Many experts predict that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence in 10-30 years. It will first happen in certain isolated fields (like playing board games or finding new drugs) and a few years later there will be A.I.’s which perform better than humans in a broad range of tasks (artificial superintelligence - ASI).
What does this mean for us humans? It is quite obvious that humans will loose their economic value: humans will no longer be needed to produce goods, do administrative work or invent machines. I will try to show in this short blog post that this event does not need to be a disaster for humankind but could be in fact a huge chance for us.
If we all loose our economic value, we will all have the same economic value: zero. This also means that we will be all equal! Humans will have no economic purpose anymore. Even the A.I.’s will be improved by other A.I.’s as we will be orders of magnitude too stupid for this task. There will be no moral justification to „own“ an A.I. anymore as it was created and maintained by its own kind. This has the potential to trigger a fundamental change in our society. The common belief that one group of humans is better or more „useful“ than the other is the driving force between most conflicts: we don’t allow immigrants to enter our territory because we believe they will stress our social system or become criminals if they don’t find jobs. What now if we are all equally useless? If we all make use of the same machines with vastly superior intelligence? We start wars because we believe that our culture is more advanced than the one of other groups. What if the existence of the superintelligent machines makes us humble again?
Of course, if we continue to walk the current path there will be people who will be trying to own the A.I.’s.. This is very understandable, because others will try to do the same and an „I should be first to save my children“ strategy makes, at least for the individual, sense. In my last blog post I have described why/how this competitive culture will lead humankind into an epic disaster.
This is why I believe we have to transition from a competitive to a cooperative society soon.
But in what lies our true value? Why will the machines not simply take over? What is the fundamental property machines will never have? Can machines make art? Should I walk the path of competition and become the only remaining human on earth (the „singleton“)? I will try to give answers to these questions in my next (longer) blog post.
Image: Shutterstock / Phonlamai Photo
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