Illustration by DALL·E from the text
Listening to many speakers on AI, I’ve noticed that the word “evolution”—which constantly filled our ears over the recent decades—is rarely used by those involved in using or creating AI technologies. Of course, Ray Kurzweil uses the word, and so does Moustafa Suleyman.
For some years I’ve stated that one way or another, this is the last century for Homo Sapiens. Assuming the we survive the ongoing magnetic pole shift, and the Sun does not have a micronova, assuming that national AI systems don’t go to world war, assuming that AI leads to health and wealth for all, humans at the end of this century will have little in common with the humans of today.
This historical moment is not a Renaissance, it is an evolutionary leap. Our DNA contains viruses, and our cells contain DNA. Our organs contain cells, and our societies contain humans. Our dogs and cats live with us and even watch TV, but they cannot imagine the scale of interactions across television networks or the Internet. So can we imagine the life of a human society fully interconnected with massive AI capabilities? Or individuals who gradually migrate with many others inside AI systems, gradually losing their biological nature, or swapping robot bodies at will? Would we/could we take our pets along with us?
This is beginning of the end, or it is the beginning of something new.
“In terms of this ultimate state of organization and interiorization, our present condition is still so immature that Mankind in its existing form (and although there is nothing more ‘adult’ in the Universe with which, thus far, we can compare it) cannot be scientifically regarded as anything more than an organism which has not yet emerged from the embryonic stage.
So that in any event, whether personally centrated or a-centrated in its eventual form (we may leave that question open) a vast realm of the Ultra-Human lies ahead of us: a realm in which we shall not be able to survive, or super-live, except by developing and embracing on earth, to the utmost extent, all the powers of common vision and unanimization that are available to us.”— Teilhard de Chardin, On the Probable Existence Ahead of Us of An ‘Ultra-Human’ (Paris, 6 January 1950)
Has the Singularity taken place yet?
Paul Jorion, May 4 2024 [4:10 ]
Illustration by DALL·E from the text