Horses smell, love, recognize faces, jump over fences and do a whole lot of things far better than a Figo or a high-end Lamborghini. But then horses were replaced by cars, for the latter are superior in the handful of tasks that the system really needs. Elon Musk’s Tesla is on to eliminate the human experience of driving a car, save lots of time, money and human lives and of course in the process eliminate millions of human jobs. The controlling logarithm knows the position and intentions of every vehicle on the road and disallows cars to collide. Like taxi drivers, many of us humans are highly likely to the way of horses. Instead of limitless cannon-fodder, countries now need only small numbers of highly trained soldiers and a handful of experts who know how to produce and use sophisticated technology. Hi-tech forces manned by pilotless drones and cyber-worms are replacing the mass armies of the 20th century. Generals delegate more and more critical decisions to algorithms.
Over the past half-century, there has been an immense advance in computer intelligence but there has been exactly zero advance in computer consciousness. With humans having two basic types of abilities; physical and cognitive, machines compete in physical abilities and not cognitive tasks. We’re on the brink of a momentous revolution. We’re in danger of losing our economic value because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. Only conscious beings could perform tasks that required a lot of intelligence such as playing chess, driving cars, diagnosing diseases & etceteras. New types of non-conscious intelligence perform such tasks far better than humans. For all these tasks are based on pattern-recognition and non-conscious algorithms what will conscious humans do once the highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms almost do everything better….better teach, diagnose and design. What will happen once algorithms outperform us in remembering, analyzing and recognizing patterns? In the past, there were many things only humans could do. But robots and inorganic computers are catching up and may soon outperform humans, even though it seems unlikely that computers will gain consciousness, start experiencing emotions and sensations and become humanlike anytime soon.
Humans may be the organic algorithms but material hardly matters for algorithmic calculations. Whether abacus is made of wood, iron or plastic, two plus two equals four. As long as the calculations remain valid, what does it matter whether the algorithms are manifested in carbon or silicon? A massive new unworking class of humans is there to be had; people devoid of any economic, political, or even artistic value who contributes nothing to the prosperity, power, and glory of society. The useless class will not be merely unemployed….it’ll be unemployable. Traditionally life has been divided into two main parts; period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent them repeatedly. Many if not most maybe unable to do it.
We differ from other chimps in our upright posture, large brains, ability to speak, nakedness, and peculiar sexual lives…..all concentrated in a mere 1.6% of our genetic program. The difference is responsible for all of our seemingly unique properties (anthropomorphic thinking is dying fast). We underwent some small changes with big consequences rather quickly and recently in our evolutionary history. Our unique qualities have been responsible for our present biological success as a species. No other large animal is native to all the continents or breeds in all habitats from deserts and Arctic to tropical rainforests. No large wild animal rivals us in numbers. But among our unique qualities are two that now jeopardize our existence; our propensities to kill each other and destroy our environment. Of course, both propensities occur in other species; lions etc kill their own kind, while elephants etc damage their environment. However, these propensities are much more threatening to us than in other animals because of our technological power and exploding numbers.
As economists predict that sooner or later unenhanced humans will be completely useless. Robots, 3D printers have since replaced manual jobs; intelligent algorithms are on way to replace white-collar occupations. Even doctors are fair game for the algorithms. IBM’s famous Watson— an AI system that won Jeopardy TV game show in 2011 with its unlimited memory, expected familiarity with our entire genome, zero chances of getting tired, hungry or sick, will give tough time to doctors. With Watson around, there isn’t much need for Sherlock. Humans will lose their value completely, and instead, be managed by exterior logarithms. What will the useless lot do given the technological bonanza that will probably feed and support them? They may occupy themselves by indulging in drugs or playing computer games. Yet such a development would deal a mortal blow to the liberal beliefs in the sacredness of human life and of human experiences. Humans are unlikely to suffer this degradation because as Artificial Intelligence (AI) surpasses human intelligence it might simply exterminate the humankind. The AI would likely do so either for fear that humankind would turn against it and try to pull its plug or in pursuit of some unfathomable goal of it’s won. It’d be extremely difficult for humans to control the motivation of a system smarter than themselves.
The system will still need you to compose symphonies, teach history or write computer code but it will know you better than you know yourself and will, therefore, make most of the important decisions for you and you’ll be perfectly happy with that. Some people will remain both indispensable and undecipherable but they’ll constitute small and privileged elite of upgraded humans. These Super Humans will enjoy unheard-of abilities and unprecedented creativity which will allow them to go on making many of the most important decisions in the world. They’ll perform crucial services for the system while the system could neither understand nor manage them. However, most humans will not be upgraded and will consequently become an inferior caste dominated by both computer algorithms and the new Super Humans.