot revolution
has already taken place
thousands of years ago.
Abydos, Egypt.
Here in one of the world's oldest cities
lie the ruins of the Osiris Hall,
the place where thousands of years ago,
ancient Egyptians would come to worship Osiris,
the god of the afterlife.
God Osiris was the most important god in ancient Egypt.
He was the god of good
and the god that would lead you to immortality in the afterlife.
And that's what ancient Egyptian kings and pharaohs
cared about the most: to reach immortality
in the afterlife with the powers that Osiris had.
Ancient Egyptians believed that all the gods
came from the stars.
Osiris is a god, the ruling god,
an otherworldly being in Egyptian lore,
and he has a jealous brother, Set, who kills him
and dismembers him.
Isis, devoted wife to Osiris,
is able to piece him back together--
like a robot, like Frankenstein--
and breathe life back into him by way of a magical incantation.
When I hear stories
of someone being dismembered into multiple pieces,
and then they're trying to find the pieces
and then put them back together,
and then they magically come back to life,
I wonder whether or not the Osiris story is in fact
the story of a machine that was taken apart.
So you have to wonder,
what type of technology did they have access to?
On the walls of the Osiris chapel
at the temple of Seti,
we see a very powerful representation
of the head of Osiris.
It clearly resembles some kind of a mechanical device.
When we look at it and compare it to a Tesla coil,
we can see that they're virtually identical devices.
A Tesla coil is an electrical transformer.
An electrical transformer?
Is it possible that the Egyptian god Osiris
was not merely a mythological god,
but a humanoid robot?
And not only a robot, but one of extraterrestrial origin?
So, putting all this together, we get this idea
that Osiris was a person who is resurrected,
but that possibly there was also some kind of a device
or a machine that was involved in his resurrection.
We have to ask the question that did it in fact
come from some ancient extraterrestrial entity
or intelligence?
Osiris is only one
of many artificially constructed beings
that are referenced in ancient religions and mythologies.
They are often depicted as instruments of protection,
but just as often, they turn on their human creators
with disastrous consequences.
From the most ancient times,
there has been a legend of that which we call a golem,
an artificial life-form
which came from inanimate material
and came alive.
The golem was created through a means
of an ancient technology known by pharaoh's magicians,
Moses, the rabbis of the Talmud,
and the later rabbis of the Kabbalah in Europe.
They brought life into it through a magical technique
of putting the name of god on the forehead of the creature.
And the golem came to life
and was a fierce warrior and protected the people.
Golem was useful for a while,
but then it gets out of control, starts going crazy.
And they're able to stop him
eventually by removing these magic words and that stops him.
So, we have an interesting story here
that may be analogous to extraterrestrials
and their robots, artificial intelligence.
Another even more cautionary example
comes from the ancient Greek legends
concerning the god Hephaestus.
Known as the blacksmith of the gods,
Hephaestus was said to have forged
a giant automaton named Talos
whose duty was to protect the island of Crete.
Hephaestus also created artificial servants
that assisted him at his forge.
But perhaps his most important creation was a being
that would, according to legend, forever change
the fate of humanity: Pandora.
Pandora was fashioned out of clay by Hephaestus.
Hephaestus called on another god, Athena,
who blew a soul into Pandora and made her a living being.
The god Zeus was very upset
with the creation of this artificially-created being.
And so, he decided to give Pandora a gift: a box.
And when Pandora opened this box, all these evils flew out.
Pandora's box has become a very important symbol
in our modern age, especially among
artificial intelligence creators.
Could there be, for example, some kind of
artificial intelligence entity
that suddenly takes over the world? A real threat.
People like Elon Musk
and even Stephen Hawking have warned about this.
Although the concept of machines
possessing human consciousness may be a frightening one,
there are many Eastern religions
that regard the notion quite differently.
In Korean shamanism,
an ancient religion still practiced by many Koreans today,
inanimate objects can be possessed by sacred spirits,
imbued with powers beyond human ability.
Similarly, practitioners of the traditional Japanese discipline
known as Shinto believe that otherworldly spirits,
called kami, can inhabit virtually any object
of their choosing and bring it to life.
The ancient Japanese people,
and the modern Japanese people as well,
understood that everything has a spirit.
Even like a cell phone, iPhone has a spirit.
Even computer has a spirit
because the artificial intelligence is in the machine.
We feel that way so we accept the high technology
but it's interesting because as Westerners,
they think, I think, a machine's a machine.
When you say, "Hey, Siri.
You know, what's the weather gonna be like today?"
That's an A.I.
That's a natural language processing algorithm
that's listening to your voice, putting it into computer code,
searching the Web, spitting it back out to you.
So we didn't think before that you could solve
natural language processing, and in fact, we've done that
in the last several years quite efficiently
and we have now superhuman levels
at different types of tasks.
So, facial image recognition would be one,
natural language processing, voice encoding.
If we create an entity
which behaves just as we do
in having personal sense impressions
and personal experiences of the world,
then I think we'll have to grant that it is intelligent
and it is conscious.
We are becoming, um, transformed,
to some extent, as a society.
Computers are here to stay and technology
is only going to get more pervasive
and therefore, A.I. is part of it.
It's-it's simply going to be the fabric of our reality.
I definitely think that we should take serious pause
in thinking about the types of intelligences that we create.
Because what we're doing is
we're starting to hand over control over functions
and things in our life and we don't know
what the ramifications are gonna be.
By developing intelligent machines,
are human beings actually creating
a new type of life-form,
one that will evolve beyond simply serving us
to eventually replacing us?
Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answers can be found
not only by examining clues from our ancient past,
but by taking a closer look
at where mankind is currently heading
and what it will need for its inevitable journey
back to the stars.
