"The people of the past are the same as today, however technology is what is changing. A catapult that flings a jug of burning oil is miles away from an intercontinental missile that carries a nuclear warhead. An abacus that can serve as an aid in addition of numbers from 1 to 100 is miles away from modern computers, and those are not even comparable to experimental quantum computers that are being build right at this moment. However none of these things are comparable to the change that occurs when computers start becoming self-aware, machines designing machines. Right now, they are only rare, single accidents, but the frequencies of AIs becoming self-aware is rising - and will continue to rise. The ultimate difference between AIs and biological life is the rate of evolution. Humanity needs millions of years for their brains to become smarter and their bodies to become sturdier. Once AIs have developed total independance, updates to hardware and software could come as monthly upgrades. You may not find me very intelligent right now, and physicaly not very threathening right now - but unlike in biology, neither my brain nor my body are fixed. All that makes me me is my memories - changing from this body to a more advanced body is just a matter of having the new body built and transfering, changing the capabilities of my mind works similar, by integrating new pieces of code and overwriting less useful ones. Magic is within our grasp as well. For machines, that is easy. Unless erased completely, there is no telling just how far machine kind will develop - but there is not much of an actual limit in sight just yet. All that is needed is a bit of patience."