The defining event of our time is not artificial intelligence, but the transformation of the human being. We tend to discuss robots, automation, productivity and technological advances as separate phenomena, when they are probably all part of the same process. We are building systems capable of progressively replacing skills that have defined our humanity for centuries. First, we delegated our physical strength to machines, then our memory to computers and our sense of direction to navigation systems. Now we are beginning to delegate our ability to analyse, create, decide and judge to artificial intelligence. Every advance expands our possibilities, but it also changes our relationship with our own abilities.

The question is not what machines will be capable of doing ten years from now, but what we ourselves will become. When we stop exercising a skill because a system can perform it better, faster and with less effort, our dependence on that system also changes. Technological progress does not necessarily mean equivalent progress for the individual. We may build an increasingly intelligent civilisation while reducing our need to think for ourselves. Perhaps the real challenge of the future is not to create more capable machines, but to preserve what allows us to understand, question and direct our own existence.