This paper claims that the “species dominance” issue will dominate our global politics
this century, resulting in a major war that will kill billions of people. The issue is
whether humanity should build godlike, massively intelligent machines called
“artilects’ (artificial intellects), which 21st century technologies will make possible, that
will have mental capacities trillions of trillions of times above the human level. Society
will split into two (arguably three) major philosophical groups, murderously opposed to
each other. The first group is the “Cosmists” (based on the word Cosmos) who are in
favor of building artilects. The second group is the “Terrans” (based on the word Terra
the earth) who are opposed to building artilects, and the third group is the “Cyborgs”,
who want to become artilects themselves by adding artilectual components to their own
human brains.

The difficult thing to keep sight of when you’re talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn’t, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It’s not a fringe idea; it’s a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There’s an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it’s an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.

Enriquez says that humanity is on the verge of becoming a new and utterly unique species, which he dubs Homo Evolutis. What makes this species so unique is that it "takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of the species." Calling it the "ultimate reboot," he points to the conflux of DNA manipulation and therapy, tissue generation, and robotics as making this great leap possible.