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In the April 2000 issue, Wired published an article titled “Why the Future Doesn't Need Us” by Bill Joy—a co‐founder of Sun Microsystems. The article postulated a dystopian scenario whereby machines with superior intelligence would displace humans—known as the Singularity era. In that final year of the 20th century, Wired also released several other cover stories that explored the combination of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) and predicted how those advanced technologies would impact the future of humanity.
After two decades, the predicted scenario has not yet materialized. The Singularity is still a matter of debate. Elon Musk of Tesla and Jack Ma of Alibaba famously had an argument on “human versus machine” at the World AI Conference stage in 2019. Elon Musk reiterated Bill Joy's concern that AI could end human civilization while Jack Ma maintained that humans would always be far superior to machines because of their emotional capacity.
Businesspeople have been wary of the threat of AI, from the loss of jobs to the extinction of humanity. But many wonder whether the danger is overrated. We imagined a long time ago futuristic AI‐powered automation, such as fully automated smart homes, autonomous cars, and self‐manufacturing 3D printers. But the automation has only made them available in forms of limited prototypes and has not managed to go mainstream.
Automation will indeed continue to take over some jobs. Brookings Institution predicted that automation threatens to replace 25% of jobs in the United States, especially the repetitive tasks. But AI has a long way to go to catch up with human intelligence and to replace it altogether. Even proponents of the Singularity believe that it will take a few more decades for it to happen. Ray Kurzweil of Google and Masayoshi Son of Softbank predicted that the Singularity would only come about by 2045–2050.
The Digital Divide Still Exists
There were close to 5 billion Internet users as of 2020. This number continues to grow at a rate of 1 million new users per day, as estimated by We Are Social. Thus, it will take us another decade to reach 90% penetration. By 2030, there will be more than 8 billion Internet users globally, which accounts for more than 90% of the world's population.
