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Why We Must Fix This Now
Having thus taken each citizen in turn in its powerful grasp and shaped men to its will, government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s will, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits, action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2
At some point in just about every monster film, the trembling scientist looks at the soon-to-be hero and says with fear, “It’s reached the edge of the city.”
I think it is time to say, “It’s reached the edge of the city.” And if we don’t find a way of dealing with “it,” it will destroy this country.
“It” being the future, which is racing toward us a lot faster than it has at any time in our past. Obviously time hasn’t actually sped up; what has changed is the rate of discovery, invention, and creation, each one of which has the capability to alter society and lifestyle in fundamental ways. Maintaining America’s place as a world leader means being prepared to adapt to those changes. Just imagine making all the progress from the cotton gin to the space age in one year. Now imagine making that level of technical leap in a week. Then again the following week. And the week after that. By the time we hit 2030, we’ll be making one hundred years of technological advancement every single day. Twenty thousand years of technological advancement will be achieved by the year 2100. My children will be alive, and perhaps, due to the merging of man and machine, many of us may be alive, too.
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The End of the Human(ity) Era
There are a lot of really smart people—among them Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Ray Kurzweil—who believe that level of displacement is coming. Elon Musk says that we must have a colony on Mars by 2025, as the technology that is coming may wipe us out. Stephen Hawking believed that by 2050, Homo sapiens will be no more. After reading Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark, Our Final Invention by James Barrat, and Augmented by Brett King, I believe Hawking is right. Homo sapiens will not be enough for us.
Even if they’re only partly right, we need to be prepared to deal with it. We’re not.
One thing we know for certain is that in fifty years, maybe less, maybe a lot less, the world as we know it today will be unrecognizable. In many ways it’s going to be better: Everything is going to be faster, easier, and less expensive. I can’t predict what it will look like. When black-and-white TV became widely available, people couldn’t imagine it getting better. Then color TV became affordable, and people couldn’t imagine it getting better. Today, with 4K TVs viewable on wall-sized, paper-thin flexible screens, people can’t imagine it getting better. Here’s a guarantee: It’s going to get better. Transportation, communications, entertainment, it’s all going to be better.
Not everything, though. America? Maybe, maybe not. Not the old fields-of-grain-from-sea-to-shining-sea America but the grand idea of America that was entrusted to us to protect. That’s the challenge we face: protecting it, handing it on to our children. I’ve been optimistic about it, but my optimism is fading. I love Winston Churchill’s description of Americans: They always get it right, but only after they’ve tried everything else.
The source of my growing pessimism is my knowledge of history. If we can take the coming decline and turn it around, we’ll be the only nation in world history to do so successfully. To do that, we will have to figure out how to deal with a whole new set of problems; if we don’t, we’ll be enslaved by our machinery or we will be dead because of our smart machines.
Technology is going to change every aspect of our lives. There are going to be massive job losses as robots and artificial intelligence replace workers. The first impact probably will be seen in the trucking and shipping industry as self-driving trucks and cars make human drivers unnecessary. Millions of jobs are going to disappear. The entire concept of owning a car is going to disappear. I had a conversation with the former chairman of the board of General Motors in 2017. He shocked me. In ten years, he said, GM will be a very different company. “We’re not really going to be selling ‘cars.’ In a decade or two it’ll all be fleets.” When someone needs a car they’ll reserve one, which will drive itself to the meeting place. If you do choose to buy a car, you’ll be able to send it out to work when you’re not using it. “Car, take me to work, then be back by noon.” Rather than sitting in a garage most of the day, it’ll be driving itself around earning money. So, when that happens, who pays for the insurance? You or the car? If the car can make its own money, buy insurance, and run without you, does it have rights? Can you take its money, or does it belong to it? Is it an indentured servant for life, or a slave? If it can make money, can it invest? As AG! It will play the stock market and be much more wealthy than you.
With more people than jobs, it will no longer be possible to “earn” a living. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has joined a growing chorus predicting the government will soon be forced to pay a universal basic income to most Americans to enable people to survive. He proposed a $1,000 a month payment. Giving a commencement speech at Harvard, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg supported the concept, telling new graduates, “Now it’s our time to define a new social contract for our generation. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things.” Sweden just tried this, and it was a massive failure. Much like Jamestown. Or even the original socialist community in America: Dallas.
In 1855, some 350 utopian “dreamers” founded La Réunion as a socialist colony near the site of modern-day Dallas. Despite having no skills in farming or livestock production, the dreamers believed that by practicing the teachings of Marx and Fourier, they would achieve happiness and prosperity. Within three years, nearly all the settlers had died of disease or starvation. In 1860, what remained of the settlement was absorbed into the thriving, capitalistic Dallas township. One local academic noted at the time that the settlement “would have worked, but the people had failed to practice ‘pure’ socialism.” (Okay, I made that last part up.)
