5) What is the most difficult challenge facing humanity in that time?

Hugo de Garis: Facing up to what I call the "artilect issue", i.e. should we or should we not build artilects. Will it be possible to avoid a gigadeath war over this issue? The human group in favour of building them I call the "Cosmists", based on the word cosmos, because the Cosmists will take a cosmic perspective on the issue. They will see the "big picture" and understand that one godlike artilect is "worth a trillion trillion trillion human beings". The "Terrans", based on the world terra (the earth), is the name I give to the second human group, who are opposed to the creation of artilects, due to the risk that the existence of artilects will pose to humanity's survival. The only way to be sure that this risk is not taken is that the Cosmists never be allowed to build artilects in the first place. In the limit the Terrans will destroy the Cosmists if the latter start building them. The Cosmists in turn will anticipate this and will defend themselves against the Terrans. You will thus have all the makings of a major war in which billions die. Last century several hundred million people were killed for political reasons (wars, purges, genocides, etc). This century, given that the stake is higher, the passion level will be higher, and with 21st century weaponry, the number of dead will be in the billions - gigadeath. I am very pessimistic about the outcome of the artilect debate, which will be raging within a few years. In a decade people will be seeing with their own eyes the constantly growing artificial intelligence of their household robots. Everyone will be asking the question - "Where is all this growing A.I. headed? Will we allow the machines to become smarter than us? Should there be a limit to their artificial intelligence? Should A.I. be stopped? Can it be stopped?" Personally I think the momentum pushing towards the construction of artilects is so strong that it will not be stopped until Terran opposition is so strong that a war erupts. I just don't see a way out of this terrible scenario. Part of me is Terran. That's why I'm trying to warn humanity before artilects are a fait accompli. On the other hand, I'm a Cosmist. I think it would be a cosmic tragedy if humanity chooses to freeze evolution at the puny human level when we could build artilectual gods. I'm prepared to take the risk of a gigadeath war so that artilects can be built. Building artilects is a kind of religion to me, one compatible with science, in fact one based on science and fit for the 21st century, providing inspiration, awe, and a direction to millions of human souls. A lot of people think that we are living in a golden era now that the cold war is over. The planet seems to have settled on a more or less uniform global ideology of capitalistic parliamentary democracy. Democracy is spreading all over the planet. Unfortunately, I foresee humanity being torn apart again as the century progresses, this time by the artilect issue, the greatest challenge to human survival and the toughest decision humanity will ever have to make. "Do we build gods, or do we build our potential exterminators?"

Richard Wheeler: Without going too far ahead, I would say that the environment and the discrepancy between the first and third worlds is the most difficult challenge facing humanity in the last (and probably next) 100 years. Science in the popular press gives us the impression that the whole world is grappling with highly advanced and esoteric issues about the future of technology, communications, and the web, and that space exploration, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology are the most important challenges of the day. The truth is that the two biggest problems facing the world (overwhelmingly) are the lack of sufficient water purification and sanitation methods. Our pride filled tunnel vision perception of the 20th century as a time of innovation, advancement, and scientific triumph should surely be secondary to a basic recognition of the period as an unprecedented pageant of greed, war, ethnic conflict, and destruction. The most profound question of the next 100 years will likely be how to balance a wildly skewed and barbaric world economy so that it (and the human race) can continue to function. It may not be in our nature to resolve this question, as human greed, corruption, and stupidity remains relatively constant and independent of technology.

6) What do you consider the greatest invention or discovery of the last 100 years?

Hugo de Garis: Probably the hydrogen bomb. Thanks to its existence and the threat of everyone dying in a nuclear winter, we have not had a major war in half a century, which has allowed the world population to concentrate on improving living standards and world health.

[Shebang asked Hugo de Garis to expand on this:]

Hugo de Garis: The hydrogen bomb in itself is a horrible "gadget", but the consequences of its existence have been very positive so far, due to the lack of a major war for the past half century. Politicians of leading nations know that if ever there is a nuclear holocaust, they will probably be killed themselves, either by the bombs of the other side, or by their own surviving citizens in a political witch-hunt. In WW1 and WW2 it was easy for the generals to send young men to their deaths at the front, while they sat back safely at HQ. In an H bomb war, the HQs are amongst the targets.

Richard Wheeler: Probably the use of chlorine and chemical methods for water purification, and the discovery of antibiotics and formalised chemotherapy in medicine. After that, perhaps advances in physics, mathematics, cartography, and logistics.

7) Do you think there is life on other planets?

Hugo de Garis: I would say that this is a certainty, given there are probably a trillion trillion planets out there and that the laws of physics and chemistry are the same throughout the universe.

Richard Wheeler: I think it would be impossibly narrow-minded and obscure to imagine that we are the only life forms to emerge from such vastness. In the last ten years we have discovered water on the moon, and possible life on Mars. The truth is, we know very little about the conditions necessary for life, even within our own solar system, let alone what might exist in the rest of the galaxy. As they say, the strongest indication that extra-terrestrial life exists is that none of it has tried to contact us.

8) Do you believe machines can ever achieve consciousness?

Hugo de Garis: Yes. Human beings are molecular machines, as is any biological creature. Human beings get built according to an embryological unfolding process as dictated by our DNA. Hence our DNA implicitly contains the solution to the problem of the nature of consciousness, since it builds us and we are conscious. Therefore we need only study ourselves to find a solution to this problem. We know that a solution exists because we have the existence proof of ourselves. Once we understand how consciousness is built by nature, we can copy its mechanisms and then build machines with consciousness. It's only a question of time and scientific progress I believe.

Richard Wheeler: Consciousness is one of the hottest topics in A.I. and cognitive science right now, with many controversial and interesting theories arising. I don't think we know anything about human consciousness yet, let alone machine consciousness. However, I will throw my own thoughts into the fray. I think everything in the universe has its own form of consciousness - its own perception of time and information flowing through it. As such, machines may have their own consciousness (perhaps already evident), which we are unable for perceptual reasons to see; this may be one of the great mistakes in A.I. and cognitive science - to investigate consciousness from a purely human point of view; surely it is a much broader phenomenon. The hunt for the "ghost in the machine" is an on-going obsession for many people, as its discovery may signal the last moment where humankind is dominant on the planet, and like them, I hope to see the day when machine intelligence evolves into a meta-conscious state.