EDUCATION AND ALTERNATIVES FOR THE FUTURE: Part Two

The exponential increase in the pace of evolution is not really anything new. It has been at an amazing pace that evolutionary change has been increasing practically since the beginning of time. Scientists believe that the process known as evolution started some four billion years ago. At that time, the process of change was so slow that it took about two billion of those years for unicellular organisms to become multicellular organisms. But once that first step was taken, it only took about another 200 million years—a relative blink of an eye—from the birth of the first mammal until the birth of our first ancestor, the first Homo sapiens.

Yuval Noah Harari is a scholar who has delved deeply into the possible future that awaits human beings in the technological era. According to his vision, humans are on the verge of seeking to become gods. He refers to this process—as the title of his book indicates—as homo deus. What he means is that as of the 21^st century, the human race is embarked on a search, by means of advanced technology, for quasi-divine powers. Through technology, human beings are seeking boundless happiness and eternal life. In a word, humans are seeking immortality.  

All of this will very likely take place within an intersubjective reality. That is to say, in everything that separates people from animals, there is an intersubjective reality. Be it nations, borders, religions, languages, money, trade...whatever, every code that separates us from our mere existence as an animal species requires our faith in a framework of intersubjective beliefs.

All of this can be referred to as humanism. And humanism is becoming more and more a religious belief. Within the framework of humanism, human beings begin to believe in themselves and in their kind instead of believing in God. Within this context, then, ethics, morals and values in general are generated from within, instead of being received from an external data source. From Harari’s viewpoint, it is ever strengthening humanism that, in the 21^st century, will prompt the human race to delve deeper into its search for happiness, power, and, eventually, immortality.  

But the vehicle for this search is ultra-high technology. The basic question that Harari poses is, what will happen when algorithms that are still unconscious but highly intelligent, come to know us better than we know ourselves? The danger, Harari says, is that technology might eventually threaten the ability of human beings to continue to find meaning in their existence, as technology replaces men and women in every activity, including intellectual activity.

In his book, Life 3.0 — Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Professor Max Tegmark goes a step further on the idea of the role of the human being today in shaping the events of the future. According to Tegmark, we will be the ones, for better or worse, who program the future. The theory that he posits is that you get out of artificial intelligence precisely what you put into it. In other words, Tegmark recognizes that the future could indeed end up being a scenario similar to the scenerios in The Terminator or I, Robot (another more contemporary film that takes up this subject). But what if, thanks to how we develop it today, artificial intelligence ends up being imbued with a true philosophy of service to Humankind?

His proposal is that if artificial intelligence ends up being malevolent toward the human race in the future, it will be because we are teaching it to be in the present. In other words, if we teach artificial intelligence our predilection for war, selfishness, lack of empathy and our tendency toward self-destruction, that’s exactly what we can expect to get back from it. But if we teach artificial intelligence to always look out for the well-being of Humankind, then the future could end up being a time and space in which human beings will live happily with a superintelligence at the service of their every need and desire.  It would work at the complete service of humans and of the environment that is our home.

Be that as it may, the renowned MIT professor offers some warnings regarding various aspects of the development of artificial intelligence, and he imagines some of the scenarios that could emerge from it.

For example, the success of human beings in achieving the invention of an artificial intelligence similar to their own could well trigger an authentic intelligence explosion. As a result, artificial intelligence could develop itself so swiftly that it would leave human intelligence far behind.  Although Tegmark admits that the emergence of an artificial superintelligence could lead to a complex of much more highly coordinated social hierarchies, he suggests that there is no way of knowing whether, within the framework of this reordering there might not be a major increase in totalitarianism. In other words, the creation of a vertical power structure might be the result, rather than a greater empowering of the individual.

Imagining how this emergence of an artificial superintelligence might develop, Tegmark foresees a number of alternatives:

- A libertarian utopia, in which everyone, whether cybernetic organisms or human men and women, would have rights and would all live in peace.

- Life under the power of a benevolent artificial dictator. Everyone would be aware that artificial intelligence was running everything but would resignedly accept this as a fact of life.

- An egalitarian utopia where the concept of property would be abolished and where sufficient income to live on would be guaranteed.

- A world managed by a kind of artificial, superintelligent gatekeeper that would interfere as little as possible in people’s lives so as not to create the need for a rival intelligence to control it, but that would intentionally inhibit any new technological advances so as to avoid a Terminator-like scenario.

- An artificial omniscient and omnipresent god whose mission would be the maximization of human happiness. But it would carry out this mission while maintaining the illusion that humans are still managing their own destiny. In this case, the hand of the artificial superintelligence would be so hidden that many human beings would doubt its existence.

- An artificial god enslaved by a certain human group. In this case, whether it would be beneficial to all humans or not would depend to a large extent on who controlled it.

- A conquering superintelligence that would create a situation similar to that depicted in The Terminator, where humans would be enslaved to carry out certain servile functions, or in which the superintelligence would decide that human beings were of no use whatsoever and would exterminate them all.

- An Orwellian world like the one described in the book 1984 —a state that would curtail all technological progress toward the creation of a superintelligence, by means of a surveillance system with spy units installed everywhere.

- A regressive state in which fear of domination of the human being by artificial intelligence would lead to a return to the distant past and a life very much like that of the Amish, who reject entirely any sort of modernization and maintain a lifestyle very much like that of a 19^th century rural existence.

- And as a final alternative, the self-destruction and extinction of Humankind, whether by means of environmental deterioration or nuclear holocaust. 

There is an encouraging message within the script of the motion picture that James Cameron released in the fateful year of 1984. According to the script of The Terminator, “The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”

And this is the message that educational excellence should bear constantly in mind as it looks to the future. It doesn’t matter that futurologists foresee a world in which humans and machines will merge, or one in which the advanced development of artificial intelligence will be tantamount to the extinction of the human race. The fact is that the future will depend to a large extent on how capable we are today of molding that future. An education of excellence is the only weapon against the extinction of Humankind, be it by environmental deterioration, elimination imposed by a new technological species, or as a result of a catastrophic nuclear war.  
The flip-side of all of these pessimistic predictions is the kind of education that is capable of being a powerhouse of innovative ideas and global solutions. Education must be at the forefront of a growing trend toward a world of peace and cooperation capable of creating a better future for all.