Our coming obsolescence

While it is hard to tear my eyes away from the spectacle of the continued implosion of Cheeto Jesus and his government, I did see an interesting interview with an Israeli historian who suggests the continuing advances in artificial intelligence will eventually lead to our species being supplanted by AI within the next 300 years.  The process could happen sooner the author, Yuval Harari, believes if the present speed of automation increases with new breakthroughs.  Self driving cars and pizza delivering robots are just the tip of the iceberg.  Within our children's lifetime, many professions from construction to diagnostic healthcare will be the within the purview of AI, leaving most of the population of humans redundant.   Obviously there are many dystopian scenarios to be constructed from these predictions, and the author declines to speculate about where his predictions lead.  A science fiction author, Iain Banks has speculated about a future in which self replicating machines free the human population to explore the outer limits of its potential.  Harari is more sanguine.  He argues humans will retreat to the fantasy world we have been constructing for millennia.  Religion is what will give our descendents meaning in a world where we can no longer define ourselves through our work.  It is a dark view of the end of our evolution as a species.