The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity

So that’s that: Babbage realized machines could do math. Turing added that they could also run programs. Von Neumann figured out how to build the hardware, and Shannon showed how the software could do things that didn’t at first look like math problems.

Those in the United States are fortunate to live in a nation wealthy enough even to have this debate. Worldwide, GNP is $9,000 per capita, but in the United States we define the poverty line as $12,000 per capita. In other words, we are so wealthy that we define poverty as 33 percent higher

Interestingly, some of the Greeks divided the living world into those three similar categories as well. Plants, the reasoning went, have one soul, because they are clearly alive, and eat, grow, reproduce, and die. Animals have two souls. That same one the plants have, but another one as well: they are purposeful. Finally, there are humans, who have

than the average income of the planet.