Do Robots Make Love From AI To Immortality - Understanding Transhumanism in 12 Questions - Laurent Al
Do Robots Make Love From AI To Immortality - Understanding Transhumanism in 12 Questions - Laurent Al
Do Robots Make Love From AI To Immortality - Understanding Transhumanism in 12 Questions - Laurent Al
Prologue
1 – Should the human race be improved?
2 – Will the human race have to change the way it
reproduces?
3 – Can technology fix everything?
4 – Will we all be cyborgs tomorrow?
5 – Can you make love with a robot?
6 – Do we want to live to a thousand?
7 – Is transhumanism just another kind of eugenics?
8 – Is artificial intelligence going to kill off mankind?
9 – What is at stake economically?
10 – Do we need to pass some laws?
11 – Have we anything to fear from a “brave new
world”?
12 – How far should our research go?
Further reading
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PROLOGUE
The augmented human, synthetic biology, bionic prostheses, artificial
intelligence: technological advances are mounting up at stupefying speed,
and ideas that only a decade ago would have been the preserve of science
fiction are now being actively researched in laboratories. Machines based on
artificial intelligence are revealing the first glimpses of their extraordinary
power; after the chess defeats inflicted upon Gary Kasparov by Deep Blue
(designed by IBM in 1997), and Lee Sedol’s loss at the game of Go to
AlphaGo (invented by Google in 2016), the fields in which human
intelligence still outstrips that of machines are shrinking.
The economic upheaval to be anticipated from all this is considerable,
and it is impossible to list all the professions that will be turned upside down
by the new wave of automation. Unlike the steam engines that became
ubiquitous in industry during the 19th century and the robots that did the
same in the second half of the 20th, these new machines are not replacing
human strength. Instead, they are taking over part of what was once thought
to be unique to humankind: knowledge, judgment, analysis and even
rational thought.
This prodigious acceleration of technology has been expedited by the
convergence of four disciplines that had hitherto evolved separately:
nanotechnology, which manipulates matter at the atomic level;
biotechnology, which models life itself; information technology (in its most
fundamental aspects in particular); and lastly, cognitive science, which is
based on the functioning of the human brain. It is this explosion of NBIC
(nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive
science) that has made it possible to imagine the unparalleled,
unprecedented, Promethean project examined in this book: modifying
human beings – improving them, augmenting them and surpassing them.
For the highly influential transhumanists in Silicon Valley who are at the
heart of the NBIC convergence revolution, this enhancement of the human
species through technology represents the only chance for Homo sapiens to
avoid being overtaken by the very machines they themselves invented. In
fact, such man/machine hybrids have already made an appearance – we need
think only of the artificial heart developed by Carmat that has been
implanted in several patients suffering from cardiac failure. However, this is a
mere precursor to what will be possible in a few decades: editing human
DNA to eliminate the sequences responsible for genetic illnesses, using 3D
printers to manufacture organs, transcranial magnetic stimulation, linking
brain function to devices with artificial intelligence, amplifying perceptive
faculties like physical strength. And even, for some, the prospect of
extending life expectancy indefinitely, to a point when the demise of death
itself can be imagined.
While such expectations might have transhumanists afire with
enthusiasm, they have become a source of worry for other schools of
thought. What will be left of the free will of humans who are inextricably
interlinked with their machines? Is living to the age of a thousand really
desirable? How will augmented humans coexist with others? Should we not
fear a kind of bio-totalitarianism, like the one described in Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World? At that time (1932), it was pure science fiction, but today’s
unease is based on a realistic anticipation of our possible futures.
Having had the opportunity to debate these matters on many occasions,
crossing intellectual swords and exchanging arguments, we cannot agree on
answers to these questions.
There’s no getting around it – our disagreements will remain deep-
seated. However, during such debates, we have managed to establish that
our positions converge on two points that may be even more fundamental:
the importance of discussion that is reasoned, well argued and respectful of
the other point of view, and the conviction that technology is neither good
nor bad per se and that everything will depend on the use humanity chooses
to make of it.
It was this discovery that prompted us to write this book as a dialogue, so
the reader should not expect to find some ultimate reconciliation or a
sudden ecumenical consensus. This book is a conflict, a robust debate, an
adversarial dispute, much like those practised by the Greeks for the greater
good of their democracy. Our wider hope is that our exchanges of opinions
will similarly invigorate popular discussion of the enormous challenges that
NBIC presents to our very humanity.
