It was confirmed in the early hours that Republican Donald Trump had won the race to the White House in a closely fought contest against the Democrat’s Hillary Clinton. Not much is known about the billionaire’s stance on science and technology, but Zoltan Istvan, who was running as an independent in the White House race in the hope of raising awareness for transhumanists, believes that Mr Trump will boost the US’s science and technology sector. The transhumanist movement is a group that want to use science and technology to radically change the human beings by merging our bodies with machine. Mr Istvan was campaigning for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) that will make the Western world’s inevitable transition to a robot-led job market easier.

GETTY Donald Trump will be great for science and technology

Speaking to Express.co.uk, Mr Istvan said the President-elect will not halt the rise of technology as it would be against the 70-year old’s business-nous. When asked why Mr Trump will not attempt to halt the rise of technology in the job market, Mr Istvan said: “That doesn’t seem business-like. What he is probably going to do is make a bit of a combination and say ‘well how can we keep jobs as long as possible, without technology interfering?’

GETTY Robots are set to replace humans in the workplace

“For me, Republicans are better economically than Democrats. The problem is their conservative values might hold back technology and genetic editing, for example. “The big danger here now for Trump is that we get left behind because China and other places might start creating and using these technologies without some of the political hinderances that our Republican government now has.

WIKIMEDIA • GETTY Zoltan Istvan says that humans will one day merge with machines

“I don’t think that Trump will let that happen and I think he is going to put America’s superiority in terms of science and technology first, over the conservatism that might say ‘let’s lay off transhumanism technology’. “My guess is that Trump is not going to accept a country that is going to take a step backwards.

GETTY Donald Trump will become the 45th President of America

“When he says ‘let’s make America great again’, I think he really meant it. He wants America to be a world leader and that means in science and technology and that’s the good news for transhumanists and I think Trump will end up pushing it quite strongly. However, Mr Istvan stated both Mr Trump’s and Ms Clinton’s promises to create more jobs was off the mark, as there will not be any role to create as robots will fill human positions cheaper and more efficiently.

Donald Trump in numbers Wed, November 9, 2016 A look at some numbers that define Donald Trump Play slideshow 1 of 10