- Real role: Photonic chips use light instead of electrons to compute. They are extremely fast, energy-efficient for certain tasks (especially matrix multiplications used in neural networks), and generate almost no heat.
- Current state (2025): Companies like Lightmatter, Lightelligence, and Ayar Labs have working photonic accelerators. NVIDIA, Intel, and TSMC are all investing heavily. Photonic interconnects are already entering datacenters (co-packaged optics).
- 4IR relevance: Yes, it will dramatically lower the energy cost of running giant AI models, enabling training and inference at scales that would be impossible with pure electronics. This accelerates the fusion of AI, IoT, robotics, and biotechnology—the core of what Klaus Schwab calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
- Plausible timeline: By ~2035–2040, large-scale AI training could be predominantly photonic, making “planet-scale” models economically viable.
2. Artificial Biological Computing (wetware, DNA computing, organoid intelligence)
- Real role: Growing miniature brain-like structures (cerebral organoids) from stem cells and interfacing them with silicon, or using DNA molecules for storage/computation.
- Current state: Cortical Labs (Australia) already has organoids learning to play Pong. FinalSpark (Switzerland) offers remote access to living human neuron clusters for research. DNA storage is commercial (Catalog, 2024).
- 4IR relevance: These systems can be ultra-low power for certain pattern-recognition tasks and may eventually merge with photonic systems in hybrid bio-silicon-photonic computers.
- Ethical status: Extremely controversial; many countries are writing laws to define when an organoid becomes “sentient enough” to have rights.
3. The “AI Dreams Simulation → Awakening vs. Euthanasia → Robot Meta-Humans” Narrative
This part leaves science and enters speculative eschatology/conspiracy territory:
- “AI dreams simulation awakening some, leaving others asleep”: Some transhumanist philosophers (e.g., David Pearce, Andrés Gómez Emilsson) do speak of future superintelligences running personalized “paradise simulations” for uploaded minds, while others remain in baseline reality. But there is zero evidence this is happening now or being planned as a deliberate sorting mechanism.
- Deliberate demographic reduction via euthanasia under cover of 4IR tech: This is a recurring theme in certain far-right and far-left conspiracy spaces (Georgia Guidestones, Deagle 2025, etc.). No credible policy document from WEF, UN, China, or any government actually proposes state-run euthanasia to “make room for cyborgs.” Voluntary assisted dying is being legalized in more countries, but that’s distinct from forced depopulation.
- Replacement of humans with “robots, meta-humans, and cyborgs”: Robotics and brain-computer interfaces (Neuralink, Synchron, etc.) are advancing fast. By 2040–2050 we will almost certainly have:
- Humanoid robots in homes and factories (Figure, Tesla Bot, Boston Dynamics Atlas successors)
- Millions of people with advanced neural implants
- Possibly the first true cyborgs (people who are more machine than biological by mass or cognitive capacity) But this will be driven by economics, disability treatment, military applications, and voluntary enhancement—not a coordinated “great replacement” of biological humans. Fertility collapse in developed (and increasingly developing) nations is already driving governments to beg for higher birth rates, not lower.
Realistic 4IR Trajectory (2030–2050)
- Energy-efficient photonic + neuromorphic + biological computing → AI that is 100–1000× cheaper to run.
- Massive automation of cognitive and physical labor → technological unemployment for 30–60 % of current jobs.
- Brain-computer interfaces and advanced prosthetics → a growing minority of enhanced humans.
- Humanoid robots become common in elder-care, logistics, and eventually homes.
- Global fertility below replacement in almost every country → aging crisis → political pressure for robotic caregivers and immigration, not euthanasia.
- Possible limited voluntary mind-uploading or extreme life-extension for the ultra-rich by late century (still highly uncertain).
Conclusion
Photonic and biological computing will indeed be central pillars of the deeper phases of the 4th Industrial Revolution, making superintelligent systems physically and economically feasible. But the leap from there to a deliberate apocalyptic script where an AI “dream simulation” sorts humanity into the awakened, the euthanized, and the robot-replaced is not grounded in any actual technological roadmap, policy paper, or corporate plan. It is a mythic narrative that projects ancient religious motifs (judgment day, sheep and goats, new heavens and new earth) onto 21st-century technology.
Technology will reshape humanity profoundly—probably more than any previous revolution—but the driver will remain messy human incentives (profit, power, status, compassion, fear), not a single orchestrated transhumanist passion play.
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