The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans. A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines

This paper claims that the “species dominance” issue will dominate our global politics later this century. Humanity will be bitterly divided over the question whether to build godlike, massively intelligent machines, called “artilects” (artificial intellects) which with 21 century technologies will have mental capacities trillions of trillions of times above the human level. Humanity will split into 3 major camps, the “Cosmists” (in favor of building artilects), the “Terrans” (opposed to building artilects), and the “Cyborgs” (who want to become artilects themselves by adding components to their own human brains). A major “artilect war” between the Cosmists and the Terrans, late in the 21 century will kill not millions but billions of people.