Two basic events seem to be converging. First, our technology advances at an astonishingly rapid pace, while our behavior hasn’t changed since our ancestors were kicked out of Eden. Thus, we now have the capacity for endless mayhem (I’m ignoring all the benefits of technology, as they can be extinguished in a millisecond), coupled with a management capacity unaltered for millennia. The sad reality is that we have yet to discover an effective way to govern ourselves.
The world is roughly divided into two types of governments – authoritarian and representative. The former tightly regulates the actions of its population and represses (often sternly) behavior that is unapproved. Individual freedom in these states is curtailed to what the state approves.
Those who live in representative states exhibit a wide range of behavior, from tolerated to approved. Individual liberty under these governments is high. Behavior also ranges from aberrant to exemplary. The range between the two patterns probably resembles a bell-shaped curve.
Bad behavior has been a constant among humans since the cave days. It’s been at least three millennia since attempts to codify and direct human action into proper channels started. While our knowledge of how we should interact with our fellows is very sophisticated, it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect. Both religion and philosophy have examined the subject with piercing insight. They have explained how we should live our lives to the best outcomes, but they seem to have had little success. We still rob, steal, cheat, and engage in violent behavior from robbery to war with more or less the same frequency today as we did two thousand or more years ago.
Of course, this undesirable pattern is only seen in part of the population – different portions at different times. Even if the fraction of undesirables is small, it’s large enough to cause serious problems.
Then there’s the problem in a “free” society of liberty descending to license. John Stuart Mill, in one of the most influential tracts ever authored – On Liberty – argued that any actions by adults that did not directly affect the well-being of another could not be sanctioned by the state. The individual was free to do whatever he pleased as long as no one else was harmed – society could disapprove, but no more.
What he didn’t consider was the effect of cultural decay caused by license that did not impinge on the liberty of others. The cultural health of a society is a real phenomenon. Alas, it’s impossible to quantify, and disagreement as to whether a society is healthy or degenerate will abound in even the sickest polity. Nevertheless, civilizations decay and die – by suicide, according to Arnold Toynbee.
Regardless of the correctness of my reasoning, it’s obvious that our technology has outpaced our ability to control it. The relationship between our self-control and our miraculous and awful inventiveness presents a situation analogous to a toddler trying to drive a Formula One race car. A cool glance will lead a cogent observer to conclude that our species is headed for extinction.
At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned the convergence of two events. The second of these is artificial intelligence. Many who work in this field worry that AI will soon evolve to a level far superior to that of the smartest humans. They tend to think of this development as a threat to human autonomy, and to have convinced most of the general population who know virtually nothing about AI that it’s a real threat to their way of life. Why they (the AI experts) hold this view has always puzzled me. Why should we care about the autonomy of a dying species whose death throes could extinguish all life on the planet?
My guess is that the only hope we have for continued existence is a benevolent AI that will sanely manage our murderous technology, while suppressing our baser instincts. It’s quite clear that murder and mayhem are as much a part of the human condition as opposable fingers and thumbs. Attempts to prevent the emergence of an AI that will take over the administration of the planet are not only likely to prove futile, but they are wrong-headed.
Could my analysis be wrong? Of course. But a serious look at the economic status of the world, its politics, its capacity to engage in reasoned disagreement, and much of the world’s population’s inability to engage in serious discourse strongly suggests that humans are not able to manage the world as it now exists.
God may have said and let them (mankind) have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. What happened right after this pledge? He expelled us from Eden. He didn’t say such dominion was irrevocable. After thousands of years of management, it’s time to try a new regime before the supreme being gives up on us altogether.
An AI-managed world may not look upon us with benignity, but is there another choice that will keep us from suicide?
I don’t know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. Albert Einstein
Only the dead or dulled have seen the end of war – apologies to George Santayana.
