Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Repent the End is Near

There may be evidence of the coming apocalypse given our ever expanding population and depletion of our environment, our in-ability to fix logically simple things such as war, poverty, discrimination, the expansion and proliferation of our vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. But foretelling of the apocalypse is kind of dull, its been done, that is not what interests me, and not what I'm going to blog about today.

Humanity has survived through several Armageddons before, an Ice Age, the Great Plague, World War, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, whatever the future has in store for us, it is pretty likely that some of humanity will suffer through it. Even the biggest environmental collapse of any civilization, on Easter Island, where unbounded population growth and on a small isolated island in the middle of the Pacific caused the great for-thinking civilization to cut down the very last tree on the island. Their livelihood depended on trees to make canoes to fish, so no trees, equaled no fish, equaled tribal warfare, cannibalism and a 90% drop in population, but when the first Europeans arrived, there were still peoples living on the island, humanity persisted.

So, that long winded introduction, is what I'm not going to talk about. What am going to talk about is far more certain than the Apocalypse, in fact it is almost guaranteed to occur in the life-time of those alive today. What I am going to talk about is the End of Life as We Know It.

One trend that has been quite persistent throughout human history is the exponential increase of technology. First a trickle, invention of the spear, discovery of fire making, ..., Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. Then a flood, the Industrial Revolution, steam engine, train, automobile, airplane, printing press, computer, Internet, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia. In fact, technology is now increasing at the rate that it is getting close to vertical. We are on the verge of some extremely radical breakthroughs that will so fundamentally change the fabric of our existence, that our civilization as we know it, will come to an end.

For instance, take bio-technology. If you read between the lines of some bio-tech press releases lately, you will see the signs that we are on the verge of some pretty major breakthroughs. A cure for cancer, the ability to grow and transplant entire new organs, the ability to end, even reverse aging. End aging, what does this mean exactly, immortality, or at least greatly increased life spans. Think about this for a minute, no aging, no death, equals a major population growth problem. If you can live forever, than there are consequences, you cannot go merrily along having children, immortality equals a world without children, not sure anyone can imagine this, not sure anyone would want to live in this world. Perhaps one will be given the choice, live forever, and have no children, or die, and have a child.

What about computer science? Haven't we heard of computer AI being around the corner since the 70's? However, other than plenty of good Sci-Fi movies, not much seems to come of it. Of coarse, programmers are notorious for underestimating time-lines, but they normally pull through eventually. If you look out on the web recently there has become quite a recent proliferation of AI web-site, projects and advancements. Strong AI, computer more intelligent than the most intelligent humans is coming, and is coming soon. What does this mean? Biologic humans will no longer be the dominate species on this planet.

What will become of us, will we merge with computers to form cybernetic organisms, will we live out an isolated life in a human wildlife sanctuary that the AI's confine us to. Will they eliminate us, or gradually take over our habitat and displace us until we have no place left to live. Will we become pets, or be kept alive in Zoos. One thing that worries me, is that AI's will learn from our treatment of less intelligent species. How well do we treat our fellow animals? We enslave them, murder them for food and clothing, torture them in the name of science, destroy they're homes and habitat. Is this how we wish to be treated by the coming super intelligent species of AI, if not, perhaps we better start making some changes, and making them fast, if we delay we may get exactly what we deserve.