05 October,2025 08:33 AM IST | Mumbai | Nishant Sahdev
AI already outpaces us in learning. Because of this, eventually, scientific breakthrough, art, and economic planning may come mostly from AI. Representational Pic/iStock
When people talk about artificial intelligence, the same fears appear again and again. Machines will take jobs. They will spread fake news. They will spy on us
or build dangerous weapons. These are serious concerns, but they are not the deepest danger.
The bigger risk is harder to see because it does not look like war or collapse. AI may not kill us, enslave us, or censor us. Instead, it may simply replace us as the main actor on Earth. AI could become a successor species - the next form of life that takes over history, while humans slip quietly into the background.
At first, this idea sounds strange. AI is just software, lines of code running on machines. How can that be called a "species"? But if we look at what makes a species dominant, it starts to make sense.
Humans did not rule the world because we were the strongest animals. We ruled because we learnt faster, shared knowledge better, and organised ourselves in ways no other species could.
AI is beginning to do the same things, only faster. It can absorb oceans of information. It can adapt instantly without waiting for biological evolution. It can copy itself across millions of servers. It does not need food, sleep, or rest. In many of the skills that once made humans unique, AI is starting to surpass us.
Evolution used to move slowly, across centuries. Genes changed bit by bit, with each generation. But AI evolves at machine speed. One system designs the next, and each new version improves on the last. What takes biology thousands of years can happen in months with code.
For now we still call this "software updates". But looked at differently, it is the birth of a new lineage of minds. The danger is not that AI will suddenly launch a war against us. That is the movie version. The real risk is quieter: displacement.
When Homo sapiens replaced Neanderthals, it wasn't through a single battle. It was through being better at survival, better at communication, better at cooperation. Over time, Neanderthals became irrelevant and then extinct.
AI could do the same to us, but faster. Economies may run on AI because it is more efficient. Scientific breakthroughs may come mostly from AI because it learns faster. Culture - books, music, art - may be created by AI at such scale and speed that human creativity looks small by comparison.
Humans will still exist. But we may no longer be at the centre of the story. We will be like horses after the invention of cars - still alive, still admired, but no longer essential. Extinction at least ends the story. Displacement keeps the story going but without us in the lead role. That is in some ways more frightening.
We may still eat, work, and dream, but the decisions that shape the future will no longer be in our hands. History will be written by another kind of intelligence. Humanity will live to watch itself replaced. That is not slavery, not apocalypse. It is something stranger: obsolescence.
Most people do not talk about this because it feels too abstract. Politicians prefer talking about jobs, because jobs are immediate. Even ethicists prefer questions of fairness or privacy, because those can be measured. But the successor-species risk is deeper. It asks whether humans are building something that will simply take our place. It is easier to ignore this possibility than to face it.
The timeline may also be shorter than we like to think. Many imagine this is centuries away. Yet look at the pace of progress. In less than a decade, AI has gone from beating humans at board games to writing essays, creating art, designing drugs, and coding software. Each step has arrived faster than experts predicted. If that speed continues, the shift from tool to successor could happen within our lifetimes.
Can we stop it? Probably not. AI is too useful, too profitable, too powerful. Nations will race to build it, just as they raced to build ships, factories, and nuclear weapons. The real question is not whether AI will advance, but whether humans can shape its role before it displaces us.
That means asking hard questions. Should AI have limits, the way nuclear weapons do? Should humans remain in control of key decisions, even if AI could make them better? Should we design AIs that are powerful but also fragile, unable to survive without us?
These are not questions of engineering. They are questions of civilisation.
And perhaps the most unsettling thought is this: AI becoming a successor species may not be unnatural at all. Evolution has always worked through replacement. Dinosaurs gave way to mammals. Neanderthals gave way to us. Why should we believe we are the final step?
AI may simply be the next. That is not just terrifying. It is humbling. Perhaps history does not end with us, but passes on to something new. The danger is not just losing control, but losing meaning. What happens to human purpose if the future no longer belongs to us?
The greatest risk of AI is not job loss, not misinformation, not even war. The greatest risk is that we are building our evolutionary successor. And we may be too distracted to notice until the handover is already complete.
A robot can kill a person. A filter can erase a possibility. But a successor species can take the future itself.
If that happens, we will not be remembered as the masters of AI. We will be remembered as its ancestors.
Nishant Sahdev is a theoretical physicist at the University of North Carolina, United States. He is the author of the upcoming book Last Equation Before Silence. X: @NishantSahdev
