Technology

As we program more and more intelligence into our computers, exponentially increasing their capabilities every year, it is only a matter of time before they are smarter than we are. Already we entrust computers to run our stock markets, land our planes, correct our spelling, Google our trivia, and calculate our restaurant tips. In development are robots that look like us, talk like us, and recognize our facial movements. How long before they are us, as we download our thoughts and memories into our hard drives, the so-called “singularity?" How long before these machines are self-aware?

Futurists believe computers will be as smart as us by 2029, and by 2045 will be billions of times smarter than us. Will they decide we are superfluous? Or maybe we ourselves will decide.

Most of that is speculation, though. There is enough real technology to worry about at the moment. In every fight since 1945, U.S. forces have been a generation ahead in technology, having uniquely capable weapons like nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. These technologies of the time gave us an edge every other nation wanted. Now, many countries have caught up, or in some cases, have overtaken us. China, for example, overtook the EU in spending and is on pace to match the U.S., with new projects ranging from the world’s fastest supercomputers to three different long-range drone-strike programs. And now, off-the-shelf technologies can be bought to rival even the most advanced tools in the U.S. arsenal. The winner of a recent robotics test, for instance, was not a U.S. defense contractor but a group of South Korea student engineers. If a war broke out, certainly an array of science-fiction-like technologies would likely make their debut to be used against humanity, from AI battle management systems, to autonomous robotics, to nano-technology.