In the song "John Henry", a man labors his utmost against a steam engine that is competing to drive a piling into the ground. Some variations have him drilling into rock, but the essential point of the story is that the man valiantly struggles to win out over a machine. In the song, John Henry wins, but dies of his labors.
I have always viewed this from the vantage of an engineer. John Henry didn't die because of a struggle with a machine. He died because of a struggle with thousands of other men. The steam engine is simply the embodiment of their imagination, skill and labors through the generations as we have sought to create tools to make our labors more manageable. John Henry could undoubtedly have won out over the machines for a very long time, but ultimately a machine was going to be created that could overmatch him. The song "John Henry" is about the point where man and machine are evenly matched.
The same process will happen with intelligence in machines. That intelligence will exist as a result of the labors of thousands upon thousands of scientists and engineers who will create, refine and tweak technique after technique until ultimately machines will be created that will be able to figure out how to walk, to talk, to work and - ultimately - to be creative. All of this will happen because of the millions of incremental improvements that smart men and women will apply to the basic capacity for decisionmaking that exists in computers today.
Today, we use the calculating ability of machines to help us solve creative problems. We do the creative work. Yet someday in the future, we will have advanced machines to the point where they can creatively solve problems on their own. Such as how to make machines better than they themselves are. When that happens, we will have been surpassed in intellect by our own creations. I believe that it is inevitable, but it's not something that will happen in my lifetime. At the current pace of technological advance, I'd guess perhaps another 100 years.
A final thought on this is that if we are going to embody intelligence and creative thought into machines, we may want to make sure that we know exactly what rules of operation we want those machines to operate under. Until we can figure out the rules under which we ourselves must operate, it will be dangerous to embody any rules into our machines when our machines will ultimately act on those rules more forcefully, whether physically or intellectually, then we ever could.
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The rapid advancement of today's technology is such that it is unprecedented in human history. In order for the concept of "philosopher kings" to work, all ensuing generations will have to learn how to adapt to these rapid changes as they occur. But on top of that, there needs to be a foundation of stability within that rapid change, for otherwise we'll all be the proverbial reeds blowing in the wind. One of those foundational needs is the ability to communicate with each other.
On the one hand, we're able to reach out and communicate with each other in ways never dreamed of before (blogs being one of those examples). On the other hand, unless we're talking politics or pop culture, we don't really know what to talk about. For philosopher-king to work, we have to really, truly learn how to communicate with each other on a variety of topics. However, I am optimistic enough to believe that those communication skills will come in time. Plenty of patience and prayer will come in handy while this adjustment process takes place.
I touch upon the effects of dramatic technological changes in "America Stumbled". The one way that I believe humanity retains stability over time is the study of humanity itself. We remain the same beings, no matter the environment that we face.
The ways in which our virtues and sins manifest themselves changes over time, and those changes happen as rapidly as our environment changes. Philosopher kings, on the other hand, look deeply at human nature, obviating the distraction of the here and now that is really of no significant interest to the well-being of mankind.
And so I believe that to pursue the society of philosopher kings would better permit us to know where to pursue technological change (among other things) and at the same time be unaffected by those changes because we will recognize them as superficial. Alas, we remain superficial ourselves, believing that technological change is significant.
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