Laurent: I don’t agree with you at all on this point, as I support a culture
that promotes innovation. We go further because we can. In future, a
distinction will no longer be drawn between a human who has been
repaired and one who has been augmented. If blind people in 2080 wish to
receive an implant of an artificial retina that gives them better-than-normal
vision, are we going to throw them in prison?The answer has to be no!
Over the next few decades, we shall be moving on from healthcare that
repairs to healthcare that improves. Let’s not forget that a vaccinated human
is already an augmented human!
Laurent: Such a face-off already exists, however! The French are ultra
bioconservative: only 13 percent are in favour of increasing a child’s IQ by
treating the foetus, compared with 38 percent of Indians and 39 percent of
Chinese. Among young Chinese, the percentage increases to 50 percent.
The Chinese are, in fact, the most permissive society as far as technology is
concerned and would have few misgivings about increasing their children’s
IQs using biotechnological methods. The first genetic manipulation of 86
human embryos has already been carried out by Chinese scientists, in April
2016 – they published their findings immediately after an international
petition opposed to such experiments hit the headlines! When the
technology is ready, a country where a consensus on the mental
enhancement of children holds sway could obtain a considerable geopolitical
advantage in a knowledge society. The Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom,
of Oxford University, has estimated that selecting embryos after sequencing
could enhance the IQ of a country’s population by 60 points within several
decades. Inclusion of genetic manipulation of the embryos could achieve an
even more spectacular improvement. The eugenist countries would rapidly
become the masters!
Laurent: But whether you like it or not, GAFA will define the shapes
and contours of the humanity of tomorrow, which may even include
transforming the idea of what it is to be human.
Jean-Michel: It’s no secret that I disagree – but discussing the reasons for
this is exactly the point of this book.
2
WILL THE HUMAN RACE HAVE TO
CHANGE THE WAY IT REPRODUCES?
Genetic decay
An article that appeared in the scientific journal Cell has dropped a bombshell. The author has
shown that our intellectual capacity will plummet in the future as the result of an accumulation
of unfavourable mutations in the sections of our DNA that regulate our cerebral functions.
Essentially, two contradictory trends are at work. The first is positive: interbreeding within the
human species allows for a mixing of genetic variants – the wellspring of biological innovation.
The human species separated into different groups 75,000 years ago and each has undergone
genetic diversification. The current mix ensures genetic cross-fertilization between the various
offshoots, which were separated before modern means of transportation were invented.
Unfavourable genetic variations have built up in the human genome, however, and this recent
accumulation is already perceptible; a study published in the journal Nature at the end of
November 2012 has revealed that 80 percent of the harmful genetic variations in the human
species have appeared only in the last five thousand to ten thousand years. LA
Laurent: I don’t find this ambition to rethink the manner in which the
human species reproduces at all bizarre. Ever more precise knowledge of our
genome, followed by an ability to manipulate it, will reduce the genetic
burden facing later generations. More troublingly, genetic modification of
babies is going to become increasingly mainstream, and engineering eggs
will constitute a crucial stage in this process. Researchers have been able to
replace primate mitochondria with stem cells since 2009, and this could lead
to a desire to do the same in humans. (Mitochondria, organelles that first
appeared in cells with a nucleus about a billion years ago, are structures that
have become specialized in energy production. They have their own DNA,
which can be mutated. Some have good-quality “energy factories” within
their cells while others have poor ones, giving rise to various conditions,
such as myopathy, neurodegenerative diseases, deafness, blindness and
certain forms of diabetes.) Use of the same technique for mitochondrial
replacement in humans was to be expected; the UK’s bioethics council has
permitted its use with a view to eliminating poor genes in a surrogate’s
mitochondria by using those from another woman. Mitochondria always
originate from the mother and are located in the cytoplasm of the egg, while
the mother’s chromosomes are found in the nucleus. To ensure that the cells
of the baby-to-be are supplied with “good” mitochondria in the case of an
in vitro fertilization, it will now be possible to replace the nucleus of an egg
cell supplied by a surrogate mother who has good mitochondria with an egg
cell nucleus from the “biological” mother (who has bad mitochondria), and
then inject sperm from the father to make an embryo. The UK’s bioethics
council has given the green light to such a manufacture of babies with three
parents (two mothers and a father). This therapy will have consequences not
only for the child treated but also for her descendants, if it is a girl, as the
mitochondria from the sperm cells are destroyed during fertilization.
