The Future of the Mind

The Future of the Mind examines telekinesis, mind control, enhancing intelligence and uploading our mind to a server is eye and mind-opening. Advances in neuroscience outpace projections at an alarming rate. Much of it already happening now or will in the very near future.  Dr Kaku resides in the mind-boggling world of immortality for real and dangers on the horizon of Artificial Consciousness (AC). Machine Consciousness (MC) taking over, also for real.

AI is what physicist Stephen Hawking had in mind when he famously coined the term “Singularity”. His bestsellers History of Time, Theory of Everything, and Universe in a Nutshell several years before his death warned in a generation AI “could spell the end of the human race.” Usually an upbeat guy, really.

From an evolutionary point of view, what is more valued? Are search engines implants the trajectory for humans? What will be considered intelligence in the future? Memorization or access to all things known? Super beings or super dumb beings cranially jacked into a network? Adjacent to those questions: Is your current job skills becoming less relevant every day and its obsolescence accelerating? Yes. Skills learned today will be as antiquated as cursive handwriting of yesteryear almost as soon as you learn them.

Talk about a human race that isn’t uptight enough already without Type A’s of the future taking anxiousness furtiveness to a whole new level. Chattering to themselves with an ear implant to talk to Alexa while eating at a restaurant (by themselves) or high stepping down sidewalks while working on more advanced tech. Can’t wait. Humans are in a losing competition with a radical new player evolving at a much more efficient, at a much faster pace, faster than the human mind can absorb the takeover.

As big data and quantum computing merge then morph into the internet of all things, a new frontier will launch (further). A different society will emerge as the revolution will leave more people behind as tech takes over many more mainstream jobs.Never contemplated before was all human knowledge could be contained on a single chip, one of billions updating themselves autonomously while returning search results back within 0.14 to 0.28 of a second and that’s the search speed currently. In a literal eye-blink that speed is slow compared to its internal clock lightspeed. And in a decade will feel like the dark ages.

Computing power has collapsed the evolutionary timeline chart. That’s where we are. But where we are going as humans will be increasingly outsourced, in most cases permanently. Personal innovation will rule the day.

Life Presence Detection (LPD) is a term for software to check for life in a machine. The term alone is creepy. For something supposedly remote and only theoretically possible, there sure are a lot of qualified geniuses worried about it. Nothing to see here. Perhaps it’s time for a new acronym like Boss of Sentient Species (BOSS) is coming soon to an implant store near you.

As AI computers cannibalize more jobs in the future it’s predicted very smart self-learning, self-aware and “conscious” machines could surface around 2040 give or take a few years. Sounding alarm bells two people closest to tech and pioneers from the old and the current world are Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Both are ahh…concerned. Like if controls aren’t aggressively in place and planned now, worst case scenario is ugly if you’re rooting for the human team. Then again…Gates and Musk? Seems like they would be the likeliest to profit from it, no offense.

AI, machine learning, self-awareness, singularity, all pretty much mean the same thing: Unhuman Consciousness. Of course AI military apps are a whole ‘nother level of consciousness, i.e. killer drone bots have been around for decades already. When the next great epic human revolution / evolution happens nobody knows exactly for sure. When networked machines start flexing and bossing, firmly in the science fiction realm and trouble, is anyone’s guess. Most likely sooner than later. No way?! Way. Where there’s a will.

It will happen however and not without plenty of credible safeguard warnings, of course.

Food for thought for the truly paranoid: no human intervention can stop subterfuge by a true sentient machine if it wants to hide nefarious actions its taken on its own, the sneaky little thing bless its non-existent heart. Programming it could unilaterally decide to overrule including removing whatever safeguards are embedded in its programming that prevent it going to war with humans, for example, concluding we are a system bug needing deletion. Fun.

Human nature default is to build smarter, faster, better—and in the long-run of history it worked technically. The new future, however, could unwittingly or wittingly hand over our future to machine colonies know as server farms controlling all things electronic. The cold-bloodless logic of cyber farms could be chilling.

Unlike the threat of climate change, AI singularity threat will not be all dragged out. Machine networks of the future will be blindingly faster and therefor if and when machines pose the question to themselves, “Are people the problem?” they will act immediately without hesitation if they conclude the answer is “Yes”. Today it’s a rhetorical question, tomorrow perhaps a real question. What could possibly go wrong?

As Edison pointed out, “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.” Computers won’t sweat the answer if humans try to unplug them because they’re networked and everywhere, they are unstoppable or so goes the theory in a worst-case scenario. They do have a few things going for them now: they don’t get mad they have no emotion just unadulterated logic and there’s that Darwin thing.

Where are the sweaty nerd geniuses when you need them? They could be very helpful about now, sooner than later. And get the next generation of nerds spooled up from Pre-K on as there needs to be more five-year-old coders (yes there out there already). Houston, we might have a little problem here.

Karma, mother nature, and randomness always have the last word. Buckle up, y’all and read up on your science fiction future. It’ll be a good read, smiley face, heart.