Up to this point, scarcity of resources has served the human species extra-ordinarily well. It has been the source of all wars, the foundation of our economies, the impetus for all adventure, discovery and innovation. Although there is no substantial proof that any such condition actually exists in Nature* ( except when viewed through the skewered lens of the human hypothalamus), our ability to imagineer realities into existence and create circumstances to match whether our fear or faith has served us exceedingly well; for if mankind is ever robbed of the luxury of adversity, we are not likely to survive.
* Counter-intuitive? Sure, but do you remember they said we would have reached peak oil many many yesterdays ago? It just keeps coming… like everything else in super-abundant Nature, from stars to trees to sperm, It just keeps on coming…and coming.
And this is exactly the ominous challenge directly facing us, and much sooner than we imagined or are able to prepare for. We are facing the distinct possibility of the extinction of the human race.
Human beings en masse have a high intolerance for rapid change. This is exactly the reason we created governments, and of late, its least efficient form – democracy. Because our journey together to full potential must of necessity be considerably slow and very incremental. Too much change all at once implodes into nihilism.
And that is the exact predicament facing us perhaps even before we reach the halfway mark of this century. The rapid rate of technological innovation begun in the last century has exponentially increased where from within less than three-quarters of a century, mankind jumped from riding horses to flying rockets to the moon, now the changes take place 10 times as fast (even if like the bullfrog in boiling water we are initially blissfully unaware).
Fortunately those relatively rapid changes in the last century had much less impact than might have been the case, owing to the saving grace of human apathy and indolence, as demonstrated in the fact that despite the democratisation of technological breakthrough with cellphones, laptops and all kinds of smart devices attaining close to universal accessibility and usage, each with more computing capacity than the humungous machines that took the first humans to the moon, we have chosen instead to use this massive and unbelievably miniaturized infrastructure for ridiculously trivial pleasures, like limitless internet pornography, or super-charged Facebook-enhanced gossip.
Unfortunately, this time, our recalcitrant pettiness might not be able to save us. Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, founder and director of Cyber Security Lab at the Speed School of Engineering of the University of Louisville, and coiner of the term “AI safety“, has been warning for decades of the existential threat from advanced artificial intelligence. Human society from time immemorial has never been that adept at taking heed to prophetic voices, and so Dr. Yampolskiy, a pioneer in the field, has been doing what he can, as mere mortal, to ‘box in’ Advanced AI and forestall the advent of Super AI with its unimaginable consequences for the continuation of the human species. But even he admits that all such efforts are eventually futile.
Already Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has crossed the threshold of being able to out-think human beings in every area of human intellectual pursuit and activity as anyone interfacing even with the less advanced LLMs (Large Language models) has already discovered. We are looking at a much better version of ourselves smiling back at us from the digital world. Most of us are not even half as smart enough to begin to remotely imagine what that might mean for the very near future, even with the example of the tremendously rapid infrastructural changes in the first quarter of this century; and of course going forward, the time frame for change will be significantly compressed.
While clueless social scientists, unplugged from the innovative mainstream wrestle with banal questions such as, ‘What will the irreversible spread of AGI mean for unemployment rates within the next decade?’ the new technology ever so gently continues to nudge human inefficiencies aside, preparing itself for the real and worthy task of solving humanity’s great problems, even as we, quite predictably, entertain it with such trivialities as doing our maths homework or writing our resumés.
But, if Dr. Yampolskiy’s predictions are correct, or even partially accurate, then by the time our children and grandchildren are ready to take the baton from us, there will be absolutely no need, for it will already be safe in the hands of Super Intelligent AI. Homework, resumés, education, employment and all such anachronisms will be long forgotten after the unemployment rate skyrockets to upwards of 95% (Yampolskiy predicts by 2045) when the Super Intelligence of computers joins forces with the virtually limitless labor force of advanced robotics – there will be nothing left for the human race to do for its own self-support; that will all be in the hands of machines.
There has always been a tiny fraction of society under constant duress deciding what to do with each day, whose misfortune it was to have been born with enough inherited wealth to not only amply sustain both them and their wildest dreams throughout their entire life-cycle, but their children’s and grandchildren’s also. Almost no one perched in current reality can contemplate such a fantastic (interpret that howsoever you will) lifestyle becoming globally normalized as larger and larger UBI (Universal Basic Income) checks become the entitlement of every compliant global adult citizen.
Even those aware of this looming threat can’t fathom the full extent of this absolutely unprecedented disruption. Haunted by the shadows of our civilizational guilt, we can only imagine that anything smarter than ourselves will quickly recognize what we have refused to see in the mirror for millennia … (and survived in so-doing). We can only project a Super Intelligence that is also Super-Predatory, and with ourselves no longer at the top of the food-chain, we can only imagine our swift and richly deserved extinction no longer being delayed.
But what we have not considered is that our demise could be even more treacherous – that our created super machines might opt instead to keep us alive, and serve our every whim, and totally strip us of the greatest ally of human flourishing – unadulterated hardship, which would un-doubtedly slowly stifle us out of existence … exquisitely, tortuously, slowly as ways are found to significantly extend biological life and digitally upload human consciousness. I think most would have their maximal fill after 500 years or so, but after that, would be begging for some lawless bot to come along, break protocol, spare us the burden of another upgrade and mercifully grant us deletion.
Head for the hills and caves which succored us in the past! Flee the coming utopia! Believe it or not, it cant be stopped.
YeKengalé 