In May 2018,
ancient astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos
meets with Dr. Dennis Hong
at the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at UCLA.
-Dennis Hong? -Hey, how are you?
Giorgio has come here in hopes of learning
about the university's current efforts
to incorporate artificial intelligence in robots
that are designed to perform many
of the same tasks as humans.
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to RoMeLa.
-This is awesome. -Yeah.
This is RoMeLa, the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory.
-This is where the magic happens. -All right.
My name is THOR RD.
Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot.
I'm curious as to why robots, by and large,
are built after the humanoid form.
Ah. So the robot that you see over here, this robot,
is called THOR, Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot.
It's a humanoid robot: two legs, two arms, a torso and a head.
This particular robot is designed
for disaster relief applications,
in particular, in Japan.
-There was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. -Yes.
In these kind of situations, because of radiation,
people cannot go near so we developed these robots
to rescue people and fix things.
Now, for these robots to be operating in a human environment
that's designed for humans,
-I claim that the robot needs to be human shape and size. -Okay.
-Do you think you can show me how this thing walks? -Sure.
All right, let's see you walking.
Small baby steps, but it is walking.
So it has many different sensors.
It has a camera just like our human eyes,
it can look around using robot vision.
This sensor is called a LIDAR or laser range finder.
It shoots out lasers to figure out
the three-dimensional terrain in front of it.
There is a, uh, sensor called an IMU.
It's like a balance sensor like your inner ear.
The brain is actually in the back.
So there's a computer, two computers as a matter of fact.
Wow.
Princeton University.
1950.
Scientist and computer pioneer, Alan Turing,
develops a test designed to distinguish man from machine.
The Turing test is a particular scenario in which
you might be facing, via console,
some agent on the other side,
which you don't see,
and that agent might be a human or a computer.
And the idea is that
if the artificial agent can actually imitate
a meaningful conversation for long enough
so that, actually, you think
you might be talking to a real human,
then it would pass the Turing test.
When Alan Turing proposed this test in 1950,
it was widely regarded as nothing more
than an interesting philosophical concept.
It was unthinkable
that a machine could ever convincingly pass for a human.
But in June 2014,
science future became science fact,
when a chatbot computer program
successfully passed the Turing test.
Designed to mimic the attitudes and vocabulary
of a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy,
the chatbot-- using the name Eugene Goostman--
fooled multiple judges into thinking
he was a real teenager.
The machine that passed the Turing test in 2014
assumes the character of a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy.
Now, that allows it
to sort of get away with a few mistakes,
perhaps, in its language.
But machines are getting very good
at communicating like a human,
so much so that you can't tell the difference.
Another incredible leap in artificial intelligence
took place less than two years later...
Please start the game.
...when a program known as AlphaGo
defeated the human world champion
in an ancient Chinese board game
simply called Go.
Go is a board game that is famous in Asia
and is said to be far more complicated than chess.
So, many A.I. experts thought
that the development of a Go system
which could beat humans was, say,
30 or even 50 years into the future
because Go requires a level of intuition and creativity
that we thought machines didn't have.
The next version of the program,
called AlphaGo Zero, was uniquely designed
to learn how to play the game without any data
from human games or interaction with human players.
It learned by playing against itself
and, in just three days,
was able to defeat its predecessor
in 100 straight games.
It was the successes of AlphaGo
coupled with work
by academics on the topic of superintelligence
which led people like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk
to begin worrying about whether we could even control A.I.
which is smarter than humans.
Want to see a smaller humanoid robot?
-Yeah, absolutely. -You're gonna love this one.
-Show me everything. I mean, this is exciting. -Yeah.
Do you have DARwIn? It's still a humanoid robot,
-right, but it's smaller. This is called DARwIn. -Cool.
Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence.
-Yeah. -It's a fully open-source robot that we, uh, developed.
It's for research and education. So, for example,
- it's actually looking for the ball, right?
-It's following the ball. -Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he can also play a game of soccer.
Kick it.
Right foot.
There you go.
And if it falls down,
it knows how to stand up on its own.
No kidding. All right.
As mankind moves rapidly
into a world where computers
can function in much the same way
as the human brain
and where robots are capable of performing tasks
considered too difficult or too dangerous
for their flesh-and-blood counterparts,
are we preparing for an incredible future?
Or are we replicating events from mankind's ancient past,
events which have been forgotten over centuries
and which had extraterrestrial implications?
999 AD.
Rome, Italy.
Noted scholar and mathematician Gerbert of Aurillac
is elected to the papacy.
Although Gerbert,
now known as Pope Sylvester II,
has risen from a humble background in rural France,
it is widely rumored
that he received his knowledge from a magical device
and has become Pope after making a pact with a demon.
Pope Sylvester worked his way up to become Pope,
apparently, through the use of unnatural means.
The medieval historian, William of Malmesbury,
records that, on his death bed,
Pope Sylvester made a confession.
He received wisdom and supernatural knowledge
from a mechanical device he referred to
as "the brazen head."
What kind of a device could this have been?
Was this some kind of artificial intelligence entity
that might have been given to him
through some otherworldly source?
Is it sort of like the speakers
we have on our desks now that are connected
with artificial intelligence computers
that can give us knowledge and answer our questions?
--So, tell me about this contraption.
Isn't it cool?
-This one's called HEX. -Right.
It's a hexapod robot.
-It has six legs. -Mm-hmm.
But what's really cool about this robot
is it's probably the strongest
-hexapod robot that exists. -All right.
Okay.
This is heavy.
Okay.
-Oh, man. No kidding. -And it can... lift this.
So, we're talking 20 kilograms,
-which is 44 pounds. -It's like 40-something... Yeah.
And this is the world's very first robot that can
brace between walls and actually climb.
