Given the rapid advancements in the area of technology, it is now highly likely that computers will exceed humans in terms of intelligence in the near future. While this can bring about certain improvements to our lives, it may, for the most part, be a cause for concern.
On the one hand, it is difficult to reject some of the obvious benefits of highly intelligent computers. Such supercomputers, being smarter than us, can help us solve issues we have been long struggling. Income inequality, for instance, is one of the issues that result from some of the qualities that make us human such as greed. Since no human is free of such inherent acquisitiveness, it is virtually unfeasible to expect the solution to come from us. This is where computers can shine, and offer fresh perspectives we are often unable to see. Nevertheless, although the list of such problems is rather long, the effectiveness of the solutions computers can come up with is yet to be seen. There is even a chance that they could be no more workable than our own approach to those problems.
On the other hand, the existence of computers that outsmart humans can take a heavy tall on some aspects of our lives. First, automation might prevail since many employers might start preferring these machines over human employees. If computers can produce far better results than humans far faster and at a fraction of the labour cost, then such a choice by job-givers can be totally expected. As a result, large-scale joblessness can become a real possibility. A more serious issue could be our over-reliance on computers. Once we start to feel that computers are indeed more intellectually capable than us, we may start relying on them on any task that may require even the slightest of mental concentration. Consequently, we can gradually lose our faculty of thought even to the point where we become the thoughtless “robots” ourselves.
All told, while it is certainly satisfying to fantasize about a world in which computers are solving all of our problems, we should not forget that once they become smarter than us, they might start making us redundant in many areas of our lives.