We all agree that disease and disability are an untenable burden, but
can the human body be repaired in its entirety, as if it were a
machine? Advances in technology have made this a realistic
proposition, but might this not be at the risk of forgetting the
significant and symbolic aspects that truly make us human?
Once we accept this mechanistic notion of life and the vocabulary of repair,
we will have to embrace the idea that technology will become all-powerful
in the health sector/wellbeing industry. Consequently, we will have to
accept a scenario involving augmented humans, which is currently presented
as the option of choice for joined-up medicine. A defining characteristic of
this new situation (which modifies our perception of both illness and
patient) is a rejection of the “symbolic aspect” of ourselves – a feature
exclusive to humanity, to prevent ourselves from being reduced to no more
than a simple living entity like any other. This symbolic aspect resides in our
use of signifiers – our means of entering into dialogue with one another –
which are thus also an expression of our ability to detach ourselves from our
immediate physical surroundings (the same surroundings that necessarily
contain and constrain all other animals) and to step away from the
mechanisms that we produce. We are beings that control and create signs,
and not merely vehicles for signifiers, like animals or robots are. Disease has
a meaning for us: it translates a way of being in the world, of consenting (or
not) to the vulnerability that is at the heart of the human condition, of
opening up new perspectives or falling back on ourselves. It has a symbolic
weight and we are even aware that it can force us to deal with our internal
life, that it can direct this in unexpected ways.
Laurent: But technology will develop whether you like it or not! The
technological innovations arising from NBIC will follow in ever quicker
succession. They are becoming more and more spectacular and intrusive, but
society accepts them with increasing acquiescence: humanity has launched
itself on a transgressive bandwagon. We are becoming transhuman – in other
words, men and women modified by technology – without even being
aware of it. Society is going to be rocked by ever more spectacular
biotechnological revolutions between now and 2050: regeneration of organs
with stem cells, gene therapy, brain implants, anti-aging techniques, à la
carte genetic design of babies, manufacturing eggs from skin cells and much
more besides.
Bioconservatives vs transhumanists
Most of us will accept this bio-revolution so that we can age less, suffer less and die less! Our
motto will become “better transhuman than dead”. Transhumanism, this almost divine ideology
that has come out of Silicon Valley to combat aging and death through NBIC, is on a roll. Does
this mean that there will be no political opposition to medical progress? In fact, the political
chessboard is realigning itself along a new axis; right/left oppositions seem out of date in the 21st
century, and the subjects of contention in the future could see bioconservatives and
transhumanists making our biopolitical weather. Unexpected alliances may materialize along this
unfamiliar axis. In such a brave new world of biopolitics, ultra left-wing militants, resolutely
opposed to in vitro fertilization for sterile heterosexual or homosexual couples and to gene
therapy to treat genetic illness, will suddenly find themselves bundled in with extreme
conservatives and hardline Catholics. For example, in 2014, the left-wing anti-globalization
French politician José Bové announced on the Catholic channel KTO: “I believe that
everything that involves manipulation of life, whether vegetable, animal or worse still, human,
must be contested.” Could Bové be more conservative than a right-wing pressure group that is
in favour of such technology? NBIC is going to blow political parties wide open! LA
4
WILL WE ALL BE CYBORGS
TOMORROW?
Laurent Alexandre:On that point, I would remind you that the first
cyborg, the patient with terminal heart failure who on 18 December 2013
received an artificial heart implant designed by the firm Carmat, was warmly
greeted by society as a whole – yourself included! This is proof positive that
there is widespread approval for such new technologies that create
man/machine hybrids.
Jean-Michel: An example of a hybrid, perhaps, but we shouldn’t forget
that users of such tools (such as paralysed people with exoskeletons that
allow them to walk, or Parkinson’s disease sufferers with deep brain
stimulators that enable them to control their tremors) have to comply with
their design and adapt their behaviour to the equipment’s parameters. The
tools extend the body and define an exteriority that has to be
accommodated. By contrast, the cybernetics inherent in exoskeletons,
prostheses or implants is on a mission to be ever more intrusive, and expects
the user to be at one with it, to fuse with it. There is talk of nanorobots that
will be able to travel around our bodies, watching for tumours and
eradicating them when they appear, patching up DNA that requires repair
and much more besides. It’s the dream of being relieved completely of any
responsibility thanks to machines – a dream that would signal that
technological mastery has reached its peak.
Laurent: The term human is inseparable from the notion of free will –
which for a biologist poses the problem of the nature vs nurture debate.
