Towards the Happy Moron and Human 2.0

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds.

Author: Rajiv Malhotra

Look at God and His invention from a philosophical angle. God created all beings, including Man. From a simpleminded simpleton, he evolved to develop a brain complex enough to tap the secrets of the Universe. His intelligence found new frontiers and was able to create and modify new lifeforms. Pretty soon, Man thinks he is better than God. He sometimes thinks God/Universe does not exist. Man is the centre of the Universe, and everything revolves around him.

In self-discovery and expansion of human intellectual capacities, he discovered artificial intelligence (AI). From a tool to aid Man in his day-to-day mundane and repetitive jobs - help him around the house and then help in factories, AI slowly began, through Man's astute observation, that many of our actions and problem can be broken down into algorithms. 

Over time, these algorithms were created for AI to be creative and responsive independently. The point of no return must have been reached when the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in a game of chess. Many modern AI programmes are said to have come close to passing the Turing test, the instance when machine response is indistinguishable from a human's. 

Creative artistic compositions and even emotive responses have been broken down into algorithms. So, for example, AI can compose music pieces and paintings.

Will there come a time when consciousness be broken down into algorithms? What happens after that mirrors the many scenarios of innumerable dystopian sci-fi movies. AI does not need its inventors and can work independently and against its creators. Man will be redundant, an annoyance or irrelevant enough to be disposed of. 

That is the course of things. AI is here to stay. The author looks at five areas (which he refers to as battlegrounds) that may need intervention by the powers that be. The mentioned areas are economics, geopolitics, loss of agency or psychological control of the public, metaphysics of consciousness and human capital.

There is a palpable fear that the rapid replacement of jobs by AI. Even though historically, industrialisation did cut jobs, this time around, the loss of employment could be too fast and too widespread. The disparity between the haves and have-nots will be more prominent as the middle-class shrinks.

Geopolitical dealings will hit a more extensive frontier. If previously, the loss of human lives was the impediment for nations to go to war, with AI and fighter machines, the only thing that would prevent them is the ability to finance wars. Countries with more enormous AI-based military-industrial complexes will likely rule the world.

As most of us are aware now, the internet and social media have turned us into automatons. Our personal information is public domain. We had willingly signed off our right to privacy. Like dogs in dog shows, we are easy pacified with serotonin-inducing likes and approvals in our comfortable echo chambers. Virtual reality and augmented reality devices, wearables and implants will put us in a constant state of psychedelic euphoria. Our social behaviour is analysed and gamified to influence us to dance to the tunes of the webmasters.

Augmented Reality glasses

It seems that everything can be coded. Scientists have algorithms for everything, including possibly our consciousness. The average human being would be a moron as all thinking processes can be outsourced to AIs, which would be essentially Human 2.0.

The world will be divided into two categories - the 1% of the elite God-like mega-rich larger-than-life entrepreneurs and the rest being the masses who have to be servants and consumers to the institutions of the 1%.  

With the future so dim, we probably would not need shades. Perhaps just VR, AR glasses or Google goggles.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.