Computers share knowledge much more easily than humans do, and they can keep that knowledge longer, becoming wiser than humans. Many forward-thinking companies already see this writing on the wall, and are luring the best computer scientists out of academia with better pay and advanced hardware. A world with superintelligent machine-run corporations won’t be that different for humans than it is now; it will just be better: with more advanced goods and services available for very little cost, and more leisure time available to those who want it.
Of course, the first superintelligent machines probably won’t be corporate; they’ll be operated by governments. And this will be much more hazardous. Governments are more flexible in their actions than corporations—they create their own laws. And, as we’ve seen, even the best can engage in brutal torture when they consider their survival to be at stake. Governments produce nothing, and their primary modes of competition for survival and propagation are social manipulation, legislation, taxation, corporal punishment, murder, subterfuge, and warfare.