When I try to imagine what the future of humanity would look like, I always get an image in my head of a city filled with human beings as well as robots that look eerily similar to humans, all co-existing and going about their day.

You must have seen this in many movies and read about such a future in many novels and it seems like this will actually happen some day. I mean, virtual assistants are already capable of so much and are only getting more powerful every year.

So, it is natural to expect that the hardware side of things will catch up soon as well, as evident by the tremendous amount of work going on in this field. Have you seen those videos of the latest robots by Boston Dynamics and what they can do? Makes me feel like robots will be here faster than we think.

So, let's assume for the purposes of this post that the future of humanity is about co-existing with robots who will not only look like us, but also have developed sentience, meaning they will be aware of themselves and would have feelings.

What Will Such A World Look Like?

Right now, the robots that work in our factories or other places, are simply machines that we have created for our use. We don't give a second thought about what they might feel if we overwork them simply because they don't have feelings.

But imagine a future where robots have developed sentience and have their own feelings and are aware of themselves. Even though they would be created by us, for augmenting our lives in various ways, would we treat them as machines or like fellow human beings?

I think it will be a very complicated situation where on the one hand we would view them as products that we buy and on the other hand, be aware of the fact that they are very much like us due to their self-awareness and feelings. I mean, some experts are already talking about robot rights and it hasn't even started yet!

I think the whole thing will develop organically and slowly they will be given rights and ultimately it would be like two intelligent species sharing the planet, augmenting each others' ways of existing. Difficult to even picture right now but reality can sometimes be stranger than fiction.