Moore’s Law says computers double their processing ability every 18-24 months, but imagine if this sped up exponentially to every two hours. That is one potential consequence of machines with AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). If computers continue to advance at their current rate, this could be a mere 20-30 years away.

Intel is already reinventing the transistor by harnessing photons and quantum properties to increase processing power. Whether it happens suddenly, or over time, it appears that machines will become increasingly sophisticated and able to do the work of humans.

Any true AGI would need at least four capabilities to be like us: to recognise objects, handle complex dialogue, be manually dextrous, and understand social situations from someone else’s point of view. Children come to learn each of these slowly until the age of eight, when all are present. There is no reason why robots could not be made to deal with whatever tasks they are required to do, whether it is to put groceries away or to babysit a child. But will they be able to fall in love or mourn someone’s death?

Some say that the agricultural and industrial revolutions were parallels, because of the rapid pace of change compared to what had gone before. Over the past 7,000 years, output doubled every 900 years. Now output doubles about every 15 years, about 60 times as fast as in the previous seven millennia.

The next radical jump will come from two shortages in our economy: human time and human attention. If robots are able to take over what people do (and two-thirds of a nation’s income is paid directly for wages), then there will be a massive jump in output, freeing humans to do other things. But what?

It is cheaper to build robots than it is to pay someone over a lifetime. But perhaps the value of human work would rise, with some people (perhaps robots?) paying to be served by humans rather than robots.

Robots that do solely cognitive work may live in virtual environments, or even be tiny, while others will exist in human environments and be more lifelike. Whatever the outcome, it seems certain that on on level that there will be a merger of biological and non-biological intelligence.