After a year of increasingly dire warnings about the imminent demise of humanity at the hands of superintelligent artificial intelligence (AI), Magazine is in Panama at the Beneficial AGI Conference to hear the other side of the story.

Attendees include an eclectic mix of transhumanists, crypto folk, sci-fi authors including David Brin, futurists and academics.  

The conference is run by SingularityNET, a key member of the proposed new Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, to find out what happens if everything goes right with creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) — human-level,artificial general intelligence.

But how do we bring about that future, rather than the scenario in which Skynet goes rogue and kills us all?

One of the best insights into why those questions are so important comes from futurist Jose Luis Cordeiro, author of The Death of Death, who believes humanity will cure all diseases and aging thanks to AGI.

He tells Magazine of some sage wisdom that Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, once told him.  

"He said: 'We have to be positive about the future because the images of the future — of what's possible — begin with our minds. If we think we will self-destroy, most likely we will. But if we think that we will survive, [that] we will move into a better world [then we] will work toward that and we will achieve it.' So it begins in our minds."