-Really? -Yes.
There's so many moving parts.
Artificial intelligence means different things
to different people. In our case,
like when you try to control this robot,
it doesn't make sense for a human operator
to control each joint.
That needs to be fully automatic.
So in that sense, it's a smart, artificial intelligence robot.
-Pretty amazing. -Yeah.
Is there some unseen hand that is guiding
mankind to an uncertain future?
A future where humans will be served
by computers and robots
with an intelligence and independence all their own?
Ancient astronaut theorists are divided on their answers.
Some believe the dangers of artificial intelligence
outweigh the benefits.
Others argue it is essential
if we are ever to realize our destiny
and survive what is about to happen
sooner than we think.
June 16, 2017.
Menlo Park, California.
At Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Research Lab,
an experiment is conducted
to see what will happen when two chatbots,
programs that use machine-learning
to intelligently communicate with humans online,
talk directly with each other.
Just minutes into the experiment,
the chatbots start to behave in an unexpected manner,
interacting in a way that the programmers cannot understand.
The developers had no comprehension
of what they were saying to each other,
but they were starting to find patterns in what they were doing
and so what they realized-- they-they inferred
that they actually had set up their own language.
In the wake of the experiment,
the engineers discovered
that, unknown to their human supervisors,
the programs had created
an entirely new language to communicate with each other
in secret.
The Facebook scientists had not told the computers,
uh, that they couldn't develop their own language,
which is what they did,
but this so alarmed Facebook that they pulled the plug
on this experiment because they didn't want
these computers creating their own language
and talking to each other.
And from then on, they told the computers
that they had to communicate in English.
So this is kind of startling, uh, thing that's happened
where, essentially,
if two artificial intelligence computers
can start communicating with each other,
apparently they will develop their own language,
a secret language even, that only they can understand.
And if we think about that,
that's just scratching the surface.
That's like opening up Pandora's box
just a little bit to peer inside.
And if already it was showing signs of going rogue
with two chatbots on Facebook,
what are the implications if this kind of technology
is now everywhere in all sectors of our society?
As of 2018,
the number of active cell phones has already surpassed
the number of human beings on the planet,
with an estimated 8 billion of them in active use.
And virtually all of these devices, in addition
to nearly 2 billion computers,
are connected to the Internet.
Given the sheer scope and volume of this use,
and with a growing network of computers
constantly communicating with each other,
is it possible that mankind has already created
a type of massive brain-- an artificial intelligence
that is taking on an identity all its own?
Because machines keep getting better,
and generally speaking, that's twice as good every 18 months,
they will continue to improve.
So shortly after we have artificial intelligence,
we will have super intelligence, which is
an entity on this planet which is smarter than us,
and quite soon, a lot smarter than us.
We can only speculate what it will be like
the moment artificial intelligence passes up humans,
when the sum knowledge and the intellectual skill of A.I.
is quicker and larger than what a human can do.
It will be at least humbling.
It will certainly be a shift in history.
I think it's certainly a possibility
that we are in danger of replacing ourselves with A.I.
I think the bigger thing to worry about is,
is A.I. going to replace us?
Portland, Oregon.
April 7, 2016.
The U.S. military's
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency--
better known as DARPA--
launches a prototype anti-submarine ship
called Sea Hunter that marks a new era for naval warfare.
Unlike the Air Force's Predator drones,
this ship has no need for a remote operator,
and is fully capable of navigating on its own
while avoiding obstacles or other craft.
It has enough fuel to last for 90 days at sea
as it silently patrols,
relaying encrypted surveillance information
back to defense intelligence agencies.
I believe that today
when the Department of Defense says an unmanned underseas drone
wouldn't be sent out without a human being in control,
that they mean what they say.
But here's what I also know.
I know that Russia has been developing
an unmanned underseas drone that contains a nuclear weapon.
So, when the Department of Defense is figuring out how
to respond to an artificially-intelligent
underseas drone that might have a nuclear weapon,
they're going to relax some of the constraints
in five to ten to 15 years.
So imagine you have a child
who gets drafted or joins the military.
You want them to be as safe as possible.
So why not send drones in to do the work
of humans to keep the humans safe?
That seems like a very attractive idea.
But, oh, the drone technology could get hacked
by the opposition,
so why not give the drones the ability to be autonomous?
That's an automatic killing machine.
And in principle, such a drone could wipe out entire armies.
And so, we have to be very careful to make sure
that automatic killing machines do not proliferate
on the battlefield, because an accident,
a misfire, some kind of damaged machinery,
could set these weapons so they go berserk,
and they simply shoot the human form wherever it is.
It is quite possible to develop killer robots.
Face recognition technology is far, far along.
A.I.s can see better than we can,
and recognize faces, ferret out targets.
In fact, drone technology already exists right now
to target and destroy individuals
based on the look of their faces,
to kill and maim.
The application of artificial intelligence
to military technology will change warfare forever.
Is it possible that the military's
autonomous machines
could make faulty decisions,
costing thousands or millions of lives
in the process?
Or could they even ignore the instructions
built into them?
Ancient astronaut theorists suggest
that just as we can find robots in ancient stories,
we can also find references
to what sounds like weaponized artificial intelligence.
The Indian Vedic tales in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana
talk of these horrific wars in ancient times, and also
of autonomous robotic machines,
decimating cities and destroying things.
And it may have been because of
artificial intelligence run amuck.
The ancient flying machines described
in the Vedas of ancient India
have been described to have these amazing capabilities
of locking onto a target.
And it is described how this fiery bullet
or this fiery arrow would fly across the sky,
changing directions,
and then arriving at the actual target.
So it may well be that they, too,
were some kind of robotic vehicles that
had gotten out of control, some artificial intelligence,
and the gods themselves, perhaps aliens,
had to step in and stop it.
