THE Arthur Clarke (1917 – 2008) was an accomplished science fiction author and television presenter. Some of his classic works include 2001: A Space Odyssey (made into a film directed by Stanley Kubrick) and The City and the Stars. A video of the sci-fi writer from way back in 1964 has gone viral on social media.

In the BBC’s black-and-white video, the acclaimed author predicts the future of artificial intelligence. In his remarks, Clark states that people have reached the end of their biological evolution, and now it is time for engineering or technological development that will be “thousands of times faster.”

Clark states that “The smartest inhabitants of the future will not be humans or monkeys, they will be machines.” He adds that “today’s (1964) electronic brains are completely stupid, but that may not be the case in another generation. They will begin to think and eventually, they will completely surpass their creators.”

Many social media users see Clark’s words as prophetic, considering how fast artificial intelligence technologies are advancing, whether it’s Midjourney that creates photorealistic images from text descriptions, or OpenAI’s advanced chatbot ChatGTP. THE Elon Musk retweeted that video and called Clark “Prescient.”

Arthur Clarke is known for writing some of the most popular science fiction works, including the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, The City and the Stars, and The Fountains of Paradise. His works have earned him the title of “Prophet of the Space Age”.