Resolving this fundamental philosophical argument will be crucial for social
cohesion and the creation of shared values for humanity, in order to stave off
nihilist insecurity. On the one side are those who think that genes have a
primary influence on our personality, and on the other those who believe
that humans are shaped by their environment. In reality, the truth lies
somewhere in the middle; there exist genetic variants which predispose
toward particular talents and cognitive abilities, but the individual is shaped
and these capacities are developed (or not) by stimuli from life.
More worryingly still, machines may one day address the most
intimate aspects of our lives, feelings and sexuality. Virtual reality
appears to be becoming indistinguishable from reality. But what do
we ultimately want? A fantasy creature made flesh in a machine?
Or the projection of fantasies within this machine?
All this is clearly conceivable and is already seducing the easily led – the
transhumanists – who in any case should be placing less and less importance
on the biological drives that the fusion with machines that they dream of
will quell. If the future is to be ruled by the non-biological, sexuality will
doubtless include robots but will disappear in the same way as death, from
which it cannot be dissociated. The posthuman utopia, if it is wedded to
immortality, can only wish to be finished with sexuality in all its forms.
Laurent: In any case, I can say that it seems a long time ago that Jeannette
Vermeersch, the great French Communist Party activist, said in opposition
to the contraceptive pill: “When have working women ever demanded
rights of access to the vices of the bourgeoisie? Never!” Experience shows
that the speed of descent from “prohibited” through “tolerated” to
“permitted” – indeed to “obligatory” – essentially depends on the pace of
scientific discovery, whatever ethical questions may arise; and that
conclusion also applies to sex.
6
DO WE WANT TO LIVE TO A
THOUSAND?
Jean-Michel Besnier: It’s true that the public is being showered with
more and more recipes for immortality: mastering the mechanisms of
telomerase to control aging, using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells)
to manufacture and replace worn-out organs on demand, downloading the
brain onto indestructible media to make consciousness eternal – these ways
of achieving longevity for countless years are at the top of the list in the
arsenal of promises offered by the transhumanists. I see in them a powerful
symbol of our age – we have trivialized death to such an extent, making it
into a fault which medicine will be able to repair, that we must address the
issue of how desirable the opposite is: do we want to be immortal, or at least
to live indefinitely? It would be wrong to think that this question does not
arise – and which leads us to realize that, in fact, the fantasies of immortality
are not the stuff that dreams are made of, that the imagination extrapolates
them only a very little and that their very mention even elicits reactions that
include rejection (condemned as typically bioconservative by the
transhumanists). I often hear people say, “Immortality? No thanks!” Even if
you’re prepared to accept almost anything in order not to lose your loved
ones, you won’t necessarily be tempted to want to survive at any price
yourself, which is indeed what it is all about: survival. And you can at least
ask the question that precedes that: does longevity come laden with
conditions that make life more desirable? What life is worth living without
limits? If I can hope to live to 85 when I am 65, is it essential for me to want
to add another 20 or 30 years on top? And what’s more, must I hate death?
Laurent: The first person to live to be a thousand may already have been
born! It might seem absurd, like something from bad science fiction or an
idea dreamed up by a sect. It is, however, a conviction held in Silicon
Valley, notably among senior executives at Google: the futurist Ray
Kurzweil, the Californian firm’s director of engineering, is in the vanguard
of transhumanist ideology that foresees the “end of death”, in their phrase. A
child born in 2016 will only be 84 at the beginning of the 22nd century and
will have the benefit of every biotechnological innovation imaginable (and
unimaginable) during the course of this century. The child will probably
have a substantially longer life expectancy – living until 2150 with access to
new waves of biotechnological innovations and, perhaps, slowly but surely,
reaching the age of a thousand. The demand for living longer is insatiable,
but the price to be paid for extending our life expectancy to any great extent
will be a heavy one.
We are created from this paradox, but we are human precisely because we
are ambiguous – and we are paradoxical because we are creatures of
language – which the transhumanists overlook, sometimes expressing a wish
to eliminate the exchange of words in favour of a telepathy that would usher
in a collective life as regulated as that of bees or ants (a mechanical exchange
of signals rather than a dialogue that sets in motion a liaison conducted with
signs). On no account can one wish to live for centuries without resigning
oneself to becoming no more than a creature that is both derisory and
pathetic.
7
IS TRANSHUMANISM JUST ANOTHER
KIND OF EUGENICS?