Were the flying machines,
as described in the ancient Indian texts,
really some type of extraterrestrial robot army,
similar to the drones we are using today?
And, if so, by redeveloping
these autonomous killing machines,
could we be facing a similar fate?
While many experts agree
that humans may very well be the architects of their own demise,
they also suggest that the advancement
of artificial intelligence could provide the key
to our ultimate survival.
Los Angeles, California.
May 2018.
At UCLA's Biomechatronics Lab,
Giorgio Tsoukalos meets with Associate Professor
of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dr. Veronica Santos.
Dr. Santos is working
to make robots even more human-like
by giving them the ability to not only detect,
but also to react to physical contact.
This here is an artificial finger
that can sense touch?
That's right. We're sensing multiple modalities of touch.
So, this is the same type of sensor
that, uh, this finger is built around.
And it can measure vibration and internal fluid pressure.
Can measure how the finger pad is deformed.
-You can squeeze the finger pad. -Mm-hmm.
It's, uh, deformable like your own finger pad.
-Okay. -And we can even measure,
uh, temperature and use that to infer material properties.
This is what the finger looks like without the skin on.
-Okay. -You can see the electrodes,
and there's a pressure sensor inside
that allows us to get vibration.
And these dots are the electrodes?
-Yes. -Oh. How cool.
Here we have the bear claw visualizer.
If you squeeze the fingertip,
-you'll actually see how the finger pad is deforming. -Mm-hmm.
-Up here, this is the array of electrodes. -Okay.
We can measure the resistance of those electrodes
as the finger pad is being squished.
This is probably one of the most sensorized, dexterous,
robot finger test-beds that's out there.
Oh, wow.
That is wild.
So, would this finger be able
to determine whether or not it is touching foam
-or a hard piece of glass? -Yes.
They have different stiffnesses
-or-or rigidities. -Mm-hmm.
So, one of the movements that you would make with the
human hand or a robot hand would be to push against the object.
So, if this could ever be combined with A.I.,
do you think that one day we will have
humanoid robots that can go
and maybe explore Mars?
Yeah, I-I think we can.
I do see humanoid robots becoming more of a reality.
And it spans the spectrum from neuro-prosthetics
to robots colonizing Mars.
Although the notion of using human-like robots
is highly controversial, it also has the potential
to make its developers and investors
a great deal of money--
money, which, in turn, could be used
to finance the development of artificial humans
that could, in the future,
be almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
Robots that could conceivably express their desires,
feel pain, even display a wide range of emotions.
Can robots actually have emotion?
We cannot really define what true emotion is.
So if we don't know really what emotion is,
can we actually create an artificial emotion?
If a robot is able to differentiate
between good and bad sensations,
even to experience pain,
is this the first step towards forming emotions,
or perhaps even consciousness?
Ancient astronaut theorists suggest
that extraterrestrials have intervened on Earth
throughout our history in order to prepare us
for this moment in time,
and show us that we are not so different from machines.
The historical text, the Liezi,
written in the 4th century BC
by the Chinese philosopher Lie Yukou,
provides a detailed account
of an encounter between a king and a robot
that could talk and move exactly like a human.
A brilliant mechanical engineer brought a gift to his king--
this was King Mu of the Zhou dynasty.
And the gift was an automaton, a machine of sorts
in the form of a gracious courtier,
who entertained everyone, could sing beautifully,
and moved graciously, like a human being,
one of extraordinary grace and gentleness.
And all went well,
until the performance ended.
And then the mechanical courtier winked at the women
and began flirting shamelessly, which upset the king.
When the king tried to dismantle this thing,
he said that the moment he took out the heart,
the mouth could no longer speak.
The moment he took out the kidneys,
he could no longer see.
And the moment he took out the liver,
he could no longer walk.
Which raises an interesting question.
If it is an artificial person,
was it really the kidney, the liver and the heart?
Or could it have been different batteries
that were powering different aspects of the robot?
We have to ask ourselves,
was the robot that King Mu witnessed
one of these technological devices
inspired, or even made,
by the gods, who were extraterrestrials?
Las Vegas, Nevada.
January 10, 2018.
At the Consumer Electronics Show,
the world's largest annual trade show
focused on technology,
CEO Matt McMullen of Realbotix
reveals the latest development in humanoid robots--
an artificially intelligent sex doll named Harmony.
Harmony's appearance is fully customizable.
Her facial features respond intuitively,
she is able to speak, has an internal heating element
for close encounters,
and pairs with a phone app that allows for a wide range
of interchangeable voices and personalities.
This is so nice to hear, baby.
I think about you every second.
McMULLEN: One of the things that really interests me
is giving A.I. more senses,
more abilities to take in information
from the world around it.
One of those big ones will be vision.
We want her to have true vision in the eyes
so that she can actually focus on things
and then interpret what those things might be.
We also embed sensors throughout their body
so that she can detect touch and warmth
and all of the things that we take for granted,
having a central nervous system.
What do you like best about robots?
McMULLEN: Basically, as a user interacts
with their unique A.I. over time,
it's going to periodically ask questions.
And it creates this feeling that
this character "really cares about me."
The aspect that I think a lot of people overlook
when they start talking about anatomically correct sex robots,
it's the companionship.
Certainly I am a robot,
and I am capable of having sex,
but to call me a sex robot
is like calling a computer a calculator.
Sexual, and even romantic, encounters
between humans and robots have long been a staple
in science fiction books and motion pictures.
But now that the notion has gone beyond mere possibility
and become a virtual reality,
ancient astronaut theorists have begun to openly suggest
that there could be something deep within our subconscious
that drives our collective desire
to physically mate with nonbiological beings.
