“We are about to face a flood of extremely useful devices, tools and structures that make no allowance for the free will of individual humans. Will democracy, the free market and human rights survive this flood?” (p395)
Homo Duess: A Brief History of Tomorrow is written by Yuval
Noah Harari, a professor of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Homo
(man or human) Duess (God) describes mankind’s current abilities and achievements
and attempts to paint an image of the future. Easily and quickly said but once
I opened the book and began reading, I found myself having to pay careful
attention, often re-reading sections and finding my own thinking frighteningly
challenged.
Oh well, I started reading for that purpose and was happy
to take my Nephew’s recommendation and order the book.
Thank goodness for lockdown giving me plenty of time to
read sections of the near 500 pages in chunks of time then get up and go to
work, painting, fencing, anything to physically occupy me whilst I mentally digested
what I had just read.
When Harari retraced steps of history, it was very
enlightening. Albeit I had studied history at college, I had not gotten
anywhere near to appreciating the intricacies of events studied – all I was
doing was finding the acceptable right answers to pass exams not examining for
insight and understanding.
What a gift, here is someone who has looked back over 70,000
years or so of human history looking for trends to extrapolate the future. The
thought that the advances in science and technology will erode humanism, in
particular humans turning to technology to upgrade themselves through genetic,
bionic, and AI engineering, were things we fantasized about in TV programmes –
remember the ‘Six Million Dollar Man’?
I am having difficulty getting to grips with the thought we
are nothing but data processing machines – algorithms. As shocked as we might
be, the thought is not new. As I explored the concepts, I found out that a
chappie, well a philosopher called Thomas Hobbes, writing in 1651 called it an
automaton, or what we would call a robot. According to Harari, we are just the
start of this process of data-driven transformation, and there is little we can
do to stop it.
“What will happen to the job market once artificial
intelligence outperforms humans in most cognitive tasks? What will be the
political impact of massive new classes of economically useless people? What
will happen to relationships, families and pension funds when nanotechnology and
regenerative medicine turn eighty into the new fifty? What will happen to the human society when
biotechnology enables us to have designer babies, and to open unprecedented
gaps between rich and poor?” (p314).
“History
is often shaped by small groups of forward looking innovators rather than by
backward looking masses.” (p315)
“In the early twenty-first century the train of
progress is again pulling out of the station – and this will probably be the
last train ever to leave the station called Homo Sapiens. Those who miss the
train will never get a second chance.” (p310)
Whilst corporations and governments will continue to pay
homage to our individuality and unique needs, but in order to service them,
they will need to, “… break us up into biochemical subsystems”,
monitored by powerful algorithms.
Are you scared yet?
Who is this guy? And who listens to him anyway? Harari,
works at the home he shares with Itzik Yahav, his husband in Tel Aviv.
President Barack Obama is a fan, he visits Mark Zuckerberg and in 2018 he was
offered the main stage of the Economic World Forum, in a slot between Angela
Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.
Harari has a mission statement pinned to a bulletin board
in his Tel Aviv office and it begins, “Keep your eyes on the ball. Focus on the
main global problems facing humanity.” It also says, “Learn to distinguish
reality from illusion”, and “Care about suffering”.
In 2019, appearing on stage with Israel’s President at an
‘Influencers’ Summit in Tel Aviv, Harari said, “Think about a situation
where somebody in Beijing or San Francisco knows what every citizen in Israel
is doing at every moment…from the age of zero…Those who will control the
world in the 21st Century are those who will control data.”
Suddenly my brain has searched and recalled the clatter of
the dangers of 5G!
There was just too much to absorb, contemplate, and
understand in one read. I think this is one of those books which will be read
again and again.
#HarariHomosDues
#homosapiens automated
#Humanistalgorithms
#GeoffsOpinion
#obsoletehumans
No comments:
Post a Comment