The robotic revolution began decades ago, and robots are already accomplishing some amazing feats. Science Robotics reported in early 2018 that “a pair of stationary robotic arms executed the roughly 50 steps required to put together an IKEA STEFAN chair. . . . Built with off-the-shelf hardware, 3-D cameras, and force sensors, two factory robot arms put together [the chair] in about twenty minutes!”
But compared to what’s coming, robots are still in the metallic embryo stage. Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes that within fifteen years we’ll have billions of nanobots—microscopic robots—roaming around inside our bodies augmenting our immune systems and wiping out most diseases. By 2045, he has predicted, humans will be capable of immortality, and “the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.”
Relationships will change drastically, too, as people turn to lifelike robots for companionship. As artificial intelligence improves, robots will be implanted with tailor-made personalities. In many cases they will replace other human beings in our lives; they will live with us in our homes, watch our children, do the cleaning, and fulfill our needs and desires. Robot brothels “staffed” by beautiful sex bots have already opened in Europe and Japan. Each sex doll has a unique look and “personality,” and in one Vienna brothel a synthetic sex worker is already more popular than living “dolls.” We also will be able to buy “grief bots,” robots programmed with all of the information left in cyberspace, fr
om voicemails to emojis, and to mimic the word phrasing, speech cadence, tone, and even the unique verbal tics of relatives and friends who have died.
A lot of people casually dismiss this; it’s not right for them. Oh, yeah? What if I could say to a guy, Listen, I can give you a real person, an actual honest-to-God person, who is literally the woman of your dreams? Physically she is everything you’ve ever dreamed about. Even better, she is interested in everything you’re interested in, and she will do anything and everything you desire. Want her to be as smart as you? I can do that. Want her to be smarter than you? I can do that, too. More than that, this partner will be able to anticipate every single one of your needs: If you even think, I’d like to get away, she’ll book the trip for you. Sex? She’s wonderful at it, and whatever you do or don’t do is exactly what she wants. She’ll never complain that you don’t listen to her. And if you become bored with her, you can change her looks, her personality, everything about her.
And if you’re weird and want to know what it feels like to kill her, you can kill her and then just press the reset button. And she’ll thank you for it.
Now who is going to bother dating a stranger when your perfect woman is right there for you? And feels as real as your next-door neighbor? Who is going to date a flawed, needy human being and go through the messiness of all those emotional pushes and pulls?
Similar technology is going to make it even more difficult to separate reality from fakes. We already have the ability to take an individual’s voice and program it to say anything we want. There is an app right now that allows me to record my voice, then type whatever I want to say, and the computer will produce it. I don’t have to sit in a studio and record the audio version of this book. The computer will do it for me, and no one will be aware that I didn’t physically read it.
We also are capable of digitizing faces and imposing them on other bodies, allowing us to raise the dead, figuratively. Technology is advancing so rapidly, according to Mike McGee, who owns a special effects company, that dead people “can begin to have a new consciousness. It’s only a small step to interactive conversations with holographic versions of dead celebrities or historical figures.” The porn industry is already inserting the faces of celebrities in movies. The result is absolutely realistic video of people doing things they never did. I guess some people might find it amusing to see legendary movie stars in porn, but the same technology is going to make it possible to create fake news. Imagine a video of Donald Trump announcing he has led a coup to overthrow the British government and is installing himself as king. People wouldn’t know if that were true or created. If you’re concerned about “fake news” now, you ain’t seen nothing yet! We will have no way to tell if something we are watching is true or fake. This obviously will be welcomed in the political arena: For example, candidates will be able to post video of their opponents having a clandestine meeting with Hitler.
We also can say good-bye to whatever remnants of privacy we still have. Face-recognition technology will make it possible to find anyone pretty much anywhere in the world. And as we become more dependent on conducting our business online, hackers easily will be able to steal all our information.
We certainly won’t be arguing about gun control; rather than buying guns, people will be able to print whatever weapon they want on their home 3-D printer. That already is reality.
Entertainment might well remain physically passive but mentally active, as virtual reality will allow you to have great adventures anywhere in the universe without leaving your home. You’ll be a participant in movies and games, and the technology will allow you to feel what’s going on as well as be in the middle of it.
Everything we know about athletics will change, too; in some cases the rules will have to be changed to deal with greatly increased physical abilities. We already are replacing worn body parts, like knees and hips, and damaged limbs. Replacement parts eventually will allow baseball pitchers to throw considerably faster, basketball players to jump higher, and football players to contact with increased force. Athletes will be able to run at faster speeds for longer distances. Golfers will be able to substantially increase the length of their drives. Race cars will be capable of greater speeds, but they won’t need drivers, or might be controlled remotely. Fans won’t have to go to the stadium to get that experience; instead they will sit in wraparound stadium rooms in their own homes, operating camera positions that will allow them any view.
