Future Superhuman

Book excerpt: In breathtakingly original prose, Elise Bohan argues that we're hurtling towards a superhuman future - or, if we blunder, extinction. The only way out of our existential crises, from global warming to the risks posed by nuclear weapons, novel and bioengineered pathogens and unaligned AI, is up. We'll need more technology to safeguard our future - and we're going to invent (and perhaps even merge with) some of that technology. What does that mean for our 20th century life-scripts? Are the robots coming for our jobs? How will human relationships change when AI knows us inside out? Will we still be having human babies by the century's end? Bohan unflinchingly explores possibilities most of us are afraid to imagine: the impacts of automation on our jobs, livelihoods and dating and mating careers, the stretching out of 'the-circle-of-life' as life-extension technologies mature, the rise of AI friends and lovers, the liberation of women from pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, and the impending global baby-bust - and attendant proliferation of digital minds. Strap in for an exhilarating, and starkly honest, take on the promise and peril of life in the 21st century.