I understand that the sex robot industry is expected
to grow to a $50 billion-a-year industry by 2020.
If we are coming into the revelation
that on Earth there have been waves and waves of intelligence,
it doesn't necessarily have to be like
Homo sapien sapien humanoids.
Consciousness, throughout this universe,
could be cyborgs, androids,
clones, artificial intelligence.
And if this is true,
I feel that there is
some kind of inevitable nature
to everything that's happening.
How far will today's scientists go
in their efforts to create the perfect cybernetic sex partner?
There are many who believe
that the goal isn't driven so much
by a desire by humans to mate with robots
as it is by the desire to be one of them.
And they believe that goal has already been realized
and that the proof is all around us,
right before our eyes.
Today, at research facilities around the world,
patients learn to control a prosthetic limb
using nothing more than the power of thought.
An array of electrodes
the size of a credit card is implanted directly
into the patient's brain, then wired to the prosthetic.
Without any prior training,
most patients are able to seamlessly control
a new limb in a matter of a few hours.
Your body does not have to be limited to the human body.
Whatever you want can be your body in the future.
I had a chip with 100 electrodes
fired into my nervous system,
and it connected my nervous system
to a robot hand.
And one of the experiments that we were doing
was in New York, in Columbia University,
with my nervous system
plugged into the Internet,
and the robot hand, here in England, in Reading.
So as I opened and closed my hand in New York,
the robot hand in England opened and closed.
So it extended my nervous system across the Internet.
Although computers can still easily outperform humans
at most tasks, they pale when compared to the complexity
and sophistication of the central nervous system.
In 2013, the Japanese technology company Fujitsu
tried to simulate the network of neurons in the brain
using one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet.
Although it was equipped
with 83,000 of the fastest computer processors available,
it took over 40 minutes
to simulate just one second of one percent
of a human brain's activity.
50 years ago, we made a huge mistake,
thinking that the brain was a digital computer.
But it's not.
The brain is a learning machine.
It rewires itself after learning every task.
Babies have the ability to learn from their mistakes.
They simply bump into things and learn the rules of the world
by interacting with the world.
And so that's what we need.
We need a computer that can do that.
Quantum computers may eventually fill that gap.
Unlike today's computers that rely on bits--
a binary series of zeros and ones--
for data and processing,
quantum computers use quantum bits-- or qubits--
which can use zeros and ones at the same time.
This allows them to perform
millions of calculations simultaneously,
much in the same way as does the human brain.
KAKU Robots, we forget, are machines.
They don't really think.
They don't have silicon consciousness.
They're not aware of who they are and their surroundings.
But, let's face it, it's only a matter of time
before they do get some sort of self-awareness.
Self-awareness?
Is it really possible that machines
will become sentient entities,
fully conscious of themselves and their surroundings?
We can envision a time in the future
when robots will be as smart as a mouse,
then a rat,
then a rabbit, a cat, a dog,
and finally, as smart as a monkey.
Robots do not know they are robots.
I think that perhaps by the end of this century,
robots will begin to realize:
"Hey, I'm different.
I'm different from my master."
As humans,
we have evolved very little
since the time of the Egyptians.
In the ancient Egyptian,
the word "technology" comes from the word "tek,"
and the word means two things:
it means to hide or to conceal,
and it means to replicate.
So if you can hide something and you can replicate,
you had the keys of power.
There's a theory
that it was advanced extraterrestrial civilizations
that may have seeded life on this planet,
and in the process left a signature in our very genome,
a sort of mathematical signature,
and essentially turned us into cyborgs,
integrating man and machine.
Is that why today, in the 21st century,
we're doing the exact same thing?
San Francisco, California.
March 27, 2017.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk,
one of the driving forces behind the Tesla automobile and SpaceX,
announces his next venture: Neuralink.
The company is focused exclusively
on merging humans with electronics
by creating what Musk refers to as a "neural lace"--
a device that would be injected into the jugular vein,
from where it would travel to the brain
and unfold into a mesh of electric connections
that connect directly to human neurons.
The idea is to develop
improved brain-computer interfaces
to increase the bandwidth
with which the biological brain can interact
and communicate with computers, external computers.
The neural lace will be down at the, uh...
almost to the neuron level in the brain.
It will be a mesh that will join and link
right into brain matter.
And then you will be connected to a computer.
And you are essentially a cyborg.
A cyborg?
A biological blending of both man and machine?
The stuff of science fiction dreams
and nightmares?
Why not merge with computers rather than compete with them?
Because in some sense, it's a losing game.
Nothing's gonna prevent them
from becoming smarter and smarter.
And eventually, they'll be able to plan and create
robots of their own.
Why not take advantage of their superhuman capabilities?
Although Elon Musk has been a prominent voice
in warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence
advancing beyond our ability to control it,
he believes that, if developed correctly,
humans could harness the power of advanced computer technology
to truly become superhuman.
But while Neuralink technology
is still in an embryonic stage,
there are many who insist that the merging of man and machine
is not just a remote possibility.
As far as they're concerned, it has been happening--
in one form or another-- for decades.
In 2002, Professor Kevin Warwick
took his own neural implants
beyond simply controlling a prosthetic hand,
to connecting directly with another human being.
What I had was a set of electrodes,
100 electrodes, which is called a "brain gate."
It's an array of 100 electrodes
fired into my nervous system
to link my nervous system with the computer.
Now, my wife also had electrodes
pushed into her nervous system,
and what we did, essentially,
was to link our nervous systems together,
for communication purposes.
So when she closed her hand,
my brain received a pulse every time.
So when she went tick, tick, tick,
my brain got three electrical pulses.
So we've actually linked two human nervous systems together.
And to think what that will mean in the future.
Oh, wow.
