The automation of thought: information technology holds the key to global maturity1

Authoritative forecasts show that artificial intelligence is likely to automate routine human thought at about 2020, just as automation reduced farm work a century ago, manufacturing work decades ago and services today. This long-term trend suggests that attention is likely to shift from its present focus on knowledge to high-order concerns beyond knowledge – values, beliefs, ideologies and other subjective aspects of consciousness itself. This historic move seems essential to address the ‘global crisis of maturity’ – the need for a global order able to curtail climate change, energy shortages, WMD and other massive threats of our time.