As the Sotomayor hearings went on this week, I talked to a reporter about legal issues that a justice might see in the next 25 years, going beyond our present obsessions. (I did not actually say that senators should ask Sotomayor about them.)

Topics included:

• virtual reality
• artificial intelligence
• genetic engineering and human enhancement
• brain technology
• human-animal hybrids

About artificial intelligence, I said, in part:

“People have been talking about the possibility of a “singularity” (in which artificial intelligence becomes sentient) in a couple of decades. It involves two questions: if something says it’s sentient, do we believe it? And if so, do we care? It may be more of a question if it involves a biological system. Does something require a biological brain to be human?”

(Image courtesy Billogs, Flickr)