Skynet like AI will rule the world in 10 years. Or will it?
In an on-going technology management class at NUS B School, I was asked to argue FOR the statement: “Skynet like AI will rule the world in 10 years.” Below is the script of the opening statement I presented in the debate. Please treat this as an amateur discourse of a layman in an informal spar.
Skynet like AI will rule the world in 10 years. I am here on behalf of my team to make an opening stand to support this statement.
This may sound like prophesying a gory, dystopian future where humans could be embalmed, like in Matrix, enslaved, like in Colossus: The Forbin Project, or annihilated, like in Terminator. But that’s not the kind of picture we are here to paint in front of you. We believe AI and machines will indeed rule the world in a more comprehensive and obtrusive manner than just superficial dominance.
King of the World
“Rule The World” — what does this phrase even mean? Let me ask this question — after so many millions of years of life on Earth and its evolution, which species do you think currently rules the planet? Humans, right? I mean, obviously — we go where we want. We kill what we like. We dominate almost every challenge any eco-system throws at us. It is an obvious thought.
What made us such a potent species? Our evolutionary advantages in our
- Limbs: Mobility, Grip, Tool making
- Communication (Language, Speech, Script)
- Cognitive Skills: Ability to perceive threats and activate Flight or Fight response systems
- Et Cetera
But there is a less obvious after-thought to this. Learning from the book Sapiens, by Dr Yuval Harari — an anthropological historian, there is a converse way to look at which species dominate the Earth. Or more importantly, which species domesticated and ruled upon the planet’s mighty species — Homo Sapiens.
Think of an example species — Wheat. If you were a wheat historian and track its progress of evolution around the planet, there is an amazingly new world view that emerges. Here is a grass that has been in existence for millions of years as a minor wild grass in Middle East. But about just 10,000 years ago, it has suddenly started growing exponentially to reach every far corner of the planet. From occupying a negligible piece of Earth, Wheat, Rice, Corn etc. have gone on to occupy nearly 2% of the habitable planet. Just by providing a hither-to unavailable utility to humans AFTER its natural life, it has successfully dominated the most evolved species on Earth.
Wheat has forced a nomadic hunter gatherer species to settle down next to fields and give up their way of life. It hated sharing water and soil nutrients with other plant species, so it employed Humans and their evolutionary advantages to weed out competition and help it grow. It needed protection from worms, pests and rodents — humans gladly kept guard and stood watch through night and day. It couldn’t grow in rocky lands, so it forced humans to break their backs and till the land for it. Humans were designed to climb trees, be nomadic etc. and not to lift heavy weights. But just about the time when agricultural revolution took off, humans started facing new problems like arthritis, slip discs from doing the hard work of agriculture. In just 2000 years, Wheat forced nearly 98% of human population to live their entire lives promulgating its own species and coagulate into a collection of land-greedy, warring civilizations. Similar arguments could be made for Corn, Rice etc. They have all successfully become the masters of humans by providing them utility after they lived their natural life. We humans are so gullible.
AI’s Claim To Throne
AI, too, is on a similar track. By rendering itself to be indispensable to human life, it is on track to make humans its willful slaves.
Let us revisit some of the skills that made us think we rule the planet:
Limbs and Tools
- Opposable thumb gave humans advantage to carve tools and gather fruits etc. easily. Who is expected to do bulk of manufacturing, gathering / plucking etc. in the future? Hint: automated warehouses, car assembly lines, AI driven robotic manufacturing, coding etc.
- Man’s most important invention so far has been “Wheel”. For so many thousands of years, we mastered the applications of the wheel and used it to our benefit. Who is expected to be in the “driver’s seat”, literally, in the future? Hint: Self driving cars
Communication
- Human speech, writing etc. offered them an extraordinary advantage to communicate with each other quickly, propagate messages and accelerate civilization and sociability. In the future, who is expected to handle most transactional communication of utility value in the future at both personal level and for mass communications? Hint: Google Duplex, Chatbots, AI fake news bots, social bots etc.
Cognitive Skills
- Cognitive recognition of threats and instinctive decision making: We trusted our senses and instincts to survive for millions of years. As a layman, I believe that recognizing danger and deciding to fight or flee is the sharpest thing human intelligence can do. Who is expected to make these decisions for us in the future? Hint: AI based facial recognition, surveillance, threat removal, unmanned attack systems etc.
These are just examples of how AI is making itself absolutely indispensable at the most fundamental level for human survival. In fact, so great is the human conviction that AI is the answer to most problems that we are already thinking about changing our ways of life at scale — worrying about re-skilling our worker population, aspiring and craving more virtual experiences than real etc. AI has been occupying so much mind-space among even us, business students, that the chosen recommendation to most difficult case problems thrown at us at B School is AI. We are rapidly accelerating towards the time when humans will depend heavily on AI for their survival and molding ourselves to the new order, just the way we depended on wheat for our survival and dedicated our way of life to its well-being. AI is quickly making obsolete our USPs as a species. It is taking away from us activities which make up nearly 12 hrs of a day for most of us. It took Wheat 2000 years to mold us. It took industrial revolution 150 years to morph our ways of life. By extrapolating the law of accelerated returns, it is not unimaginable to guess that AI will influence and wield its soft power to rule over us in the next 10–15 years. After all, in the wise words of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
The horseman serves the horse,
The neat-herd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
‘T is the day of the chattel
Web to weave, and corn to grind;
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
