Merging with machines: safer, more secure future

By Dick Pelletier

      

    Historians place the beginning of modern culture when humanity abandoned hunter-gathering in favor of crop cultivation, about 10,000 years ago. This makes us 400 generations old (25-yrs-per-generation). When we began this trip, life was brutal, medicine almost non-existent and average life expectancy was puberty, living just long enough to reproduce.

    But we've progressed rapidly through the millenniums. Average life expectancy now pushes 80 in developed countries, and according to UN census data, octogenarians, nonagenarians, and centenarians are the fastest-growing age groups. Today, scientists are poised to eliminate most diseases; and one day, a few forward-thinkers believe we will even conquer death.

    Author Ray Kurzweil in The Singularity is Near says, "Between 2035 and 2050, we will merge knowledge, skills, and personalities with artificial intelligence. This will produce a superior human that thinks, reasons, and communicates more efficiently than today's humans."

    So, in two generations, we will begin merging with our machines. This means that civilized humans will have lasted only 402 generations, an alarmingly short span for Earth species.

    However, experts say this should not imply humanity's extinction. Today, people wear eye-glasses, have false teeth, cochlear implants, titanium hips; even thought-controlled prosthetics, but we still consider ourselves human. In fact, if we swapped every cell in our body for "artificial" materials, by maintaining memories and consciousness, experts say we would still feel 'human'.

    By mid-2030s, Kurzweil believes computers will surpass human intelligence, which could then enable human-machine mind transfers. But before this futuristic technology can become reality, science must first unravel the mysteries of human consciousness. How does a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise from a wet, mushy clump of biological neurons? Can the answer be found in how our 100 billion neurons form trillions of connections with each other?

    The National Institutes of Health hopes to foster research that will one day solve this eternal puzzle with the "Human Connectome Project," a $30 million research effort to promote major leaps in understanding brain functions. Researchers want to determine how brain activities translate into mental function and why brains decline with age.

    By mid-century, Kurzweil predicts the final step in this futuristic scenario will be the creation of an ultra-powerful artificial intelligence, or superintelligence, which can quickly solve mankind's worst problems, including environmental destruction, poverty, and diseases; and begin the psychological processes that by centuries end will unite humanity into a peaceful global village.

    As we move through the last half of the 21st century, nearly everyone will enjoy the security of life in a strong indestructible 'super-body' that automatically repairs itself when damaged. This milestone will finally signal an end to human death.

    On the lighter side, our bodies will not require food or sleep, but many will miss these activities; so a Star Trek Holodeck-like entertainment system will let us experience these and other scenarios: visiting loved ones, exotic galaxies, romantic encounters; imaginations run wild on the 'Holodeck'. We'll create situations so real; we won't realize they're simulations.

    Free from concerns over dying, we can now grasp the true meaning of humanness – to enjoy life in this incredible "magical future" as we begin scattering our populations to the stars.

This article appeared in various print publications and on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.