from NBC News

Cyborgs will replace humans and remake the world, James Lovelock says

‘Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end.’

By Corey S. Powell

Illustration of robots and human walking together in a futuristic city.
Tim Peacock / for NBC News

For tens of thousands of years, humans have reigned as our planet’s only intelligent, self-aware species. But the rise of intelligent machines means that could change soon, perhaps in our own lifetimes. Not long after that, Homo sapiens could vanish from Earth entirely.

That’s the jarring message of a new book by James Lovelock, the famed British environmentalist and futurist. “Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end,” he says in the book, “Novacene.” “The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call ‘cyborgs’ that will have designed and built themselves.”

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