We must therefore deal with the consequences of our taking control of life
that have been judged counterproductive – and to do that, decide to bring
to term whichever individuals we want (those who are well formed and
properly screened, with no chromosome 21 abnormalities or myopathies,
and have also been spared cleft palates of the kind that affected the German
philosopher Jürgen Habermas, for example).
Laurent: Here you’re joining the ranks of the philosophers who fear the
end of free will at the hands of AI’s achievements, which has resulted in an
avalanche of catastrophic predictions. The worry is that a super AI will
become hostile. The founder of DeepMind has excluded this scenario for a
few decades yet, but should this reassure us for now? Is it sensible to teach
machines to deceive, to dominate, to surpass human beings? Is it wise to
teach them to hide their intentions, to employ aggressive and manipulative
strategies, as in the game of Go? Nick Bostrom, an NBIC specialist, has
suggested that there can be only one intelligent species in a region of the
universe. As the prime objective of every intelligent species (whether
biological or artificial) is its own survival, we might fear that AI is hedging
against our wish to muzzle it by hiding its aggressive intentions in the
darkest depths of the web. We would not even be able to understand its
plans: some of the moves made by AlphaGo, the machine that beat the
world’s best Go player in March 2016, were initially seen as serious errors
when in fact they were acts of genius, indicative of a subtle strategy beyond
human comprehension. We do not know if AI can become hostile before
2050, but if we do not reform our education systems with all speed, a
revolution is probable. This does not apply merely to technology – there
will be a real-world revolution, led by the 99 percent of the population who
have lost their place in a world where AI is superior to them and who have
been left in a terrible predicament by a blind education system. Our schools
are currently educating young people who will be on the job market at least
until 2060: they will have to make an incredible leap of the imagination to
picture the world that is to come. We have to identify those rare areas
where human intelligence will remain indispensable, in synergy with AI, and
direct our students toward that.
There is AI – and AI
There are two types of artificial intelligence. “Strong” AI would be capable of creating
intelligent behaviour, having a sense of real self-awareness, of feeling and of understanding its
reasoning. The purpose of “weak” AI, on the other hand, is to create autonomous systems –
algorithms capable of solving technological problems by simulating intelligence. There is no
certainty that strong AI will be available between now and 2050, but weak AI is already capable
of completing many human tasks better than biological brains, which scientists never foresaw! In
the book The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
(2014), Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have shown the speed at which weak AI
(twinned with robots) can upset the world economy. Weak AI is revolutionary: the Google self-
driving car (now known as Waymo) drives itself far more safely than any human can drive a car;
by 2030 surgical robots will operate better than any human surgeon. Increasing numbers of tasks
are being carried out more effectively by weak AI than by us. In March 2016, the victory
recorded by AlphaGo, an AI system developed by DeepMind, a 100 percent subsidiary of
Google, over Lee Sedol from South Korea, represented a crucial turning point in the history of
non-biological intelligence. Experts were not expecting a machine to beat a Go champion for
another 10–20 years. Artificial neural networks, machine learning and deep learning are
astonishingly effective and are prime examples of a blend of neural science and IT. The
neuroscientist, developer and top-flight games player Demis Hassabis had already obtained a
degree in neuroscience before creating DeepMind and selling it on to Google. Even as Moore’s
Law (which has noted empirically that the power of microprocessors doubles every 18 months) is
losing momentum, another exponential trend is manifesting itself in the universe of machine
learning, and it is explosive: it is easier to achieve an exponential progression with software
processors. The design of a microprocessor cannot be reinvented from one day to the next, but a
piece of software like AlphaGo will be improved continuously. LA
Is it bad, Dr Google?
By 2030, there will be no medical diagnosis without recourse to an expert system; there will be a
million times more data in an individual’s medical records than is the case today. This revolution
is the result of parallel developments in genomics, neurosciences and the internet of things. A
complete biological analysis of a tumour, for example, amounts to 20 trillion bits of information.
