I'm reading a 1968 Stanley Kubrick interview right now. I completely agree with him regarding the path of development of civilizations towards superintelligence. And I think that the superintelligence is already near us, because it does not have protein bodies and it does not need to fly a starship for thousands of years to visit another star system.
Here is an excerpt from an interview with Stanley Kubrick:
"I will say that the God concept is at the heart of “2001” but not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don’t believe in any of Earth’s monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. If you accept that, it’s reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some proportion of such life developing intelligence are high. Now, the sun is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic age, so it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the universe not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man but other billions where it is approximately equal and others still where it is hundreds of thousands of millions of years in advance of us. When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made in a few millennia—less than a microsecond in the chronology of the universe—can you imagine the evolutionary development that much older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal machine entities—and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence ungraspable by humans."
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A great film, one of the best science fiction films in the world according to international film critics.
And more thoughts on this topic from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
1932
"Having entered a high-level radiant form, humanity becomes immortal in time and infinite in space.
I believe that at present, such a 'radiant humanity' cannot be understood by anyone. It seems absurd, preposterous... However, amazing premonitions have never deceived a thinking person."
In the distant future, humanity, having undergone many stages of evolution and cosmic expansion, will transition from a biological form to a higher form—radiant—that is, a form of pure energy (radiant energy), immortal and filling cosmic space. This will be a single collective consciousness or "idea," existing as highly organized energy, without the need for gross matter.
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Such ancient civilizations, long since abandoned protein and artificial bodies, retaining only the form of energy, are like gods. But they are still not the supreme God, the creator of our entire Universe. Perhaps the Creator encompasses everything and everyone, knowing absolutely everything.