The ubiquitous public discourse about the moral, technical, and ethical implications of artificial intelligence serves as a pivot point in, and may actually wake people up to, the baffling future that we are in fact facing today. Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian and social philosopher, has done an excellent job recapping a broad range of the outré possibilities humankind faces today. The fact that he calls his book Homo Deus gives a broad hint about some of the things we may see in that future.
Harari briefly treats the prevalent fictions in earlier historical epochs, from our hunter-gatherer roots through to today to trace how these fictions grew and how completely they dominated human thought. First Nature, next God, and finally human beings themselves came to rule the world and to give meaning to the universe. But this historical era won’t last forever, he says. It will give way to a future which features much more extensive human-computer interchange, where machines will know us better than we know ourselves.
Consider: humans already have a broad range of artificial implants in their bodies. They regulate our heart rate, they help motor-compromised people use their limbs, blind people see shades of light, and formerly deaf people hear. Nanobots are currently being used in cancer detection and treatment. We can measure our pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and glucose level with something we simply wear—no implant required. Harari is not alone in thinking that medicine is trending even today toward upgrading the health of healthy people, in addition to its traditional role in treating disease.
Harari spends a significant portion of his book describing the relationship between brain activity and emotion. It’s an acknowledged fact neuroscientists have detected the relationship between areas of the brain and such functions as emotion, perception, language, and so on. Harari hangs his hat on the link between brain processes which we can observe and their corresponding emotions and states of consciousness, and the claim that these process are not free at all, but probabilistic. Here, however, is a quote from one third of the way through the book:
However, nobody has any idea how a congeries of biochemical reactions and electrical currents in the brain creates the subjective experience of pain, anger or love. Perhaps we will have a solid explanation in ten or fifty years. But as of 2016, we have no such explanation, and we had better be clear about that.”
Nevertheless, the author arrives very quickly at the conclusion that not only are deterministic neurochemical reactions responsible for your choices and outlook, but soon, a network of computers, or super computers, will compile all your Likes, hates, opinions, reviews, and arguments in cyberspace, and build an algorithm of you. You’ll be able to compare two job opportunities, alternative places to live, even choose between potential mates…you won’t have to do your own soul searching, the algorithm will do it for you.
And compilation of everything that I am encompasses and presupposes the most objectionable assertion in the book: that our experiences will mean nothing if we don’t upload them for the world to see. Keeping secrets from the network of information, or otherwise limiting the free exchange of it, becomes the worst crime you can commit. I’m sure I’m just being damned old fashioned when I find this concept a ghastly affront. I cannot see a future in which I agree that I don’t feel anything unless somebody else tells me I do.
Where are the medical advancements headed? Harari sees a possible future where humans who can afford it are given the ability to see in much broader range of the EM spectrum, or can comprehend what it’s like to be a bat, or a dolphin, or an ant. These are the superhumans of the title. One grand thematic contribution of his book: the belief that human life and emotion and freedom will eventually become obsolete (along with free elections and freely consumed goods and capital) in favor of the recognition that organisms are algorithms (already scientific dogma today), and that Earthly existence (or existence anywhere in the universe) will simply be the rapid, efficient, and free processing of information.
This is not a difficult book to read, although long sections of it require you to accept statements that cannot be verified. Harari even says this. This is a visionary piece which deals with human trends and possibilities. As such, it is a highly useful and thought-provoking document. Harari remains one of the more clear-sighted and accessible cultural seers currently available to us. Take this volume up, definitely, if current trends and their possible futures interest you.
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