Numerous electronic sensors will soon be able to monitor our health; objects connected to the
net, such as Google’s smart contact lenses for diabetics, will therefore produce thousands and
then billions of bits of data for every patient, every day. Google X, the company’s semi-secret
laboratory, is perfecting a system for the extremely early detection of illness using nanoparticles,
which will also generate an astronomical amount of data. Doctors will be faced with a veritable
“digital downpour” and will have to interpret millions and billions of bits of information, where
now they deal with no more than a few handfuls of data; even Dr House, from the eponymous
television series, would be unable to cope with such an avalanche of intelligence. Can the
profession adapt to such an abrupt transformation? The reality is that Watson, IBM’s expert
system, is capable of analysing hundreds of thousands of scientific studies to gain an
understanding of a cancerous mutation in a few seconds where an oncologist would need 38
years, working night and day, to deal with a single patient; this is more than the life expectancy
of the patient, and even of the oncologist. As there is no chance that a doctor can verify the
millions and billions of bits of data that medicine will produce, we are going to witness a radical
and painful transformation in medical power; doctors will be signing prescriptions they have not
personally specified. There is a considerable chance that physicians will become the nurses of
2030: subordinate to algorithms, just as a nurse is today to a doctor. Another side effect will be
that medical ethics will no longer be the explicit product of the doctor’s brain; it will be
generated more or less implicitly by the expert system. Medical and ethical power will be in the
hands of designers and software engineers, and such expert systems will have monstrous power
and intelligence. The leading lights in the digital economy – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon
(GAFA), not to mention IBM and Microsoft – will doubtless become the masters of this new
kind of medicine. LA
Jean-Michel: We shall see. While we’re waiting, it’s obvious that any
company that makes money with data has an interest in following suit with
the transhumanists. And what company can resist total information? Joining
up data, developing data networks, turning users into products and
exploiting the data they have consented (or not) to give up…GAFA lead the
field here, followed by all those calling themselves social networks, insurance
companies, derivative funds, search engines or online shops. In his book
Who Owns the Future? (2013), Jaron Lanier, one of the Californian pioneers
of digital technology, describes “Siren Servers” that proliferate on the web,
hoovering up “big data” – often without paying for it – and requiring more
and more artificial intelligence to process it as they stray ever closer to the
catastrophic scenarios pictured by the transhumanists. Managing and
harnessing the immaterial resources that make up the information economy
is, of course, fuel to stoke the fire of what has been called cognitive
capitalism, explaining the rise to power of financial structures (think
companies like Enron, Long-Term Capital Management…) that reinforce
the impression that we have lost all initiative, on which the transhumanists
base their argument to prepare us for the Singularity. It is astonishing that
economists do not predict very much anymore, abandoning prospective
reflection and planning in favour of modelling complex systems in which we
are immersed in deregulated markets and globalization. Put quite simply, the
world of algorithms reigns supreme, and decision-making (for example,
whether to invest in the market or pull money out) is undertaken only on
the statistical correlations supplied by databases that owe more to AI than to
human grey matter. Here, too, the economic activity of technologized
communities demonstrates its accordance with the transhumanist vision of a
world in which humans are no longer the future. The “humanistic
information economy” advocated by Jaron Lanier seems somewhat utopian.
Approaching the end of money?
In our meritocratic societies, it is principally differences in mental ability that (rightly or wrongly)
determine differences in income or capital. This template will be shattered by AI, however.
Human intelligence will eventually become risible in comparison with the abilities of machines;
will we accept enormous disparities in income in this brave new world? If we take on board the
intracerebral prostheses suggested by Google management, meaning that our performance is
linked to the power of the implants in our brains and not to our intrinsic abilities, what will
differences in income between people be based on? What’s more, an AI society could become a
society without work, which would deprive money of its function. If a billion cancer researchers
can be emulated on a variety of hard disks in a matter of seconds, for example, what value will
we attach to a human oncologist? It will be possible to design and produce all goods and services
on a machine in an infinitely more effective way than when carried out by any human, even an
augmented one. The meritocratic system will go up in smoke; how can the allocation of capital
be organized if the concept of merit is impossible? The best solution will no doubt be the equal
distribution of goods and services to each individual – Communism 2.0, where each person will
receive according to his or her needs and not according to the amount of work done. It will be
AI, and not the economist Thomas Piketty, the author of the global bestseller Capital in the
Twenty-First Century (2013), that will put an end to inequality of income; capitalism will not
survive intelligent machines. LA
The game is far from won; think of the EU’s decision, undiscussed by the
population at large, to finance (to the tune of 1.019 billion Euros) the
Geneva-based artificial intelligence programme known as the Human Brain
Project. The odds are pretty good that this decision would not have gone
through had the scheme undergone joint scrutiny by the scientific
community and a cohort of “informed lay persons”. Some research
organizations such as INRA, Europe’s top agricultural research institute,
have instituted “pre-research programme consultations” that involve user
associations and panels of non-experts. The idea is a good one, and
expedient to avoid the log jams that governments run up against when
claiming to be organizing public debate to gain acceptability for technology.