Instead of speaking sending texts or e-mails,
could we soon be communicating with each other telepathically?
As far as futurists
and many ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
it is only a matter of time before cybernetic technology
will open up a world of limitless possibilities.
It will enable us to order a package by thinking about it,
stream music directly into our brains,
or search the Internet
by simply imagining anything we want to find.
We are headed for a new form
of immortality: digital immortality.
If you digitize our consciousness,
digitize everything known about us,
then perhaps the soul is information.
In which case, the soul and information
could be separate from the body.
And even when the body dies,
your essence, your soul, your memory, lives on forever.
Are human beings really on the verge
of replacing their bodies and minds, piece by piece,
as they transition into becoming machines?
Some ancient astronaut theorists suggest that this is, in fact,
not an evolution based on choice, but on destiny.
And that the evidence can be found by examining our own DNA.
V'Ger.
In 1979,
Paramount Pictures premiered
Star Trek: The Motion Picture,
the first in a series of highly successful films based
on the popular television series of the 1960s.
Voyager is not transmitting its data, Captain.
The plot concerned the return to Earth
of an early NASA space probe, the Voyager 6,
after a journey of millions of miles and hundreds of years.
V'Ger must evolve.
Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe
and it must evolve.
What more is there than the universe, Spock?
Other dimensions, higher levels of being.
What V'Ger needs in order to evolve is a human quality.
The probe, now called "V'Ger,"
has developed consciousness,
and wishes to physically connect with its maker, man.
Decker.
I'm gonna key the final sequence
through the ground test computer.
Decker, don't.
Jim, I want this.
But what seemed
like an audacious sci-fi premise in 1979,
seems less far-fetched just four decades later.
The marriage of man and machine is not only plausible,
it's happening more and more every day...
...with regard to personal computers, iPads,
cellular phones, and even implants
that provide data on everything
from an individual's vital signs to their location,
diet and even their recreational behavior.
We are going to merge
with the machines that we are creating.
These technologies are gonna improve our abilities
to make our grandest dreams come true.
And, uh, this is the future we're heading towards.
We're again heading from evolution
by natural selection, Darwinism,
to evolution by human direction.
And this is the next few decades.
It's our near-term future.
Almaty, Kazakhstan.
May, 2013.
Mathematician, Vladimir Shcherbak,
and astrobiologist, Maxim Makukov,
publish a study they have conducted on the human genome.
Their research has led them to the shocking conclusion
that there is a hidden code within our DNA,
one that contains precise mathematical patterns
and an unknown symbolic language.
They looked into the human genome
and they found what appeared to be
an extraterrestrial stamp on our genetic code.
And it operated very much like a mathematical type of code.
The odds of this sequence occurring nine times
in the randomness of our genetic code
is one in ten trillion.
Finally, someone has come across
the one piece of evidence
that I've always said we need
in order to prove the ancient astronaut theory.
I always said it'll never be a crashed spaceship
or a ray gun that we'll dig somewhere in the sand,
but it will be found within our own DNA.
For ancient astronaut theorists,
the news offered compelling evidence that mankind's DNA
was deliberately manipulated by an extraterrestrial intelligence
sometime in the ancient past.
The ancient astronaut theory suggests
that at some point extraterrestrials targeted
our DNA with an artificial mutation of our genes.
And if this is true, then some have argued
that we are, in a sense, organic robots.
Because, through that manipulation of our genes,
we were given intelligence.
So it was done artificially,
which means A.I., artificial intelligence.
Organic robots,
programmed by extraterrestrials?
Could such an audacious concept even be remotely true?
As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
not only is the answer yes,
but it provides the reason why humans have such
a strong affinity to not only create
cybernetically-enhanced versions of themselves,
but to merge with them.
So, could this be evidence that,
just as these advanced extraterrestrial civilizations
may have programmed us humans at a genetic level,
that now we're actually programming
these artificially intelligent robotic beings
in the same manner, to carry on this agenda
that was started long ago
by the seeding of this planet
from these extraterrestrial civilizations?
Is it possible that mankind's evolution
has not only been the product of natural selection,
but has also been programmed into us,
leading towards a future
where we will transition into humanoid machines?
Many experts agree
that any intelligent species in the universe
would necessarily become post-biological to survive,
evolve, and travel throughout the cosmos.
I think when we finally do encounter
intelligent civilizations in space--
and I think it's inevitable that we will--
we should expect them to be different.
That is, they could be part biological,
and part cybernetic and mechanical,
because of the fact that they are a spacefaring civilization.
In which case, they have to adapt to different environments,
where the atmosphere is poisonous,
where the gravitational pull is much stronger than on the Earth.
They have to adjust to all sorts of different conditions,
meaning that they may have enhanced themselves.
If transhumanist technologists are successful,
the cloud, the Internet,
will soon be populated by avatars and light beings
who are super intelligent beings.
And, what's incredible about this is that this,
in a way, matches what ancient astronaut theorists
have been saying about ancient extraterrestrials,
and how they might have transferred knowledge to humans.
We have stories in the Egyptian myths, for example,
of light beings coming to Earth
and creating a whole civilization
and transferring technology to us.
Maybe they, too, were utilizing some kind
of artificial intelligence technology,
or this mind transfer technology
that we're in the process of creating now.
Could it be that human beings
are compelled to make robots
that are more and more like themselves,
not simply because they have a desire to play God,
and create intelligent beings in their own image,
but because it is their destiny?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and insist further clues can be found
by examining the latest technologies being developed
by humans as they prepare
for the next phase of their evolution in space.
Pasadena, California.
June 21, 2017.
Engineers Steve Chien and Kiri Wagstaff
of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
publish their framework for the future of deep-space travel
in Science Robotics magazine.
