Contemplating our future

Consider a new-born human baby. At first, it is even incapable of breathing and has to be motivated to do so by a few friendly spanks, delivered by the attending physician. For the first few months, this being does not seem to do anything remarkable and is incapable of independent movement, let alone thought. Yet, slowly, this same baby develops an internal model of the world around it. It becomes better and better at distinguishing all this light it sees and the cacophony of sounds it hears. Soon, it starts recognizing things such as movement, perhaps in the guise of a friendly face, hovering around with deliciously gooey substances. A bit later, it develops a premature internal physics engine, through the observation of the world around it. It then uses these representations to first crawl, then toddle, and eventually even walk, progressively updating...