The likelihood of a transition to a planet dominated by non-biological intelligence is essentially dependent on one large philosophical assumption: that the substrate of intelligence and consciousness is unimportant. Although I contend that this is currently an unanswerable question, the answer may define our future.
Could you work to define what you meant by consciousness? I have a very hard time comparing the consciousness of a human or a dog with the 'consciousness' of an entire ant colony combined. I feel like they are two completely different things currently, but you write as if they are one in the same. Help me out here?
There is a lot of disagreement among philosophers and scientists regarding the definition of consciousness. For me, I feel consciousness is the ability to be aware of your own experiences. This is distinct from having experiences. This is my own philosophical belief, but I think my dog has experiences, but she is probably not aware that she has experiences. In the quote from my article from Kurzweil, he believes that there are different levels of consciousness depending on the complexity of the system producing the consciousness. So for him, he would argue that my dog is conscious, but that it is less conscious than me. When he claims that an ant colony is conscious he is simply talking about how eusocial animals enhance their consciousness by the product of being in a large group. For example, if I was born on an island and lived my entire life never having met another human, I think I would be "less conscious" than I am currently. My ability to introspect and contemplate my existence is greatly enhanced by having interacted with the human metasystem. So in this way, I may be "more conscious" because of people like you and the rest of the Hubski community.