Scientists are rotten forecasters of the future. But two trends can be confidently predicted. First, the world will get more crowded. There’ll be more than 9 billion people by 2050. Nourishing them all will require genetically modified crops, food made from insects and artificial meat.
Second, the world will get warmer and politicians won’t prioritise the long-term measures needed to deal with climate change unless there’s a clamour from voters, even though science offers us a roadmap to a low-carbon future (technically advanced nations should expand research and development into all forms of low-carbon energy generation, storage and distribution; the prosperous north can thereby reach net zero and the impoverished global south can leapfrog to clean energy).
That’s why we should be evangelists for new technology – without it the world can’t provide the food and sustainable energy needed for an expanding population. But we should also be wary, as new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), may be hard to control.
AI will undoubtedly become more intrusive and pervasive in the future. Records of our movements, health and financial transactions will be stored in the cloud and managed by a multinational quasi-monopoly. The data may be used for benign reasons, such as medical research, or to warn us of incipient health risks, but its availability to internet companies is already shifting the balance of power from governments to globe-spanning conglomerates.
Clearly, machines will take over much of the manufacturing and retail sectors. They can supplement, if not replace, many white-collar jobs: accountancy, computer coding, medical diagnostics and even surgery. In contrast, some skilled service-sector jobs – plumbing and gardening, for instance – require non-routine interactions with people and will be among the hardest jobs to automate.
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The digital revolution is already generating enormous wealth for innovators and global companies, but preserving a healthy society will require redistribution of that wealth. Indeed, to create a humane society, governments will need to vastly enhance the number and status of those who care for the old, the young and the sick.
There are currently far too few of these sorts of carers, and they’re poorly paid, inadequately esteemed and insecure in their positions. Their work is also far more fulfilling than the work performed in call centres or Amazon warehouses that AI can usurp.
AI doesn’t only replace, however; it can also help. AI already copes better than humans with data-rich, fast-changing networks. It could provide the Chinese with a highly efficient planned economy, one that Marx could only dream of. And AI can help science too, in areas like protein folding and drug development.
But it’s beyond Earth, that AI has the most spectacular scope. Indeed, I have argued that the sending humans on space voyages (which is vastly more expensive than sending robots), should receive no taxpayer funding.
The practical case for favouring humans is minimal – leave that to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Between them and the various national space agencies, humans may have established bases beyond Earth by the year 2100. But don’t ever expect mass emigration from Earth.
It’s a dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from our problems. Dealing with climate change on Earth is a doddle compared to terraforming Mars.
Nonetheless, we should cheer on these brave human space adventurers. And here’s why…
They’ll be ill-adapted to a Martian habitat, so they’ll have a compelling motive to redesign themselves. It’s them, not those of us who adapted to life on Earth, who will spearhead the post-human era.
If post-humans make the transition from flesh and blood to fully artificial (or rather, inorganic) intelligences, they won’t need an atmosphere or even gravity, so it’s in deep space – not on Earth, or even Mars – that non-biological ‘brains’ may develop powers that we can’t imagine. They may end up being as different, mentally, from us as we are from slime mould.
So even if intelligent life originated only on Earth, it need not remain here: AI could jump-start a diaspora whereby ever more complex intelligence spreads through the galaxy.
But let’s refocus on the science fiction of the far future, closer to the here and now. This century is special. It’s the first, in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history where one species – ours – holds the planet’s future in its hands. Our intelligence could inaugurate billions of years of post-human evolution, even more marvellous than that which led to us. On the other hand, humans could trigger biological, environmental or cyber catastrophes that foreclose all this potential.
If science is to save us, we need to think globally, rationally and long-term – empowered by science, but guided by values that science alone can’t provide.
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