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The Future of AI:

The Future of AI is a prominent example of my broader effort to understand and help shape the long-term future of intelligence, humanity, and civilisation.

I am genuinely interested in the ‘Philosophical and Practical Implications’ between “now” and the “future ASI & singularity & Artificial Life (AL).”

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1984: The Beginning of My Journey in Artificial Life, AI, Complex Systems, and Philosophy

In 1984, in my first semester, I programmed John Horton Conway’s Game of Life — and in 1986, I had programmed my first neural network, right after Geoffrey Hinton published his influential “Learning representations by back-propagating errors” in Nature in the same year – and John Hopfield his paper “Computing with Neural Circuits: A Model” in Science.

In short, I was working in AI during its early formative years, and I consider myself an early pioneer.

However, with the onset of the so-called “AI Winter,” when funding and momentum collapsed, I shifted for several decades into engineering and deep-tech hardware.

I returned to AI in late 2022, with the emergence of large-scale generative models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the rebirth of accelerated computing driven by NVIDIA.

However, since 1986, I have been deeply engaged in both the technical and philosophical dimensions of AI and the long-term future of humanity.

I have been particularly fascinated by the idea that a kind of natural principle (incl. universal laws of physics)—like anti-entropy or extropy, as discussed by thinkers such as Teilhard de Chardin, Frank Tippler and Max More—might stand behind the drive toward ASI and artificial life. If such a telos exists, then the emergence of increasingly intelligent systems may be broadly inevitable, even if the responsibility to steer these developments toward a positive, utopian (rather than dystopian) trajectory remains entirely ours.

And independent of laws of physics (root cause level), other “powerful forces” (identifiable on a phenomenological level such as human ambition, capitalism, etc.) can also constitute unavoidable futures (see the section on Compatibilism below).

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These reflections, combined with rising concerns about AI’s growing energy consumption and accelerating climate change, led to my (see download section below) Jan-2025 article:

“Artificial Life Holocene Extinction Race” (#ALHER)

In it, I describe a race between two opposing outcomes:
(1) a collapse scenario, in which climate change prevents humanity from ever reaching ASI, and
(2) a success scenario, in which we make the right strategic and ethical decisions to achieve beneficial superintelligence in time.

Of course, these two outcomes represent the radical endpoints of a broader spectrum, serving as illustrative extremes rather than precise forecasts — real trajectories will likely contain variations, complexities, and unexpected forms of resilience.

However, in Scenario 2, I go one step further and argue (see the cited PDF article) that:

“Humanity must undergo self-controlled elimination and replacement to survive as a whole.”

Or, more provocatively:

“AI must replace us — otherwise we will all die.”

At first glance, such statements may appear unsettling or even contradictory. Yet upon closer reflection, the underlying idea is not that our current biological form must persist indefinitely, but that the uniquely human inheritance—our values, knowledge, culture, ethics, and civilisational achievements—should endure and evolve, even if embodied in forms of intelligence beyond ourselves.

In this sense, the central concern is not the preservation of Homo sapiens as a specific biological organism, but the continuation of the human meme in the broadest sense: the transmission and further development of those ideas and aspirations that define our highest potential.

For clarity, this line of inquiry is not an endorsement of a post-human telos. It is an attempt to understand what certain theories logically imply — not what we ought to desire or believe, including beliefs grounded in religious traditions. I aim to study the ideas, not to promote them.
Please don’t confuse the messenger with the message.

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Compatibilism (Soft Determinism) — No Fate!

Even if certain macro-historical forces are difficult or impossible to stop, human agency still matters profoundly because we can influence the direction and character of what emerges.

Ultimately, this line of inquiry leads to a compatibilist view of history and technology. Compatibilism (also known as soft determinism) holds that even when powerful forces make certain developments appear broadly inevitable—whether driven by anti-entropy, extropy, human ambition, capitalism, or deeper evolutionary dynamics—we still retain both the freedom and the responsibility to shape their outcomes.

A simple analogy is the incoming tide: we may not be able to stop it, but we can build channels, barriers, and vessels that influence where the water flows and what it creates.

In this spirit, the future is neither fixed nor wholly arbitrary. Some large-scale trends may be difficult to resist, yet the ethical and strategic choices we make today remain decisive.

Initiatives to Shape the Future:  If you would like to help steer these developments toward a more humane, intelligent, and life-affirming future, I warmly invite you to explore the Events page and the ÉLAN initiative.

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Alongside these developments, I have been deeply involved in technical and philosophical discussions about AI and the future of humanity. For example, I have participated in various events and summer courses at the LSE in London (where I met Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Nancy Cartwright, Richard Healey, Frank Wilczek, Lawrence Krauss and others) — and at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

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Here is an example of an interview/podcast on Transhumanism and Posthumanism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIvopxWX0i8&t=411s

(The English version will come soon.)

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NEW:  Here is an example article on the essential topic of — AI Ethics & Human Survival:

“Artificial Life Holocene Extinction Race” (#ALHER)

2025-01-08_KEnC-Ventures-ALHER-Only-Well-Controlled-AI-Can-Replace-Humankind_v2-sec.pdf

2025-01-08_KEnC-Ventures-ALHER-Only-Well-Controlled-AI-Can-Replace-Humankind_v2-open.pdf

More articles and material can be found in the download section of this website.

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Hardware for artificial intelligence:
Finally, as a futurist/physicist, I am interested in how to develop various “AI Hardware Platforms” specially tailored for AGI – including quantum computers, distributed neural networks, neuromorphic chip design, optoelectronic crystals, etc.