A Stoic Predicts What Strong AI Might Mean for Humanity
Living in an age of technological marvels has blinded us to a simple fact about humankind
Humanity can look to the last 150 years with deserved pride. Our careful application of the scientific method has unlocked truths obscured to our forebears for millennia.
The last 50 years have seen an even more accelerated pace of technological marvels. Satellites circumnavigating the earth, the first space flights, and manned missions to the moon were early steps in what we now can look back on as rapid progress.
With our unquestioned scientific and technical prowess, we can easily overlook one simple truth: human nature has not changed a whit in this time.
We can read and understand Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations today 2,000 years after he wrote them because he discusses fundamental questions of human nature. What does it mean to live a good life? How can we control our base urges and maintain self-control?
The mismatch between humanity’s development and technological development should scare us. Why, you ask? Because it will be human nature that determines how technology is used in the world.
