Elon Musk's vision
Towards the technological singularity?
Alongside the problems relating to the emergence of a Superintelligence and the eventual manifestation of the Singularity, there are other themes, equally meaningful, which concern the profound transformations that the development of artificial intelligence will entail. Transformations that could interest us very closely, even from a biological point of view. I continue using Elon Musk and his vision of the near future that awaits us. Musk put his vision on this issue well at the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai. The conversation with Mohammad AlGergawi is also available on YouTube.
Musk's conclusion is as follows: "So, over time I believe we will probably see a fusion between biological intelligence and digital intelligence."
Some time ago in the course of an interview in the company of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Musk had declared that the appearance of a "Superintelligence" would expose us to the risk of being relegated to the role of pets. Tyson, for his part, had gone so far as to hypothesize that an advanced AI could not only tame us, but even decide to breed docile humans and eliminate the violent ones.
Similar fears were expressed by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple: «Computers will supplant human beings, there is no doubt … the future is worrying and terrible for people. If we build these devices to do everything for us, sooner or later they will think faster than us and get rid of slow humans to run businesses more efficiently. … Will we be gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be trampled like ants? I do not know".
Musk does not fail to also indicate a possible solution. According to him, an inescapable possibility: to take a step in the direction of machines, to get as close as possible to their performance, to become, in a word, a sort of cyborg. In a nutshell, this eventuality is presented to us as our best opportunity, perhaps the only one, to try to remain desperately competitive!
The bandwidth limitation of human intelligence
Without having to wait for the confrontation with a possible Superintelligence, in comparison with the machines we are already struggling. According to the millionaire of South African origin, our brain still has a good data processing and storage capacity, however the bottleneck compared to digital devices would lie in the «… speed of the connection between your brain and the digital, the digital extension of yourself, especially in the output». We are "…bandwidth-limited." Currently a computer is able to communicate at a speed of one trillion bits per second, we miserable humans, using a keyboard or the display of our smartphone, reach approximately 10 bits per second.
The Tesla CEO had discussed this in an interview with Sam Altman last year: «We are extremely limited by the bandwidth of the interface between the cortex and the tertiary digital aspect of ourselves», therefore, «… I believe that we can merge effectively with the artificial intelligence, so we improve the neural link between the cortex and the digital extension of yourself which, as I said, already exists, it just has a bandwidth problem. And then you would effectively become an AI-human symbiont.” A symbiosis with machines, therefore, which would also have the advantage, according to Musk, of democratizing artificial intelligence and preventing its distorted or dangerous use, since "... we collectively would be the AI". And he adds:
"So, having a high-bandwidth interface to the brain, I think could be something that helps us achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence."
Musk doesn't just suggest a possible solution to the danger of overly powerful AI, rather he intends to lift and cheer up the public: he is even working on it! In June 2016, the South African entrepreneur in a speech at Recode's Code Conference had the opportunity to once again address the problems inherent in artificial intelligence. Finally he had followed up with a tweet that had received a wide echo: "The creation of a neural lace [neural lace] is what really matters for humanity in order to achieve a symbiosis with machines".
In Musk's vision, the neural lace is configured as a sort of "... layer of AI (in your brain), which can work well and symbiotically with you". This mechanical implant would then communicate with the cerebral cortex. "Just as your cortex works symbiotically with your limbic system, your digital third layer may be working symbiotically with you."
The brain interface
Some experiments in this direction have been conducted on mice. A grid of flexible microcircuits a few millimeters thick, rolled up like a net to allow them to pass inside a needle, was injected into the rodents' bodies by means of a syringe. The network, which opened once inside the body, then settled in the brain. Modeled on the three-dimensional structures used by biomedical engineers to grow tissue outside the body, according to autopsies, the "synthetic wires" forged firm connections with brain matter, with seemingly minimal ill effects. "We are trying to blur the distinction between electronic circuits and neural circuits," said Charles Lieber of Harvard University, co-author of the study that appeared in Nature Nanotechnology in June 2015. So excellent results in terms of compatibility and flexibility of use.
According to Jacob Robinson, Rice University, «This could be some progress towards a cerebral interface for users. … Connecting the computer to your brain becomes much more acceptable, if all it requires is to inject something».
