Last October, Jay Richards, author of The Human Advantage, caught up with Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks, a Baylor University computer engineering prof, at COSM 2019 to ask, what are our cheat-death chances? They were responding to futurist Ray Kurzweil's heady claims made at the conference that we will merge with computers by 2045 and live on as AI. Richards and Marks reflected on Kurzweil's claims and the thoughts of the panel responding to them. Jay Richards: He's (Kurzweil, below right) very much a sort of, I'd say, a techno-optimist. And in fact, he sort of thinks we're going to get brain scans and upload ourselves, whereas the panel… Though I know there was a diversity of opinion among the panelists, nevertheless, there was, I thought, a strong dose of realism.

Both Microsoft's Bill Gates New York Mayor Bill de Blasio have called for a tax on job-stealing robots, according to a Wall Street Journal tax policy reporter: A robot tax could serve multiple purposes, slowing job-destroying automation while raising revenue to supplement shrinking taxes paid by human workers. It could take a few different forms. Lawmakers could limit or slow down deductions for businesses that replace humans with robots, or they could hit businesses with levies equivalent to the payroll taxes paid by employers and employees. The current employment picture in the United States has been reasonably good (only 3.5% unemployment in 2019) so the proposed robot tax is just an idea at present. But a downturn could turn the idea into a cause.