One can’t help be positive about the future. Even obstacles have a bright side. For example - humans at some point will be limited by space and time; we can’t expect to go far in space exploration without the development of strong artificial intelligence and robots.

Experts say it takes light 100,000 years to travel from one end of the Milky Way galaxy to the other. Note that the speed of light is 3.0 x 10^8 m/s. This means that even if humans travel at the speed of light, which is 3.0 x 10^8 m/s, it will take us about 100000 years to traverse the milky way galaxy.

This limitation of humans can be eliminated once humans decide to merge with robots.

We can’t face the future with fear and trepidation; we must face it with caution and wisdom. The trade-offs between fear and improvement need to be considered if humans are to make meaningful progress in the next 80 years.

One meaningful reason that humans need to merge with machines is because the rate of improvement in our biology is linear, whereas, computing power doubles every two years. It follows an exponential curve.

Computing power increases exponentially. Moore’s law was coined in the 1960s to show the doubling rate of the number of transistors that can be fit into an integrated circuit yearly. From that time up till now, computing power has increased exponentially.

By an extrapolation of Moore’s law, scientists now believe that performance of the computer doubles every two years.

Here is an explanation: if you put $1 in the bank this year, 2015, and that amount doubles every two years, at the end of thirty years, by the year 2045, that amount will be $16908.

Here are the figures-1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,8192,16384.

What that simple progression says is that by 2045, computing performance will increase by more than a million percent.

Further, computer scientists have predicted that by the year 2045, a computer worth $1000 will be as intelligent as the whole population of the earth combined.

At that time, we either have to allow the computer to control humans since they are a million times more intelligent than humans or we will have to merge with the machines.

If we decide to allow machines to control humans, robots can wake up one day and attempt complete annihilation of humans. That scenario is aptly portrayed by the film ‘Terminator’.

On the other hand, if we choose to merge with machines, we can control them and use them to further enhance the course of humanity.

We have to allow the evolution of new species. These species will be an integration of humans and machines - that is our future.