The Intrusion of Sophisticated Technology
Humans began with hand tools, the simplest being rocks and then later spears. Present day technology has come a shockingly long way from the Stone Age.
But the big question is…where is it going? I won’t say where it will end? Because movies and books about dystopian societies have already predicted this many times. That at some point world war 3 will break out and nukes will bring the end of technology and society as we know it.
I’m thinking where technology will be in 20 or 30 years in terms of advancement.
In my previous article I vaguely mentioned people being concerned with Artificial Intelligence outsmarting humans, and making their contribution to the further development of the human race obsolete.
And so people might think of becoming cyborgs to keep up with AI.
The idea of giving up our brains or even half of it to machines sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. But I see indeed a road going in that direction.
Some entrepreneurs are seriously endorsing the merging of HI and AI.
Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence.
The article in The Atlantic ‘What will our lives be like as cyborgs?’ by Tim O’Reilly speaks at length about the augmentation of the human mind and body by AI and machines.
We are on the brink of a big change and it’s definitely going to be the digital takeover of our world.
The movie The Matrix has a good analogy to explain what we are experiencing.
In it the lead character Neo discovers the world he is living in is a simulation, everything is an illusion, a sensory augmentation, to make the ultimate virtual alternative reality.
The grim real picture is that humans are sustained in tubes and only their minds are free in the sensory fake world.
If you are one of the people still not fully aware of the rapidly growing digitization of the world, then you might have a Neo moment, by waking up to realise the world is becoming less detached from reality and more an alternative reality.
People are identifying according to their imagination rather than orientation. There is overwhelming reliance on artificial intelligence in not just the computation of big data. But applications are coming up for even the most trivial mental and physical tasks.
Another analogy is in the movie The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey is watched his whole life as he lives in a fake world.
There is a camera peeping at him from every angle, his life events are orchestrated.
The hundreds of algorithms that pick up data from our every digital interaction, and the companies using them to gain big data, and then manipulate the information for sales in advertising, or to convince us that merging with AI even to a physical level is safe, are sort of controlling and monitoring us like in the movie.
This breach of privacy is a nightmare we are living and participating in whether we know it or not.
FaceApp which went viral, ages and changes people’s features. The altered images are so realistic, so are the Deepfake videos of people saying things they never said.
The digital world is spiralling out of control, and so is the intrusion of technology on our lives.
Recently the famous technology entrepreneur, investor, and engineer, Elon Musk unveiled threads that can be implanted in the human brain, his intentions as he says is to help those who have body paralysis to control things with their thoughts. It would improve the lives of those who accept it. But the safety of the threads is still to be officially certified.
His company NeuraLink wants to merge neuroscience with computer science.
I don’t think anyone can question the relevance of this technology with sufferers of paralysis.
But can the epidemic of losing jobs to Artificial Intelligence in the not so distant future pressure underprivileged job seekers, or over ambitious technology enthusiast to experiment with possibly advanced versions of the threads or other sophisticated machines to merge directly with our brains?
I think we can clearly see the road open to the next take over from AI to cyborgs.
I don’t endorse becoming cyborgs, no machine can compete with the human brain. And I don’t think it’s possible to temper with the brain physically without damaging it.
Copyright ©Arjuwan Lakkdawala 2019