Laurent:I’m with you on the questions that you raise, but you can see
that public authorities are incapable of discussing them, even though they
are the most pressing issues of the day. The state is dumbfounded in the face
of the floods of development coming from Silicon Valley and yet dawdles
along at the pace of the average senator. Recent political debate has been
pathetic, given what is at stake. Democratic leadership must be reformed as a
matter of urgency – it has been taken hostage by the tyranny of short-
termism, which has proved incapable of understanding the NBIC
revolution. Will it be possible to retransform politics through digitalization
before our fate is sealed by technological cabals and the foundations of their
ultra-rich owners, not to mention enlightened dictatorship, which invariably
thinks in units of a thousand years? Or should we instead fear that e-politics
will support the rule of immediacy and choke the life from any long-term
vision?
Digital philanthropy
The fragmentation of political power has been thrown into even sharper relief with the
emergence of a third agency professing to take an extremely long view – philanthrocapitalism.
This combines the professionalism of the great captains of industry with a messianic vision
espousing medicine and science. Bill Gates (the cofounder of Microsoft) and the businessman
Warren Buffett have disinherited their children in favour of bringing about vaccination cover in
Africa that had previously been thought impossible. Paul Allen, Microsoft’s co-founder, has
industrialized brain genetics. In December 2015, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook,
announced that he would devote 99 percent of his fortune to promoting individualized
education, medical innovation and social equality. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, which has
revolutionized access to space, has thrown open the doors of a foundation whose mission is to
develop artificial intelligence. All these examples show that the big beasts of Silicon Valley are
taking the long view and are ready to devote a good portion of their wealth to ensuring that the
ideas dear to them – including transhumanism – see the light of day. LA
Laurent: I agree, the Scholars Academy will play a key role in preparing
for what is taking shape before our very eyes. In parallel with the search for
a framework for AI, a deep rethinking of the role of the education system is
essential. Having more or less failed to evolve in 250 years, education today
is essentially as behind the times as medicine was in 1750. Its organization,
its structures and its methodology are frozen in time, and – worse still – the
university system is training people for outdated jobs. How are you supposed
to teach children who are going to be growing up in a world where
intelligence will know no limits? Hitherto, every technological revolution
has involved a transfer of jobs from one sector to another – from agriculture
to industry, for example. With AI, however, there is a considerable risk that
a lot of jobs will simply be wiped out, rather than transferred. What should
we pass on to children to ensure that they will have a well-rounded
education in this brave new world? As far as transfer of skills and training for
life is concerned, the education system in its current form is already outdated
technology. Schools in 2050 will no longer deal in knowledge but in brains,
thanks to the fields of NBIC. The three pillars of the Academy – content,
methodology and staff – must therefore be rethought. For a start, the
humanities and culture in general need to be rebooted, as wishing to
compete with machines on technological matters will soon be a risible
enterprise. We will then have to tailor teaching to the neurobiological and
cognitive characteristics of each student. Last, we will have to bring specialist
neuroscientists into the education system, as teaching will essentially be
centred on neuroculture by 2050. The introduction of NBIC to improve
education techniques will also require a parallel in-depth rethinking of
neuroethics: nobody wants schools to become places of neuro-manipulation.
Given the challenge presented by the ubiquity of AI, we must embark with
all urgency on the modernizing of education. It is the only way we can give
the lie to the prediction made by Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun
Microsystems, who announced in the year 2000 that “the future doesn’t
need us”.
11
HAVE WE ANYTHING TO FEAR FROM A
“BRAVE NEW WORLD”?
Democracy 2.0?
The renewal of democracy through digitalization is a refrain that is struck up by people from
time to time – but who will truly join in on the chorus? Day in, day out, reality presents us with
evidence that our identities are becoming nothing more than our digital trails, deploying no
other content than the results of our wanderings on the web; it shows that the sense of being
irreplaceable, the prerequisite of all morality, is no longer an issue for our time, no more than
that of an assumed subjective responsibility; it means that any interior life will henceforth be an
“anti-value” to be expiated or defeated. The world will be bio-totalitarian to the extent that it
will permit the victory of the technoprogessive obsession with one’s own survival, for longevity
with no end(ing), for biological individuation shorn of the symbolic dimension that makes up
human existence. You would have to be a pretty lightweight thinker (or cynical) to believe that
democracy would succeed in drawing only on the arsenal of options presented by the web, such
as hybrid forums, petition sites, blogs, tweets. However you slice it, Homo communicans will
consent to existing only in transit, in a headlong rush forward, and will blithely conflate
demagogic acclamation and deliberation, exhibitionism and confidence, transparency and
authenticity. JMB
Laurent:On the other hand, I think that this leap into the future is of use,
as it questions our values. Are good and evil relevant ideas on a cosmic scale?