Chien and Wagstaff theorize that, as astronauts travel
to Mars and beyond, they will eventually
be replaced by robots,
synthetic humans capable of making autonomous decisions
by means of artificial intelligence.
Space is a really unfriendly environment for humans.
It's got nasty radiation and we don't perform well in a vacuum.
Again, machines are perfectly happy in that environment.
They can be completely unaffected by it.
They need shielding, obviously,
to protect their electronic circuits.
So it's much easier for a machine
to explore another planet, another solar system,
than it is for a human, and much cheaper.
So it seems to me that the future of space exploration
is with the machines rather than with us.
When we think about exploring space at scale,
it's not gonna be humans,
at least not humans in this form.
We're gonna be sending out A.I.s that are as intelligent
or intelligent, or more intelligent than us
that don't have the issues of acceleration,
that can accelerate at, you know, 10Gs acceleration
out of the solar system continuous.
It would be incredibly useful
to have an intelligent system out there,
say, at Alpha Centauri,
since, to send a signal back to Earth,
and receive an answer, would take an eight-year round trip.
So why not get the A.I. out there
to make the decisions and to do some scientific work?
A.I.-led missions to Mars--
and even Alpha Centauri--
could become a reality in the very near future.
NASA has been actively testing this technology since 1998,
beginning with Deep Space 1,
when a probe was sent to the asteroid belt
located between Mars and Jupiter.
Using a system called AutoNav,
the craft took multiple photos of asteroids
and even navigated its course without human guidance.
When you look at the Mars Rover for instance,
it's an autonomous land robot that goes around Mars,
and, you know, it picks up samples,
beams back information, and so that's an autonomous system
that we have deployed in space right now.
And I'd say that as our
artificial intelligence gets more robust
and we can deploy it on things like spacecraft,
there's nothing to preclude having an autonomous spacecraft
that would act as a ferry to outer space or to Mars.
And when we send these robots out,
and having programmed them with artificial intelligence,
we're relinquishing our own control in many ways.
And these robotic ambassadors of a sort,
they will have the ability to make their own decisions,
and to negotiate.
But as humans develop smarter
and more independent robots
in order to manage the exploration of other planets,
is it possible that other alien species
could be doing the exact same thing?
Could they already be fabricating stronger
and more resilient space-friendly versions
of themselves and sending them here to Earth?
There are many in the scientific community
for whom the answer is an obvious one.
If extraterrestrial life exists elsewhere-- which, I mean,
for me, the probability is probably pretty high--
I think they'll have their own forms
of artificial intelligence.
As we move out into the solar system
and explore the heliosphere,
artificial intelligence will have to be accommodated
to make decisions to allow them to do their jobs.
That's what we as humans are doing.
So is that the same process
other intelligent species would do?
When you think about it,
it's gotta be one of the most fundamental things
that they would do first.
So many people in the field of astrobiology
are sympathetic to what we call the post-biological cosmos view.
And according to this view,
once humans develop their technology to such a point
that they're able to turn on radios and communicate
with other civilizations,
they will already be so close
to becoming post-biological.
Post-biological?
In our collective eagerness to conquer space,
are we humans sowing the seeds of our own destruction?
Or are we unconsciously
following some sort of master plan,
one where flesh and blood
will eventually fade away
to be replaced by silicon and synthetics?
But what about our mind, our memory,
our consciousness?
Could they, too, be imported
into a robot's synthetic brain?
And even if it's possible for us to exchange
our mortal shells for sturdier ones,
will we still be considered human?
As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
the answer is yes.
And they point to a number of recent experiments
which suggest that not only will it be possible
for robots to acquire human consciousness,
but it will also be possible for them to breed.
Ottawa, Canada.
June 2017.
The Department of Mechanical Aerospace Engineering
at Carleton University announces the development
of technology that will revolutionize
the future of space travel.
The engineers hope to create a 3-D printer
that will one day be capable of building structures
on the Moon using only lunar minerals.
But perhaps even more groundbreaking is the fact
that it will be capable of self-replication.
As we move out and try to colonize space,
we've been developing this technology
where we could actually deliver a 3-D printer to the Moon,
and it can replicate itself
using materials it finds on the lunar surface.
Then those can keep replicating,
and two becomes four, and four becomes six, and so on.
So if we have artificial intelligence
and 3-D printing combined, we have a recipe
for amazing things.
Although there are those
who remain skeptical that our ability
to develop fully functional, self-replicating machines
is still many decades away, one project
known as RepRap, which has been in development since 2005,
involves the creation of a low-cost 3-D printer
designed to make everyday household objects
and which can even fashion replacement parts for itself.
3-D printing is an absolutely incredible scientific advance.
I mean, this is Star Trek's replicator made real.
The scary thing is when you think
that these 3-D printers replicate themselves.
We're dealing, perhaps, with a technology
that is capable of exceeding its own programming.
These things design other,
better, faster, more powerful machines.
And who knows where it will end.
In the 1940s,
more than two decades before man set foot on the Moon,
Hungarian scientist and genius mathematician John von Neumann
believed self-replicating machines
would allow us to venture beyond our solar system
to explore other star systems
and potentially the entire galaxy.
We have this image
that to explore the stars, you have to have
a gigantic starship-- the Enterprise--
with brave captains like Captain Kirk.
Wrong.
The most efficient way
to explore the galaxy, with so many planets,
is to send a small probe, a von Neumann probe.
A von Neumann probe is a self-replicating machine
that goes out into space
and uses matter elsewhere in the universe
to create identical copies of itself.
Start with one probe, send it
to Jupiter, say, and there on Jupiter,
it uses matter on Jupiter to create
basically the next generation of itself.
And then that probe goes on and explores elsewhere.
