9 Ways The World Might End

Ways the World Might End: RobotsWE GET REPLACED BY MACHINES
In 1997, Deep Blue, an IBM computer built to play chess, schooled world champion Gary Kasparov in a six-game match. Earlier this year, supercomputer Watson kicked everyone’s ass at Jeopardy. And Siri can tell you where to go for flapjacks no matter where you are. Terrifying.

Inventor and futurist Raymond Kurzweil, who was hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” believes that in about 35 years, computers will have the ability to think for themselves. The theory is known as Singularity, and Kurzweil told Time last February that in the year  2045 the quantity of artificial intelligence created will be about a billion times the sum of all the human intelligence that exists today. We’d break down what a post-singular world would look like, but we’re not smart enough. As long as it’s not like Bicentennial Man. ::shudder::