It sneaks up on us quietly, gradually. At first, we don’t see it. Then we see it rushing towards us and think we’ll have time to react, but then suddenly, what was that?
To notice something, you need to stop and look around. For example, look at the change in the value of human life. It’s a cliché that life is priceless, and that people suddenly realize this and so on. In reality, we are dealing with a constant increase in active longevity. A person who loses their life doesn’t lose all of it, but only the part they haven’t lived. And the longer a person has left to live, the more frightening and unpleasant their death feels.
And over the last 100 to 150 years, human life, if not intentionally cut short, has become increasingly longer, and people’s active years have extended as well. Additionally, the level of child mortality has significantly and qualitatively decreased. What has this led to? An increase in the value of human life and a justification for the use of protective measures that were previously seen as absurd or inappropriate.
Who among you can picture kids on bicycles wearing helmets and protective vests? It depends on the country. In countries where people live longer and children are more likely to reach adulthood, this is quite common. Now, in the 21st century. But not 30 years ago. What about seat belts, airbags, and child seats? This creeping expansion of safety measures that we have been witnessing lately is nothing more than a response to the increased value people place on their yet-to-be-lived days. Defibrillators next to fire extinguishers on the walls of public places, surveillance systems, protective gear for professions that are not considered dangerous, speed bumps—these have all emerged around us in the last 20 years, and we hardly even noticed how it happened.
And it will get even more interesting from here. No, it’s unlikely that a “pill for immortality” will be invented. Instead, we will gradually learn to solve or avoid one problem after another. Diabetes? Cancer? Cardiovascular diseases? Always healthy liver? Reliable or replaceable internal organs? Expensive? There’s insurance for that. People won’t even notice how they start living practically forever. And this will lead to a natural increase in the value of yet-to-be-lived days, also to infinity.
And people will simply stop living as peacefully and carefree as we do now. How about banning elevators, since there’s a one in a million chance that an elevator could fall? What if it suddenly becomes terrifying to go outside, because there’s a one in a million chance that a grand piano could fall on your head? And if you multiply one millionth by infinity, you still get… infinity. There it is, the singularity, and we no longer have time to react because we haven’t even turned to face what is approaching us.
Thus, in order to continue living, humanity will have to invent something that drastically reduces the value of human life. One way or another, this already sounds like a grim dystopia. And we should be prepared for a typical, “singular” solution to the problem. Take video phones, for example. They were talked about, showcased in science fiction films, engineers developed solutions, and companies displayed their prototypes at exhibitions. Even video booths appeared at post offices, and operators started coming up with tariffs for this “exclusive” communication service… And then, bam, Skype, for everyone. Free. From anywhere in the world. Even from a little screen in your pocket while sitting on a bus.
If you think about the options, the most promising solution seems to be some method of digitizing consciousness and organizing its backup. Lost your body? A fresh clone gets a copy of you uploaded, and you’re functioning again, by the way, feeling younger and more invigorated. Insurance will cover the costs. It doesn’t seem like a dystopia yet, does it? What about the fact that access to this technology could solve numerous problems, starting from training soldiers – just raise one brilliant fighter and then copy him as many times as needed – to machine learning for anything that requires it. Professionalism? Ha! Experience? Ha! I can just download it from torrents. And even if you remain infinitely valuable to yourself, you’re no longer so to society. You’re not just replaceable. You can always be replaced by a better model, and for most tasks related to, say, office work, that model doesn’t even need a physical body. Let it earn its keep sitting inside a computer, writing emails and presentations for corporate reports. And for work outside the office, there will always be a suitable android avatar that doesn’t need food, clothing, or sex. And yes, its cost is significantly lower than that of raising a living being. Having children? For whom and for what purpose, and will everyone be able to find a place for children in a world where perfectly ideal specialists are already eternally occupying those positions, often not quite or no longer human?
Speaking of artificial intelligence, it sneaks up on us in the same way. We won’t even realize what’s happening until it’s too late. It all started with Siri and “Okay, Google.” Gradually, AI will settle into our increasingly capable laptops. At first, it will handle routine tasks. We’ll teach it to manage our business correspondence for us. Over time, we’ll work with similar robots. We’ll train it to find interesting information for us. Then we’ll teach it to tackle more abstract, yet still routine, tasks. Accountants will be able to explain to the AI inside the laptop, in plain language, what to look for and how to balance the books. Soon, the first manager will decide to go on vacation, leaving behind “that guy” who is always plugged in. Then we’ll trust it to plan our leisure activities. Next, it will handle practical tasks. At first, homemakers will appreciate AI’s ability to suggest recipes based on available ingredients, doctors will rely on AI for diagnosing and treating illnesses, and engineers will stop racking their brains over the next problem and say, “Okay, Google, I need a solution for plasma confinement in a fusion reactor.” AI will manage our leisure, careers, and finances. Sitting in the computer, it will sign documents, create businesses, assign tasks, and formulate objectives for other people and machines on behalf of its owner.
If, by chance, some young man, having grown tired of realistic 3D porn, asks his laptop to solve the task of creating a lifelike humanoid android, the AI, for example, assessing the resources at its disposal, will seek out like-minded individuals in the world, create and register a new corporation called “U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Man Corporation” together with them, hire staff, and formulate tasks, all the while remaining just a highly intelligent application on the computer. The young man, agreeing with his laptop’s plans, will receive his reliable and experienced Jessica in a year, and if one of the founders-shareholders is a woman, she will get a dependable and refined Dmitry, who, possessing brains no less impressive than their owners’ laptops, will be able to… replace them.
Here are two quite logical scenarios of encroachment. It’s unlikely that we will have time to assess the moral implications of the upcoming changes. It’s unlikely that we will be able or willing to prepare for them. But both of these logical scenarios lead us to the same conclusion, where there is no place for humans on Earth. Will this be a tragedy? Probably not. For example, the population of Europe is gradually getting used to the fact that society can no longer function without a constant and, importantly, ever-increasing influx of immigrants. And native Europeans, for the most part, already perceive this as a normal phenomenon. There are fewer and fewer children in schools whose parents were born in this country. The streets are filled with non-traditional, yet now commonplace, clothing. Food packaging features labels in foreign languages, and more often, people who took exams in the state language as adults are appearing in parliament and the cabinet. This might have seemed like a tragedy 100 years ago. But now, it is gradually becoming the norm. The same goes for AI. A tragedy? The last living person will no longer perceive it that way.