Aque no sabes que....

Editor's note: Yuval Noah Harari lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote the best-selling international Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , to be published in the United States in February 2015 This is a special item for Tomorrow Transformed CNN.
(CNN) - The twenty-first century progresses and humans are in danger of losing its value because intelligence is becoming independent of consciousness.
So far, the superior intelligence always go hand in hand with an awareness developed. Only sentient beings could perform tasks that require a lot of intelligence, such as playing chess, driving a car, diagnose diseases or write articles.
However, at present we are developing new kinds of conscious intelligence that can not perform these tasks better than humans.
This raises a new question: which of the two is really important: intelligence or consciousness? While one was on the other hand, this question was a simple pastime for philosophers.
In the XXI century is becoming an urgent political and economic issue. It is serious to realize that, at least in economics, intelligence is required, but the consciousness is of little value.
Conscious experiences of a taxi driver in the flesh are infinitely richer than the Google autonomous car that feels nothing. But the system requires that the driver carry passengers from point A to point B the fastest, safest and cheapest way possible. The  autonomous Google car may soon do that much better than a human driver. The same applies to the mechanics, lawyers, soldiers, doctors, teachers ... and even with computer engineers.
What will the superfluous people? This question is not entirely new. At the outbreak of the industrial revolution, people feared that mechanization caused mass unemployment. That did not happen because as the old obsolete professions were born new professions and there was always something that humans could do better than machines.
However, this is not a law of nature.
Humans have two kinds of skills: physical skills and cognitive skills. Throughout the past two centuries, machines replaced humans in the physical tasks and focused on producing human cognitive tasks. But what will happen once the computer algorithms can surpass humans do that?
The idea that humans always have a unique skill that is beyond the scope of simply unaware algorithms is an optimistic idea. It is based on the traditional assumption that intelligence and consciousness are inextricably linked with each other. Perhaps this was true for the millions of years of evolution, but not anymore .
When humans and computers struggle in science fiction movies, humans win because sooner or later turn out to have some magical spark within that computers can not understand or emulate. This is a legacy of the monotheistic belief of the soul.
Since people believe that humans have souls, has also been easy to believe that this soul has certain magical powers that will always be beyond the reach of simple algorithms. But science does not believe in the soul. The current scientific dogma can be summarized in three simple principles:
1 One animal (including homo sapiens ) is a collection of organic algorithms which natural selection shaped over millions of years of evolution.
2 Computational scientists can develop much faster than natural selection can develop natural inorganic algorithms algorithms.
3 There is no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that inorganic algorithms can never replicate or exceed. After all, the algorithms are algorithms. While math function, what if the algorithms are expressed in carbon, silicon or plastic?
Certainly today there are several things that organic algorithms do better than inorganic, but this is only a matter of time. Experts have repeatedly stated that something (either playing chess, recognize faces or drive a car) is outside the scope of inorganic algorithms forever . But it turns forever means no more than one or two decades.
So what will people do? Some people suggest that all artists will be. However, there is no reason to think that artistic creation is safe from inorganic algorithms.
According to the natural sciences, art is not a product of a spirit or soul, but organic algorithms. If so, there is no reason why inorganic algorithms can not master it. Today there are computer programs that predict the success of a melody or a great movie much better than art critics production of flesh and blood; Some programs even compose music that audiences seem as moving as the music made by humans.
While in the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created a new and large class of workers (the urban proletariat), the Second Industrial Revolution of the XXI century could create a huge class of economically useless people.
Thanks to the wonders of new technologies, it's probably easier to keep these well fed and even masses satisfied. The correct dose of drugs and computer games will be enough, so there will be no need to exterminate these humans by force. The system will simply allow them to disappear quietly.
However, the big question that hangs over this possibility is if consciousness has an intrinsic value that has nothing to do with intelligence. The political, economic and scientific apparatus pay little attention to this issue. Both the natural sciences and the social sciences strive greatly to examine intelligence processes and decision making, as if life were reduced to make intelligent decisions. The brain is fashionable today. On the other hand, the mind and consciousness are considered more as a secondary phenomenon.
But the point is we have no idea what is consciousness. Although the natural sciences as the idea that organic algorithms create consciousness is a gospel , nobody has any idea how it happens. It's a simple dogma. A critical analysis of this dogma is probably not only the greatest scientific challenge of the century, but the most pressing political and economic project.