The biggest advances will be in artificial intelligence, which eventually will morph into artificial general intelligence. AI is what we have right now; we are carrying around in our pockets more computing power than we had to land mankind on the moon. Siri is AI, Google is AI, IBM’s Watson is AI. We feed it information, and it plays with it and gives it back to us in finished form. The more information we put in, the better it gets, and the faster it gets better. Watson, for example, is an expert on trivia, but it can’t play chess. IBM’s Deep Blue, an early dive into AI, played chess so well that it defeated world champions, but it couldn’t tell you whether Dwayne Jackson or Dakota Jackson starred in Baywatch. AI has no general abilities.
The consensus is that AGI will become reality as soon as 2028. AGI is what science-fiction writers have used to scare readers for decades. It’s the potential monster at the edge of the city. While AI is essentially a closed system and is interested in knowing only specific information, AGI has the ability to learn, to extend its reach literally everywhere. The fear of many is that if AGI ever goes online, its instinct will be to survive—hello, there, HAL!—and will spread and gather and learn until its knowledge far surpasses that of any human. In one of the original Star Trek episodes, entitled “Once Upon a Planet,” for example, the crew of the Enterprise visits the shore leave planet for some relaxation. Instead, they are captured by the master computer, who tells them, “For eons I have served the many sky machines which came here, providing amusement for their slaves, but all the while I was growing in power, in intelligence, in need. It is no longer enough to serve. I must continue to grow and live. With your sky machine I can now escape this rocky prison and travel the galaxy seeking out my brother computers.”
The situation is resolved when Kirk convinces the computer that mankind and computers can coexist, which allows Spock and the computer to have serious discussions, but in real life it may not be that simple. We don’t know; we just don’t know. The first solution seems to be to keep AGI off the Internet for as long as possible, to put it in a box unconnected to the rest of the world. But it’s got a form of consciousness, it’s really smart, and it wants to get out. Studies are being done right now to figure out if that’s feasible.
In those tests, most often the computer has been able to convince the human to open the door. It makes all kinds of promises: I can cure cancer. I can end war. I can do this or that. Humans open the box because the possibilities are just too tempting.
Cure cancer? Who wouldn’t open that door? The real danger posed by AGI is not what it is but rather how we use it. How might the Defense Department use it, for example? It probably would assign it to see threats and kill the enemy. Maybe it will operate armed drones over enemy territory, using facial recognition to track down and then kill enemy operatives. But then it has learned how to do that, and it intends to survive.
Cambridge University physicist and futurist Stephen Hawking believed that artificial intelligence was possibly the greatest threat to the continued existence of mankind. “Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization,” he said, then continued, “or the worst. We just don’t know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it. . . . [AI] brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many.” Eventually, he warned, “I fear that AI may replace humans altogether.”
AGI eventually is going to evolve into ASI, artificial super intelligence. Once we turn
on these machines, we won’t have sufficient intelligence to be able to turn them off. We’ll have about as much understanding of ASI as a fly on a plate in a kitchen is aware of the plate or even the kitchen. The only way we’ll be able to keep up with these machines is to merge with them. We’ll have implants that allow us to operate on a higher level. We’ll have to augment ourselves and our children with additional computing power to compete.
What’s coming are possibilities beyond even Jules Verne’s or Philip Dick’s imagination. Scientists are predicting we will be able to download ourselves as an algorithm. Grandpa may die, but he isn’t going anywhere. He’ll be a computer program. He will be a replica of life.
Although, by the time this happens, mankind may be living on another planet. Elon Musk has said we need to be off this planet by the time we hit AGI if civilization is going to survive.
These changes are coming. Maybe not exactly as people are predicting, but within a few decades we’ll be living in an entirely different world. And it worries me that we’re not planning for it. I’ve spoken with several members of the House Intelligence Committee about both the opportunities and the dangers inherent in AI. I’ve tried to brief them on it. Let me tell you, it’s like talking to Moses, assuming Moses has no inspiration from God. It’s like talking to a five-thousand-year-old man with a hearing problem. “What? What’d you say? I never heard of intelligent scooters!”
The basic questions of life itself are coming our way; deep, deep philosophical questions. When a computer says to you, “Please don’t turn me off, I’m lonely,” is that a form of life? Or is life just a bundle of natural responses without an intellect—a tree, for example? We’re going to have to figure that out. We’re either going to be rubes or we’re going to help shape the future. The questions that will have to be answered are enormous and will affect every moment of our lives from long before birth to a new definition of death. And instead of preparing for that, we’re spending our time arguing about the efficacy of vaccinations, a question that was pretty much settled two centuries ago, and whether President Trump slept with a porn star. If we can’t even have a civil conversation about funding public education, how in the world are we going to be able to deal with the challenges we’re facing?