The arrival of superhuman machine intelligence will be the biggest event in human history. The world's great powers are finally waking up to this fact, and the world's largest corporations have known it for some time. But what they may not fully understand is that how A.I. evolves will determine whether this event is also our last. The problem is not the science-fiction plot that preoccupies Hollywood and the media -- the humanoid robot that spontaneously becomes conscious and decides to hate humans. Rather, it is the creation of machines that can draw on more information and look further into the future than humans can, exceeding our capacity for decision making in the real world.