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We are going to die in the 21^st century, according to Seth Shostak, the director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute. We will be replaced by genetically manipulated humans, aka designer babies, and artificial intelligence, which will finally lead to a new "alien" species, according to the Daily Mail.

"We can eventually produce offspring that are as different from us as dogs are from grey wolves," Shostak posted in an article on SETI's website. "I'm not talking about the various self-destructive threats of the moment - the ones that fill the papers and spark pontification on the nightly news. No, the three big things that I believe will take place in the 21st century are more profound, and not necessarily bad."

The genetic manipulation is going to happen, no matter how loud the opposition is, he believes. "You may hesitate to endorse designer babies, but hot-rodding our children is as much on the horizon as the morning sun," he said.

Even as destruction looms large, he feels that we need to expand into space to search for resources, not exploration, according to Inverse.

"Everyone expects our progeny to establish colonies on the moon or Mars, but the better deal is to build huge, orbiting habitats in which you can live without a spacesuit...The days of being confined to the bassinette of our birth are coming to an end," he said.

However, the biggest influence on humans would be super-intelligent robots, he felt.

"It is less a matter of improving our descendants than replacing them with our engineered successors," he said. "Perhaps we can promulgate our culture and ourselves by putting chips in our brains or simply uploading our brains to the machines. But you can be sure that the result will not be Homo sapiens as we've known him for 50,000 years."