In The Future Philosophers Will Be Gods
There are people in the world today actually trying to create technology that would let humans merge with machines. The two most prominent players are Kernel and Elon Musk’s Neuralink. The subject has been hotly debated, as proponents promise a future in which humans and artificial intelligence become one in what is known as the singularity, while detractors either question the possibility of humanity ever reaching such heights or warn of holy hellfire for attempting to play god.
If you listen to the experts, though, most of the debate actually ends up revolving around the question of “when” as opposed to “if”. You’d be hard pressed today to find an expert in the field of artificial intelligence, who thinks that human level artificial intelligence or AGI is impossible. AI is already way better than humans at a number of tasks, such as playing Go, diagnosing rare diseases and recommending music you may like.
Similarly in the field of biology, the idea of brain implants is not considered to be physically impossible. It is, however, very difficult, but we are already making progress, especially in artificially enhancing vision.
So the question really is just how fast we will get there, not if we will get there. Why then is this idea so polarising to the public? I think this disconnect of public perception from what the experts are saying stems from one of the most foundational debates of our lifetime: Is there something special about humans that can’t be replicated or recreated?
As much as humans like to think so, currently available evidence strongly suggests that, no, there is not. Scientist have for centuries tried to locate that special something, the soul, but alas nothing has been found. Not even a hint. To put this more bluntly, there is not a shred of evidence that humans are in anyway different or special as compared to other animals. Definitely more complex, more evolved, but not fundamentally different.
Continuing that chain of logic, the current most likely explanation for the experience of consciousness is a large degree of complexity. Consciousness doesn’t seem to be a static thing, but instead a spectrum in which humans seem to hold the highest spot. It’s hard to tell, since we still aren’t quite sure what consciousness is. Whatever it is, there is no reason why even more evolved beings could not exist or why we couldn’t enhance ourselves to reach a higher evolutionary position.
If consciousness is just complexity in our biology, suddenly the idea of being able to manipulate, enhance or even combine consciousness, doesn’t sound quite so impossible. Complexity means difficulty, but fundamentally there doesn’t seem to be anything we could not recreate. Alas, if human brains exist, it must be possible under the physical laws of our world.
When we will be able to do this is hard to predict, but based on the estimates of experts, who take into account Moore’s law, it seems likely these things will be achievable within 50 years. That’s very, very soon. Most likely within any young adult’s lifetime.
An enhanced human brain will be able to search for information from the web as fast as it can think. No more typing keywords into Google. Google is in your brain and every thought conveniently comes with all the relevant information in existence at that time. You aren’t searching for information, the information is just there as soon as you think of something.
We can call this frictionless data acquisition or instant download. If reading a book is quite high on the friction scale, using a computer to search for something is a little lower and googling from your smartphone is less friction still. Once friction is removed, every thought is an instantaneous Google search and not only a search, but the compiling of the best available information into an easily digestible form. Every thought is instantaneous knowledge and understanding.
Hooking up Google in our brains is one way to enhance our ability to acquire information. Another is potentially even more interesting. It is the linking of human brains, which we’ll call collective consciousness.
It’s entirely possible that we will not be able to compile information into a instantly understandable format for a long time due to our inability to perfectly replicate biological storage methods. Happily, though, nature has already figured it out. Your brain stores information in a way that is instantly understandable by you. This is the experience of knowing something. Maybe the best way to increase human knowledge is to aggregate and redistribute the collective knowledge of humanity, already conveniently stored in a format compatible with biological humans.
If we can instantly download information, it’s likely we may also be able to instantly upload it. If we have frictionless data acquisition, we may also have frictionless data creation. With instant upload, people can not only understand new things in the blink of an eye, but change new thoughts into actions at the same speed. Things like messaging, financial transactions and operating machinery can happen at the same speed thinking does.
The most powerful individuals, then, will be the philosophers, the thinkers, the people exercising their instant download and upload the most.
At the same time the entire concept of the individual will become increasingly blurred. Who are you if your brain is connected to everyone else’s, be it via Google or direct link? Arguably, if we are all connected, no one individual is any more powerful than another and simultaneously we are all more powerful.
Maybe we will all be gods. Maybe the one true god is a technologically enhanced collective consciousness of all of humanity.
Wouldn’t that be fun?
About the writers:
Teemu Paivinen
Teemu is an entrepeneur and wannabe futurist. He is a co-founder of Oddshot.tv, a video network for crowdsourced highlights and previously co-founded Coinmotion, a European bitcoin brokerage and exchange.
Misha Talavera
Misha is an entrepreneur and investor. He is a co-founder of NeoReach, a B2B SaaS company. Prior to that, he studied Computer Science and Philosophy at Stanford.
