EXCERPT In today’s popular imaginary, ‘possible worlds’ are often presented as apocalyptic settings in which fleshy sentience is displaced and slowly erased by some form of artificial intelligence, whether embodied in machines or not. In these scenarios AI is assumed as the inevitable next step in an evolutionary process whose controlling force, at least for this one important step, is no longer nature, but humanity itself. According to this fantasy, once we have created our own successor we will no longer be necessary, and natural selection will again assert itself through a survival of the fittest mechanism in which humanity is destined to lose. One wonders, in this dream, why we humans should play the game at all.If all that AI can offer is our own demise, why should we bother to spend time and resources bringing it into being? Unless we have a collective species’ death-wish, or at least a massive inferiority complex?…