Martin Rees: Technology will set us free — but new moral issues arise

Scientists have a rotten record as forecasters. Only a decade before the first atomic bomb, Lord Rutherford, the greatest physicist of his time, said nuclear energy was “moonshine”. And one of my predecessors as Astronomer Royal said, as late as the Fifties, that space travel was “utter bilge”.

But there are some trends we can bet on with confidence. By mid-century, the world will be more crowded: its population will have risen from seven billion today to at least 8.5 billion. It will also be warmer — though we can’t forecast by how much, and how threatening climate change will by then be.

And we can predict something else. Technology will offer amazing prospects but will pose new dilemmas, and a range of new dangers. We can’t be sure what the greatest advances will be. The iPhone would have seemed magical even 20 years ago. So, looking 50 years ahead, we must keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to what may now seem science fiction.

For instance, new cognition-enhancing or life-extending drugs, genetics and “cyborg” techniques may alter human beings in novel and drastic ways. Indeed, some — such as the futurist Ray Kurzweil — think intelligent machines will “take over” within 50 years.

The most hackneyed sci-fi scenarios involve robots, usually threatening rather than benign. Actual advances in robotics are patchy. Even back in the Nineties IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. But robots can’t yet recognise and move the pieces on a real chessboard as adeptly as a child can. They can’t tie your shoelaces or cut your toenails.

Later this century, however, their more advanced successors may relate to their surroundings (and to people) as adeptly as we do. Indeed, it should surely be a priority to develop robots that can help us, particularly when we’re old and frail.

If robots become too lifelike, moral questions may arise. We accept an obligation to ensure that other human beings, and indeed some animal species, can fulfil their “natural” potential. So what’s our obligation towards sophisticated robots? Should we feel guilty about exploiting them? Should we fret if they are underemployed, frustrated or bored?

Robots will surely have a role in dangerous environments — on oil-rigs and in mines or nuclear power stations. But their grandest arena will be in space. In coming decades, the whole solar system will be explored by flotillas of miniaturised robots. And robotic fabricators may build vast lightweight structures in space (solar energy collectors, for instance), perhaps mining raw materials from asteroids.

These advances in robotics weaken the practical case for human spaceflight. Nonetheless, I hope people will follow the robots, though it will be as risk-seeking adventurers rather than for practical goals. The most promising developments are spearheaded by private companies, for instance SpaceX, led by Elon Musk. We should cheer along these initiatives.

Denis Tito, entrepreneur and former astronaut, may not be crazy in planning to send people to Mars and back — without landing. This would involve 500 stressful days cooped up in a capsule. The ideal crew would be a stable middle-aged couple — old enough to be relaxed about a high dose of radiation.