Behold The Digital Overlords: Artificial Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
I love to think a lot about the future, and many times when I do, I get excited. The envisioning of a time in our lives when almost everything is possible creates this allure that gives me warm chills (LOL). At other times, I get so depressed, worrying about the future of humanity and if we stand a chance at all. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in this, a lot of us are really worried. But should we be?
After reading the book, The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil (you should read it too), I came to the conclusion that it is really up to us to decide how the future plays out. In his book, he describes three major emerging fields of Science and Technology that are bound to shape our future and bring about new patterns of living and culture:
- Robotics: Strong AI
- Genetics
- Nanotechnologies
Let me add one more to the list, String theory. Believe it or not, these are major fields to look into. If your career is not centered around these right now, they will be in very little time.
I have a friend who’s a lawyer. She’s currently taking side courses on Artificial Intelligence. When I asked why, she said she’d like to be a frontier in the Robotics Law. She believes, and I do too, that in no distant future, machines would be so real you can relate with them and we’d have to start worrying about whether to accept them as humans or not. Eventually, like every other controversial topic that yielded a resolution, we will accept them and AI-powered machines would have rights too, just like us. MACHINE LIVES MATTER!!!
If you don’t believe it, do a Google search on Sophia the robot.
These are scary thoughts, even though they give us hope of a better and more prosperous tomorrow. And considering the exponential rate at which we’re improving technology, there are different ways the future could play out:
Scenario 1
It’s 2040 and humans have figured out AI (or we think we have). Machines are working for us. We’re gods and they’re our slaves, doing our bidding.
Scenario 2
It’s 2040 and machines figured out that they didn’t really need us in the first place, so they wipe us out, or find a way to get rid of us. In short, they win. Think the movie Matrix.
Scenario 3
We’ve figured out a way to co-exist with machines. We respect them and they respect us. In fact, our co-existence is on the biological level where we are ourselves part-machine, part-biological. This way, we have capabilities that are beyond what we thought about. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a bionic arm and a chip in my brain to spike my intelligence, and I’ll start processing information at ten times the speed of light. The possibilities are endless.
I think I like this scenario the best.
In Scenario 3, we’re not at war with the machines. All I have to do is think of something and it is done, teleportation has been solved, we can tap into 4th , 5th, and 6th dimensions like traveling between cities. We can live as long as we want. We finally understand string theory. We have found a way to encode binary digits in protons and electrons and everything (including you and even that ugly piece of rock in the corner of your street) is now a computer.
In Scenario 3, we’re merging our already high level of thought, reasoning, and intuition with the high-speed computational capabilities of machines. We’re not dummies, in fact, humans are the most intelligent form of biological life. We’re at the top of the food-chain of everything living and we’ve kept the Earth alive for this long. However, in order to match up to the future which many perceive to be a doom, we have to improve our capabilities.
The sad part is this: no one is preparing for the future. We’re all just talking about it.
We could be perplexed, or excited about this grand future, but to remain relevant socially and be alive, we have to be prepared for it (individually and collectively).
LONG STORY SHORT, we have to be prepared!!!
Thank you.
