High-Tech Life-Forms Are on the Way - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), April, 2000

Humans will share the Earth with synthetic intelligent life-forms in the future, claims Ian D. Pearson, who maps information technology for BT Laboratories in Ipswich, England. "Overall, they will catch up with human intelligence before 2020, though there will still be a few things that only people can do," he told the World Future Society, Bethesda, Md.

Home gadgets will include housework robots, domestic appliances with personality and talking-head in terrace that can anticipate people's needs, virtual fish tanks, and electronic wallpaper that reduces background noise.

Moreover, mobile robots will fight fires, and insect-like robots will be used in warfare. Fleets of garden robots will be available for lawn care. Intelligent robots will run unmanned factories, guide the blind, and serve as exercise companions. By 2010, the highest-paid movie star will be synthetic, he predicts.

By 2025, robots will outnumber humans in developed countries, Pearson says. They will have artificial nervous systems, and some might use muscles based on gels that resemble human muscles. Computers will exhibit the human-like capacity to learn and thus be thought of as colleagues.

What will people do? "As machines gradually take over both mental and physical work, we will shift into a `care economy,' where people gradually concentrate more on the human side of activity," he suggests.