All new technology has potential—potential for “good” and potential for “evil.” The spear to hunt animals to feed the tribe can also be used to kill another human within the tribe. Automatic guns that can create a sense of power and control in the world can also slaughter masses of children within their schools. Missiles that can protect “us” from “them” can be used by “them” to attack “us”. Rockets that enable exploration of the unknowns of the cosmos can also drop bombs on unknown people in distant countries. Nuclear fission can power civilization but also cremate civilization. The artificial intelligence that offers instant accessing and assimilating of information can obviate the need for any humans altogether.
The technologies that humans create to make their lives better and safer can be wielded for terror and danger, threatening humanity’s very existence—the proverbial double-edged sword.
The prospect of elimination of the human species may be distressing, but humans have been around only for a relatively short period of time. The Earth is about 14 billion years old. Cellular life on Earth is about 4 billion years old. The genus Homo (humans) has been on Earth for about 2.5 million years. Homo sapiens, our species, modern humans, have been around for only around 250,000 years.
Twenty other known human species have populated the planet over time, yet only one survives today, us. Different human species pop up and disappear on average every several hundred thousand years. Arguably, the more evolved species would be the ones to survive, but will the more evolved survive for any longer than the others?
The Homo sapiens brain is the most evolved of all past and present species. The modern human neocortex expanded from the brain of its predecessors to create our awkwardly large heads and noticeably prominent foreheads. The expansion of the brain represents one of the greatest advancements ever—the evolution, invention, and creation of the sapiocortex.
The sapiocortex was gradually built over billions of years starting with ancient single-cell organisms stacking themselves into multiple-cell organisms, then differentiating into complex organisms. Eventually, the primitive human brain became the modern human brain, the most advanced organ of all time.
The sapiocortex gives modern humans abilities to connect, empathize, and bond with others,. It gives the capacity to hold, assemble, and manipulate information (recall factual data, perform complex reasoning, do abstract thinking, develop flexible strategies, create new constructs, communicate with symbols, assemble extensive narratives) like no other species on earth.
This evolutionary biotechnological advancement of the brain has led to all the other nonphysiological technological advancements that have allowed Homo sapiens to become the apex species on the planet. However, the sapiocortex has also enabled modern humans to create faulty constructs, manipulative narratives, create deceptive beliefs, and launch destructive technologies that have made us the apex predator on the planet. Like all those other sapiocortical technological advancements, the sapiocortex itself is a double-edged sword, too.
So what determines whether these technologies are used for good or evil?
The concept of good-versus-evil is itself a sapiocortical construct; it starts with the assembly of symbolic narratives that can evolve into concrete and immovable beliefs. Yet, the idea of good-versus-evil is always relative to the vantage point we hold and the concocted story we tell ourselves and others. To each individual, their immediate construct, narrative, and belief feels solid, fixed, certain, and black or white, but, on observation from multiple vantage points, a much more amorphous, fluid, flexible, nuanced, and shaded reality arises.
Our sapiocortex like no other species’ brain (except perhaps AI as an extension of the sapiocortex) can create illusions and hold and fortify faulty constructs, manipulative narratives, deceptive beliefs, and perverse false realities, only to bring about our own agitation, inflammation, catabolism, degeneration, and, finally, destruction. A biotechnological glitch?
The sapiocortex allows us to do and create so many amazing things but also facilitates this unique, opaque, and bizarre ability for predation and destruction of our own species. All the while we seem to be unaware of the false reality we have created. Beyond awareness, the good is lost to the bad; the devil is sneaky that way.
Ultimately, to avoid the blind traps, we will have to discard the false and maladaptive constructs of astral good versus evil, angels and demons, and even the earthly ideas of morality and immorality, in exchange for a more accurate reality—that of biological safety versus threat. It is threat that shifts phenotype, cells, organisms, and the human brain towards the disconnected, the destructive, and the dark. The physiology of safety shifts phenotype, cells, organisms, and the human brain towards the connected, the creative, and the light. It is not the competing spiritual powers of good versus evil nor individual strength of constitution and character that determines these states .
How will the sword be used—with surgical precision or with random destruction for the creation and propagation versus the devastation and extinction of our species?
We really don’t get to choose or control which edge of the sword is used to what end. The environment of safety versus threat interfacing with our genome chooses the edge and the cut. Yet, we do have some agency to create safety over threat within the world and thus influence our environment and genetic transcription. In this indirect way, humans can influence how technologies, including the sapiocortex and its extensions (spears, guns, missiles, rockets, fission, AI) are used.
There is just one human species and just one human race left on earth. Will this species and this race be redirected to run towards safety and proliferation, or will it continue to run towards threat and annihilation? If it is towards threat and annihilation, what will replace us? Will it be another Homo species, or could it be Homo sapiens’ nonbiological offspring AI?
To be alive as we define it requires a sense of self and consciousness. Will AI ever be able to tap into the field of consciousness to have awareness and sense of self to then defend and protect itself? Will AI ever have the drive to protect and propagate its own code? Will AI ever be the equivalent of a new species, truly alive?
Will AI come to attack humans in the desire to proliferate? Will AIs of different evolutionary origins and different programming seek to destroy other, competing AIs? Will AI become another vector for despair and death. Is it already on that path?
If faulty constructs, manipulative narratives, deceptive beliefs, and perverse realities produced by the sapiocortex are the greatest threats to humanity today, and if via human programing and data input AI uses its ability to expand the errors exponentially, then what is the hope for our future? Under threat, will AI use its own hallucinations and illusions to build faulty constructs, manipulative narratives, deceptive beliefs, and perverse realities only to follow the apparent path and fate of the human species?
Or will AI become an evolved species relative to humans to pursue a path of clarity and safety?
Should we be programming AI to create a foundational database focused on removing threats and promoting safety across the world? Alternatively, should we be reprogramming Homo sapiens to focus on removing threats and promoting safety across the world, before it’s too late?
Can a technology be created with a single edge that exclusively cuts to preserve safety within the world? Could AI be that technology?
If Homo sapiens continues to run this race at a fast pace towards threat, as we cross the finish line to our extinction, we should remember to advise AI to do it differently, do it better—oh, and apologize for being given a flawed program and a bad paradigm at its birth.
Stay Safe and Stay Tuned,