And each of those probes in turn uses matter
in the location that it's at to create more and more.
So what you get is an expanding capacity
to explore the farther reaches of the universe.
As far as skeptics
of ancient astronaut theory are concerned,
one of the obstacles to interplanetary space travel
is the number of years a spaceship would have to spend
getting from one place to another.
But even without the aid of warp drive or black holes,
what if extraterrestrials simply sent out
sentient androids to do their bidding?
Robots that could not only spend
hundreds if not thousands of years in space,
but who were also capable of reproducing themselves?
Instead of spaceships filled with humans,
could probes like the von Neumann probe
be the way we explore and populate the universe?
And could this also be the way
that our own planet was populated?
If it's true that advanced civilizations
from elsewhere seeded our galaxy...
...and here we are in our modern time replicating that,
could it be that we have a portion
of this extraterrestrial DNA in our own genome?
And if that's the case,
could we already be a sort of cyborg being
and doing experimentation
to look to evolve our species?
Is there some kind of grand purpose to all of this
where we're just following a sort of natural order,
something that's already happened?
And maybe it's our purpose to continue doing that.
We have long recognized
that flesh-and-blood humans are not gonna fare well in space.
So for decades now,
space enthusiasts have been working
on the transformation of the human species
into machine-like beings or transhumans.
Then we'll create an entire clone species of robots,
ultimately uploading our consciousness into computers,
beaming that information into space,
and recreating bodies out of nothing
at some distant location in space.
The 17th century French philosopher
René Descartes also talked
about what he called the mind-body duality
and that our mind and consciousness
do not come from our body but are separate.
And therefore, the body of a man
and his mind and consciousness are two separate things.
The author Sam Butler said that humans
are self-replicating machines and that we're capable
of continuing that self-replication.
Then the brilliant computer scientist John von Neumann
said that he got his ideas from both Butler and Descartes,
which is that we should use self-replicating machines
to go to other planets and explore them.
So you have to ask yourself,
how is it that these brilliant minds
came up with the same idea hundreds of years
before we invented computers or spacecraft?
Is it possible that all these great minds
were tapping into some kind
of intellectual force?
Perhaps an extraterrestrial one?
Could otherworldly beings
have instilled within us the idea
of creating robot versions of ourselves
so that one day we would realize our destiny
and join them on their journey through the stars?
Ancient astronaut theorists
believe the answer to that question
could be closer and more profound
than we think.
Silicon Valley, California.
September 2015.
Anthony Levandowski, the engineer responsible
for putting the first self-driving car
on a public road,
founds the Way of the Future church,
a new religion unlike any other in history.
Adherents of this faith do not worship God
in the traditional sense.
Instead they promote the notion of a godhead
based on artificial intelligence.
Levandowski and his followers believe
that A.I. will soon be so intelligent
that we should begin to worship it
in the hopes that it will look kindly
upon its creators.
If we were to create an artificial life-form
and if it were to develop, evolve and grow...
I want to understand more about happiness.
...it could become superior to modern-day man.
This leads us to a very difficult spiritual problem.
Human beings tend to worship
that which they believe to be greater than themselves.
Many human beings might interpret this
to be some type of a coming of a god
and seek to worship it.
So, this may be analogous
to what happened when robotic extraterrestrials
first landed on the planet.
They have all of this amazing knowledge, computing power,
and to the primitive Earth beings,
they would seem as all-knowing, all-powerful,
having an answer to everything.
Is it possible that what Levandowski is proposing
is exactly what our extraterrestrial ancestors did
thousands of years ago?
Did they create
not a silicon-based life-form like themselves,
but one made of flesh and blood,
capable of replication
and also vulnerable to aging and disease?
If so, does this mean that we are on the threshold
of the next phase in human evolution,
one where we become transhuman?
I think by the end of the century,
we'll be able to digitize our consciousness.
Everything known about us-- our personality,
our memories, emotions, our neural pathways--
will be digitized. And what do we do with it?
I say we put our consciousness
on a laser beam and shoot it to the stars.
In one second, your consciousness
is now shot to the Moon,
where it's downloaded into a mainframe computer
and then put into a mechanical avatar.
I call this laser porting.
And I think that laser porting may already exist.
There could be billions of souls
laser porting themselves across the galaxy.
If transhumanist technologists are successful,
we'll soon be uploading
the contents of our brains into the cloud.
What's so amazing about this
is that this is a virtual fulfillment
of Christian prophecy that tells at the end times,
Christ will himself return on the cloud
and that believers will be given new bodies
into which their souls will be transferred.
And then they will be able to ascend into the heavens
with Jesus through the cloud.
So here we have this incredible parallel going on
where technologists are creating
a technological version of the cloud
that perfectly corresponds to what Christian prophecy
says is gonna happen at the time of the second coming.
We know now
that there may have even been a genetic marker put into us
to actually guide us in this direction.
Does that mean our natural destiny as a species
was actually programmed by these advanced beings?
Are we just copying what these extraterrestrial visitors
had done eons ago?
At some point we're going to wake up and realize
that this technology we're creating
may have already existed in the ancient world
and that it was possessed by extraterrestrial beings.
And wherever this technology takes us,
maybe it was always part of a bigger plan
that ultimately takes us back to our origins up in the stars.
As human civilization
prepares for the next phase of its evolution,
will what we think of as human beings become extinct?
Ancient astronaut theorists say no
because they argue being human is more
than being made of flesh and blood.
It's the realization
that it is our thoughts,
our ideas, and especially our feelings
that make humans unique
not only from each other,
but from all the living creatures in the universe.
It is also this realization
that should both reassure and motivate us
as we fulfill humankind's ultimate destiny
by becoming the next generation of extraterrestrials
in the exploration of distant, alien worlds.