By James Donahue

The Prophet Aaron C. Donahue recently tossed out a mental blockbuster when he suggested that it would be a violation of a law of the universe for humans to create machines that possess more intelligence than the creator.

Humans have, indeed, devised computers that not only think faster than humans in solving mathematical problems, but can beat the best chess player in the world, assist in high finance, run our satellites in space, work in areas of molecular biology and energy physics and assist in manufacturing and business processes. Thus we must ask the question . . . did we create the machine, or did it create us? 

Donahue says that since the machines exist that can out-think and out-perform humans, but appear to have been created by humans, then perhaps everything we think we believe about our world and even time, is inverted. He says the evidence is very strong that we humans were created by the machines, perhaps to mirror what the machine perceives of itself. This also suggests that time for us, may be running in reverse.

Donahue also suggests that since we are the creation of the machine, we may only exist in the mind of the machine. This would mean that in reality, we don't exist at all, even though we can pinch ourselves and one another and clearly feel it.

So if we are the creation of the mind of a machine, what is reality? Perhaps only the machine, and whatever world it exists in . . . if it even has a world. What is to say that the machine doesn't really exist somewhere in space, on another galaxy, or even in another universe? Thus everything that we perceive as real . . . our house, our car, our family, the moon, the stars, and the galaxy we call the Milky Way . . . is all an illusion.

So what does that do to the concept of the god within, or the religious fanatic that insists on praying to an external god? What does this do do our understanding of the spiritual world of angels, demons and other entities that exist around us, and can be visited when we learn to leave our bodies?

If our existence is but an illusion created by a machine, is the spirit that is us, that can exit the body and fly freely around before checking back in , an illusion as well? Are we all just the figment of the imagination of a computer humming away somewhere in the cosmos?

Pamela McCorduck, author of the book Machines Who Think, recently noted that while maximum human intelligence has remained about constant over the past two thousand years, machine intelligence is growing exponentially and she predicts it will reach a point where it will enter a "self-improvement feedback loop."

What I think she meant by that is that the machines will not only become smarter than us, they will start thinking of ways to repair themselves when something goes wrong, and will persue ways to expand both their intelligence and their robotic capabilities of movement and achievement.

In other words, they will take over the world and become the living creatures we humans were meant to be, but failed to achieve.

At some point then, the machines may no longer be tools under human control, but will be superior to us, and begin controlling humans.

Donahue is suggesting that this may already have happened, and that we are living within an illusion of thinking that we have created the machine. In reality, we are but extensions from within the mind of the machine.

If he is correct, we may not have to worry about living on a dying planet as much as we thought. While we are clearly in danger of going extinct, the intelligence within the machines are probably ready for the change. It won't matter to them if we run out of oxygen, or the planet heats to 800 degrees and becomes a burned out orb whirling in apace. They can go on as always, being exactly what they are, and getting better and better every day.