Data III

"If humankind is indeed a single data-processing system, what is its output? Dataists would say that its output will be the creation of a new and even more efficient data-processing system, called the Internet-of-All-Things. Once this mission is accomplished, Homo sapiens will vanish."
-Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (London, 2017), Chapter 11, p. 443.

Vanish how? And why? In Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars Tetralogy, human beings and AIs coexist indefinitely albeit inharmoniously. In Anderson's Genesis, it takes a long time for humanity to stop reproducing and to become extinct. And, in both cases, the post-organic intelligences are conscious entities, not mere data-processors.

Data-processing is a means, not an end, and its ends are those of the human beings who construct the data-processing systems. Indeed, purposiveness/goal-seeking/the pursuit of ends is a conscious activity. The previous process, natural selection, was unconscious and unpurposive, although selection favored organismic sensitivity that increased until it became conscious. Intelligent conscious beings constructing data-processors for their own ends will not "vanish" when their data-processing system has become more efficient.