Better at everything: how AI could make human beings irrelevant

The end of civilisation might look less like a war, and more like a love story. Can we avoid being willing participants in our own downfall?

Right now, most big AI labs have a team figuring out ways that rogue AIs might escape supervision, or secretly collude with each other against humans. But there's a more mundane way we could lose control of civilisation: we might simply become obsolete. This wouldn't require any hidden plots - if AI and robotics keep improving, it's what happens by default.

How so? Well, AI developers are firmly on track to build better replacements for humans in almost every role we play: not just economically as workers and decision-makers, but culturally as artists and creators, and even socially as friends and romantic companions. What place will humans have when AI can do everything we do, only better?