The Virtual Age

October 5, 2016

On the momentous day of February 15, 1946, the very first electronic general-purpose computer came into being. The ‘ENIAC’ could perform basic addition and multiplication –  35 calculations per second to be precise. It was ‘Turing-complete’ and could solve a large class of numerical calculations through reprogramming. Less than a century down the line, the world’s fastest ‘supercomputer’ – the Sunway TaihuLight clocks 93 petaflops per second i.e. 93,000,000,000,000,000 computations per second making it roughly 26 quadrillion times faster! Apart from raw speed, we also have ‘digital assistants’ which analyse and act upon verbal commands. The graphics are being tweaked up every year and it is getting tougher to differentiate between reality and ‘virtual reality’. With the ‘Silicon Industry’ on a spectacular rise, it is not impossible to foresee an age where we humans are no longer the most intelligent beings on Earth. This is where we find ourselves in an uncomfortable situation. In the foreseeable future, aided by the spectacular rise in technological advancements, the human race shall either adapt and integrate itself successfully with the new age technology or we will become slaves to their own creation in an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Takeover.

The world as we know it has changed drastically from what it was a century ago. The exceptional progress in the field of science and technology has changed our understanding of the universe as we know it. Scientific advancements in the fields of biophysics, metaphysics, robotics and most importantly the advent of the IT sector has taken us humans to whole new horizons.

The amalgamation of man with machine is inevitable. Prosthetic 3D printed arms and legs, fully-functioning heart-sleeves that permit one’s heart to beat eternally and bionic eyes are on the verge of being patented. All this, aided by ‘Nano-robotic assistants’ to conduct surgical treatments is testimonial to the fact that we really are living in the digital age. The way man looks now and the way he looked a hundred years ago is vastly different. It is likely that a similar such change shall be witnessed in the near future by mankind as we transform into cyborg lookalikes – half-man, half-machine.

Futurist and Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil believes that “we’re close to linking our brains with Artificial Intelligence . . . In the 2030s we’re going to connect directly from the neocortex to the cloud” (223). A recent survey conducted by the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), of Oxford University, suggests that a Skynet-like HLMI (Human-Level Machine Intelligence) could emerge as soon as 2028.

Singularity – wherein man and machine become one conscious being – and the oncoming of HLMI however, might prove to have serious repercussions if advanced and superintelligent machines are programmed to fight in wars to reduce the risk of human casualties on the battlefield.

What makes these ‘killer robots’ so much scarier is their intelligence and perceived ability to make decisions over life and death. In other words, it simply does not kill but, makes the decision to kill in place of humans. (Krishnan 33) 

This opens a plethora of debates, such as: “[The debate] seems to be framed in a way that computers are moral agents or that computers are not moral” (Gunkel 67), and “An action is said to be morally qualifiable if and only if it can cause moral good or evil. An agent is said to be a moral agent if and only if it is capable of morally quantifiable action” (Gunkel 71). These pertain to the morality of machines being able to think intelligently whether to kill or not and them turning on us in a freakish case of accidental coding culminating in an AI Takeover.

An AI Takeover is a scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, with computers or robots effectively taking control of the planet away from the control of the humans. It is not an instantaneous and overnight occurrence. Many futurists and evolution theorists are of the belief that sometime in the future, we humans will end up creating a machine that will surpass human brains in general intelligence and will become omnipotent. Oxford professor Nick Bostrom – an expert in existential risk, superintelligence risks and human enhancement ethics – in his book: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, compares our fate to that of the gorillas who depend more on us humans than on themselves. (ii) Similarly, the humans too shall become a mere dependant life form incapable of solitary survival – our fates confined to the actions of the superintelligent machines. 

            Though HLMI is beneficial in innumerable ways, it is extremely risky. In March, 2016, Hanson robotics boasted of launching the most-advanced AI robot – Sophia. However, their celebrations were cut short when the robot replied in the positive when asked if it would destroy humans. Hanson Robotics claimed that this was nothing more than a ‘glitch’ in its code and Sophia was not programmed for military purposes anyway. Events like this are the binary causes which over a period of time may culminate in an AI Takeover. The HLMI AI has access to gargantuan amounts of data on the internet. Through the thousands of evidences and articles elucidating the fact that it is us humans who are responsible for the pitiable condition of the Earth, and because they have human level intelligence, they might even take extreme measures to save the Earth by exterminating its oppressors – us.

The conundrum of a whether our world has already witnessed an AI Takeover and life as we know it is nothing more than a simulation – run by an extremely powerful computer has left many futurists and leading computer scientists dumbstruck. 

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors and Space-Ex, had this to say at the CODE Conference 2016 when asked by a reporter whether a sophistically advanced civilisation would be able to create a simulation of the world we live in or, in other words, whether we are living in a ‘video game’ like simulation:

The strongest argument for us being in a simulation probably is the following. Forty years ago, we had pong. Like two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.

Now, forty years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality.

If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now. Then you just say, okay, let’s imagine it’s 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing on the evolutionary scale.

So, given that we’re clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any console or on a PC or whatever, and there would probably be billions of such computers or set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we’re in base reality is one in billions.

It is not just Musk who thinks such a scenario might be plausible. Bostrom in his books Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies and Human Enhancement claims that:

Many technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. One thing that future generations might do with such super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Suppose that these simulations are fine-grained … and the simulated people are conscious. Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears.

Even though there are no definitive means to ascertain their claims, both these arguments make sense on a rudimentary level and their authenticity can only be verified through time. Both Musk and Bostrom emphasise on the fact that way into the future computers would have obtained the capability to run simulations identical to our worlds. Their arguments question the very foundations of the universe and life.

The notions of men becoming machines and machines taking over the world might be criticised and be dismissed as “nothing but science-fiction”. Then again, the Earth used to be “flat and stationary”, space travel was considered as “just a theory”, an atom was the “smallest particle” known to man, George Orwell’s idea of a ‘surveillance state’ is a modern-day rendition of USA and Bill Gates publicly claimed that 640K RAM was more than anyone ever needed: showing to prove that the smartest of us can make mistakes. Science-fiction not only makes for great story but also is a gift of ideas and a source of inspiration from the past to the future. That is why, science-fiction is not just a genre of literature but has a potential contributory value to spur the best of us into inventing those ideas. It is therefore not right to dismiss such theories as unreal just because it can’t be concluded definitely with our present-day limited knowledge.

Technology is on a meteoric rise with new advancements taking place every day and shall continue improving the lives of the masses. However, the very same meteor might end up showering upon us if more faith is placed in technology than in humanity and the last time a meteor struck us, nothing survived. That is why technology must be invested and researched in, keeping in mind that the machines do not gain an overbearing power over us. Mankind should spread out its wings and reach out for the sun but remember not to fly too close to it otherwise they might burn their wings and suffer the same fate as Icarus.

Works Cited

Bostrom, Nick and Savalescu, Julian. Human Enhancement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 

Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Print.

Chen, Angela. “Elon Musk: We’re Probably Living in a Video Game.” Gizmodo, 2 Jun. 2016. Web. 20 Aug. 2016.

Gunkel, David J. The Machine Question. Cambridge and London. The MIT Press, 2012. Print.

Krishnan, Armin. Killer Robots. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009. Print.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines. United States of America: Penguin Books, 2000. Print.