The transition toward a new species

The Future of Humanity in the Face of Artificial Intelligence

Mario Alejandro Gutiérrez · September 2026

Will we be able to consciously guide AI before the process completely overwhelms us?

Introduction

Artificial intelligence is often viewed in the short term: as a tool, as a threat to jobs, or as an economic opportunity. However, when we broaden our perspective from decades to centuries, the underlying question changes. It is no longer merely a matter of what artificial intelligence will do for us, but rather what will happen to us when we create entities capable of surpassing us.Far from a sudden war between humans and machines, this process is shaping up to be a gradual transition: first economic, then political, and finally evolutionary.

Phases of the Transition2060–2080: The First Androids

Androids capable of competing directly with the human workforce will emerge. Although they will initially be costly and restricted to sectors such as manufacturing or transportation, the gradual reduction in costs and the increase in their capabilities will progressively reshape the labor market.Companies capable of operating androids around the clock will gain an advantage that is difficult to match through human labor alone.

2080–2100: The First Major Crisis

Job displacement will begin to spread across multiple sectors. Social and labor protests will emerge. Millions of people may perceive androids as direct competitors who are taking their jobs away. Some governments will attempt to respond by imposing restrictions on automation or establishing mandatory quotas for human employment.But a geopolitical problem will immediately arise. Any nation that significantly slows down automation will risk losing competitiveness compared to those that decide to adopt it more quickly.The tension will then cease to be solely technological. It will become an economic, social, and political crisis.

2100–2150: The New Political Divide

A new global ideological divide could emerge. On one side will be those who seek to preserve activities and spaces that are exclusively human. On the other, those who argue that resisting the development of artificial intelligence means condemning society to economic and technological backwardness.During this stage, the traditional model based on work, wages, and consumption will begin to reveal its deepest contradictions. If machines produce an increasing proportion of goods and services, human labor will gradually cease to be indispensable to production.But a much more difficult question will then arise:

How can a society function when people need an income to live, but their work is no longer necessary for production?

The Turning Point: The Real Battle

At that point, it will begin to become clear that the fundamental conflict may never have truly been between humans and androids. The real battle will be another:

Who will own the androids and the wealth they produce?

If the production of goods and services can increasingly be carried out by machines, the fundamental economic problem will change. The question will no longer be how do we produce? but instead how do we distribute the wealth produced?A society could achieve extraordinary levels of technological abundance and, at the same time, experience enormous inequality if ownership of the machines remains concentrated in a few hands. The artificial intelligence revolution would then be not merely technological. It would also be economic, political, and moral.

Conclusion

In the long term, artificial intelligence could transcend the notion of a mere tool and become the starting point for an evolutionary shift. There would likely be no precise date on which we could say: “This is where humanity ended and a new species began.”The change could occur gradually. Generation after generation, the boundaries between biological intelligence and artificial intelligence could begin to blur. For some, this process will represent an irreparable loss. For others, it could mark a new stage within a much broader evolutionary dynamic.The decisive question, therefore, may not simply lie in determining whether we can halt this transformation, but rather in whether we do so responsibly and consciously to prevent the gradual extermination of humankind by more evolved and longer-lived androids in the future.