Although such a solution represents a big step forward compared to other much more invasive procedures, in order to make it suitable for use in humans, some problems encountered so far, related to the longevity and stability of the devices, must be overcome. "We don't intend to put the cart before the horse, but we think we can really revolutionize our ability to interface with the brain," says Lieber. It's still:
“I think there is a possible way … to achieve some kind of fusion between biological intelligence and machine intelligence … to some extent we are already cyborgs”.
Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist, director of the Engineering department at Google, at the recent SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, relaunched Masayoshi Son's prediction regarding the probable date of the Singularity: twelve years time and it will become reality. According to him, the process is now underway: "It's here, in part, and it's starting to accelerate."
Kurzweil belongs to the party of optimists. The evolution of AI, the advent (certainly for him) of the Singularity, will not represent a catastrophe, but a precious opportunity for the progress of humanity. “What is already happening is that [machines] are empowering us.” He then liquidates the fears related to a "Superintelligent" AI destined to take over and subjugate man, confining them to the domain of science fiction: «All this is not realistic ... We don't have one or two AIs in the world. Today we have billions of them." In his vision, the road is marked: «All this leads to computers that possess human intelligence, to insert them inside our brain, to connect them to the cloud, expanding who we are. Today, this is not just a future scenario."
The effects for humanity will be surprising: «We will acquire a greater portion of the cerebral neocortex, we are destined to become more entertaining, to improve in music. We're going to be sexier… We're really close to embodying all those things we value in human beings to a higher level." And the relapses will affect and benefit everyone: «We will be able to satisfy the physical needs of all human beings. We will expand our minds and amplify those artistic qualities we value."
In short, a couple of decades or so according to Kurzweil, our mind will be in the cloud and fusion with smart devices will appear trivial everyday life. So why be afraid of machines? “They're making us smarter. They may not be inside our bodies yet, but by the 30s, we will be connecting the neocortex, the part of our brain that generates thought, to the cloud."
Technological evolution will therefore supplant biological evolution. However, at least for now, our human essence appears safe. Hybridization with machines postponed, even if for a short time. But is it really so? Maybe yes maybe no. It depends on how we understand it. In his argument, Musk starts from a truly difficult assumption to refute: in part we are already cyborgs.
"Think of the digital tools you own, the phone, the computers, the applications you use, like the fact ... that you can ask a question and get an answer immediately, with Google."
The tertiary digital layer
The South African entrepreneur defines this dimension as a "digital tertiary layer". A sort of further third evolutionary level, compared to the two components that shape our brain, working in perfect harmony. We human beings, in fact, to the archaic, primitive part of the brain, the limbic one, located in the hippocampus, which dominates the emotional, instinctual component, inherited from our most remote ancestors, combine a more recent one, the "cognitive" one, developed with language and culture, found in the neo-cortex. The artificial, digital "tertiary layer", in Musk's vision, would combine and operate in symbiosis with the other two organic constituents of our brain. “So you already have a digital tertiary layer. I say tertiary because you can think of the limbic system, a sort of animal brain or primordial brain and then the cortex, a sort of part of the brain that thinks and plans, and then your digital self as a third level».
Currently our digital self takes shape in social media, it resides in the emails, posts and photos that we send, publish and exchange every day. It takes on the contours of smartphones, tablets or other devices from which we are never separated and which we could hardly give up, or so we think. Digital matter appears increasingly integrated, even interpenetrated in our existence, even in the biological component. We or parts of us, information of various kinds, more or less personal data, instants of our lives, emotions, moods, are already roaming the net or hovering lightly in the cloud.
And our digital self has already gone beyond the imposed physical and biological limits, to the point of transcending the ultimate border: that of death. «… If someone died [his] digital ghost would still be around. It would consist of all the emails and photos, social media posts. All this would continue to live, even if someone were dead.
The intrinsic nature of our alter ego in binary code, in fact, has a dimension that still remains closed to us. A dimension that also allows us, while waiting for the definitive liberation from the constraints imposed on us by physics, to enjoy right now, a taste of the magnificent and progressive fortunes that will come: to anticipate, to some extent, a small portion of immortality. Though, as Musk notes, as ghosts. Digital ghosts, of course. A brief purgatory of a dozen years, according to Kurzweil. Nothing, in the face of eternity!
