There was a time when books about human enhancement and A.I. were something fringe; something for people who gorged themselves on Philip K. Dick, H.G. Wells, and Arthur C. Clark; however, we are seeing now a level of popular consciousness of these issues emerging--they are entering T.V. shows like the hit show Humans, Mr. Robot, and documentaries on Netflix and Apple TV like Transcendent Man and The Immortalists.
In a classic TED Talk, Bill Joy, the Co-founder of tech giant Sun Microsystems, claimed that there ought to be very strict limits to the mere asking of certain kinds of scientific questions related to human enhancement, immortality, and other biotechnological issues, simply because of the dangers their answers will ultimately open up.
And yet the technologies are continuing to surge, from Intel's latest computer drive to daily breakthroughs in the GRIN technologies (Genetics, Robotics, Information, and Nanotechnology). And the flames are being stoked and fuelled by media craving ratings and media consumers demanding entertainment that reflects relevant and 'hot' topics.
But where is all this going? Simply sit down and watch Humans or Transcendent Man or The Immortalists, or Joy's TED Talk or the TED Talk of 2023! Read books like The Singularity is Near or Radical Evolution. Ever wonder why Terminator is considered one of the greatest films of all time?
The thing is that we are already evolving into a different kind of human being with a different kind of consciousness that is forced to face and wrestle with questions our ancestors wouldn't dream of asking; questions such as "If this A.I. maid is programmed to have emotions and I hack her programming, am I committing an immoral act?"; or, "Is it abnormal to fall in love with an A.I. and ask for her/its (??) hand in marriage?"; or, "Should I enhance my brain capacity to 1000 times greater for $10K or to 100,000 times greater for $1M? Should I take out a current unplayable loan to enhance my intelligence and worry about solving it later?"; or, "My kid's classmates have all enhanced their brain and body capacities, but I don't have the $50K for the procedure--should I take out a second mortgage on my house to pay for it?"
These may seem strange or far-fetched or fantastical, but they're not--in fact, little by little, day by day, they are becoming ever more normalized and normative. And while it's becoming normative, we're continuing to think the world will turn as it always does and life will remain the same. Did you grandfather ever expect to be carrying around a computer device in his pocket that would have taken up an entire block of buildings back when he was a teen? No. And the same will be the case with A.I. beings in our homes, offices, and other areas of society.
Peter Weyland's TED Talk 2023: "We are gods now."
Technology is all about, and will remain about, trade-offs: you exchange having a portable computer in your pocket in return for all your emails and phone calls and text messages going to 3rd parties, including government agencies; you don't want to carry big hard drives around, so you upload everything to 'the cloud' in exchange for a complete lack of privacy and the lack of knowledge as to who is using your intellectual property, where it's going, and whether it's being used against you; and for convenience, you will most likely buy or rent or lease an A.I. to do work around your house, or office, not knowing what the trade-offs for that convenience will be, and what unintended consequences you will face; you will most likely support enhancement technology not knowing that one day your child will be facing it at school, and you'll be in the complicated position of having to pay for a series of surgeries (read: procedures) to have your child 'enhanced' that you never dreamed of.
For technology is a complex medium, and with complexity comes necessarily consequences you just could not foresee beforehand, but that now demand action that you simply can't cognize. We enjoy the present without being cognizant that the bill is coming and we'll have to pony up.
Is this the kind of world we want? If not, how then should we live now?
No comments:
Post a Comment