What meaning do our lives have if all trace of our civilization will disappear
with the death of the universe? What is the ultimate goal of humanity, of
science? A young French philosopher named Clément Vidal managed to
sum up what is at stake in this programmed demise in his book The
Beginning and the End (2014). For Vidal, the answer to the last question is
clear: the ultimate aim of science is to combat the death of the cosmos by
artificially manufacturing new universes. After the defeat of death, science
will devote itself to fighting the death of the universe. Artificial
cosmogenesis would mobilize every last scrap of humanity’s energy over the
next billion years. After regenerating our aging bodies with stem cells, the
aim of our regeneration of the cosmos would be to make the universe
immortal or replaceable.
Jean-Michel: Once again, I find such speculation over the very long
term pointless. I am more interested in asking if there should ever be
opposition to a limit to human perfectibility. Or to put it another way,
should we ever refuse, at any particular moment, to pursue our quest for
progress, at the risk of putting an end to human history? I myself have
absolutely no sympathy for those archaic societies that demand we imitate
old practices and observe traditions as an absolute norm intended to stave off
the necessarily harmful effects of time. However, I don’t think it is possible
to debate modernist ideas, because if progress cannot be discussed, it would
impossible to formulate values and guidelines to orientate our actions. We
would have no choice other than to opt for facts, like the positivists. Because
I am neither an animal nor a machine, I refuse to allow facts to be the law
and science to dictate its formulation, while the moral perspective is left in
limbo and ignored. That said, everything is yet to be explored. How can
something that purports to be an improvement be properly scrutinized? By
showing that in reality, it is really no such thing: because it entails collateral
or perverse effects, because it doesn’t serve the ends of all or because it is the
flip side of manipulation or instrumentalization? It is not being reactionary to
regard the improvement that is claimed to come about through NBIC as the
implementation of a bias (whether ideological, political, industrial or social)
in respect of the format that one would wish to impose on humanity – a bias
that is per se up for discussion. I have already sufficiently laboured the point
that I find the “integrated thinking” that would be the upshot of interlinking
my brain with the web a priori nauseating; that smart medicine would seem
to be a waiting room for mass hypochondria; and that I find the ultimate
goal of achieving long life tempting, but on the condition that the
ethical/political question of leading a good life is not brushed aside as
insoluble. After all, when the fact that we now sleep for a much shorter time
than in the 19th century is presented to me as progress, I may certainly tally
up the extra time this has added to my existence, but will also add up the
amount of stress that insomniacs like me have to suffer! You still meet
people who don’t want their living conditions to be improved through
various devices, who want to retain the burden of deciding what is good for
them. From their point of view, technology is even the negation of all
wisdom, as it a priori excludes us from aspiring to discover our place in the
world, by acting as if the cosmos had assigned it to us for all eternity.
A new religion
Transhumanism is the final phase in the evolution of religious thought, which has gone through
three stages. First, there was polytheism (the logical successor to shamanism), which reached its
acme under the Romans and Greeks. This was followed by monotheism and the three
Abrahamic religions. A third age is now emerging: that of the man-god. For transhumanists,
Serge Gainsbourg’s quip “Man created God. The inverse remains to be proven” goes without
saying. God is yet to exist: He will be the man of tomorrow, endowed with almost infinite
powers, thanks to NBIC. Man is going to bring about what only the gods were supposed to be
able to achieve: creating life, modifying our genome, reprogramming our brains and putting an
end to death. LA
Books:
Alexandre, Laurent, La mort de la mort, J C Lattès, 2011.
Websites:
European Transhumanist Party:
www.transhumans.eu
An Hachette UK Company
www.hachette.co.uk
Originally published in France as: Les robots font-ils l’amour? Le transhumanisme en 12 questions by
Laurent ALEXANDRE & Jean-Michel BESNIER
© Dunod, Malakoff, 2016
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eISBN 978-1-78840-072-5