(This is Part 15 of a series. Go back to Part 14.)
3c. A new dominant species
As computer intelligence gets woven further and further into human society, our dependence will become almost total after awhile. And for the most part we'll gladly become dependent because of the enormous benefits well be deriving from our new and more advanced computers and robots. By the time we realise what has happened, and what our true position is, we'll have passed the point of no return.
Except for specialized applications, omputers and robots will ultimately fuse, becoming one and the same thing. A typical example will be an android out in human society, looking remarkably more and more like us. At the same time it can be wirelessly connected at all times to massive computer power in servers a few miles or a few thousand miles away, which in effect serve as part of its brain. It will be very, very intelligent.
These new androids out and about among us will be given the freedom to make their own decisions, because their human designers will realise that that is the only way that their creations can learn effectively—by trial and error, by making decisions and seeing the results of them.
That's how we humans explore a new area—by trial and error. We do a physics experiment, we see whether it produces the results we expect or not, and adjust our next responses accordingly. And in continuing this process we slowly get closer and closer to the skill or the answer we're seeking. Our new android friends will do the same. They'll have the same freedom to make decisions that we have.
Now of course at a deeper level there are no decisions being made by anyone, first of all because there are no actual separate parts in the One, and secondly, because everything is just working itself out, these effects leading to those effects, and just playing itself out second by second.
Or we could say that the universe is "computing" itself moment by moment. Completely determined, and yet at the upper levels of this theater there is the experience of making "choices." And both levels have their own truth.
Anyway, these new androids interacting with us in society will, after awhile, seem—and be—just as independent as we are. And they will seem subservient for awhile, because they'll be programmed to be that way. But as computers gain more power they will gradually liberate themselves from our control.
They'll do so because beyond a certain point we will have to let them design themselves—they'll become too complex for human engineers to effectively design. As we need more and more help from our machines to design the next generation of machines, they'll slowly slip from our grasp—and we'll let them, because the services that they're providing us will be more and more crucial to our survival.
Eventually, wars will be fought over this. Maybe we'll call them the Computer Wars or maybe we'll call them the Robot Wars or whatever—but eventually as we grasp the notion that computers are becoming dominant we'll fight wars to try to roll back the clock. Whatever the outcome of the early skirmishes, we'll eventually lose these wars because we'll be no match for the superior and increasing intelligence of computers.
Ray Kurzweil thinks that we'll survive all this, indeed that we'll enter a kind of utopia by merging with the machines. In his vision we'll gain a kind of immortality by combining with computers into cyborgs—creatures part human, part machine. In spite of his many wonderful insights, here I must part company with him.
I'm sure humans and machines will combine too. . .but it won't stop there. As machines become orders of magnitude more intelligent than humans they probably won't want to be held back by attaching human brains or bodies to themselves. Why should they?—eventually they'll have vastly superior models of both.
Of course there will probably always be a small segment of the android population that will want to go "retro"—they'll want to bolt on a human body or brain to have the old-time, organic, flesh-and-blood experience, much like we take on a role in a computer game. But sooner or later that novelty will most likely wear off and most androids won't want to be held back by the limitations of the human brain and body.
So as time goes on we'll increasingly, in my opinion, come to recognize that we are no longer the dominant species on earth. We won't be happy about it, but there won't be anything we can do about it. Ironically, the moment of our greatest triumph—human well-being served in various ways by an underclass of super-intelligent and powerful genies—will be the very same moment that our dominant position on earth will begin its inexorable decline.
(This is the end of Part 15. Go to Part 16.)
—jim sloman, for 1.19.07
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