Getting the future of mankind realistic depends, or in part depends, on "our" choices. In the face of rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, we need to explore the future and find out future society that will be beneficial to mankind, from a variety of possibilities.
The integration of new technology into the society will bring about harm as well as benefits. What the society has to weigh up is whether the cost of technology is acceptable. For example, people in the intelligent society risk being completely manipulated by machine algorithms. The Internet-based "virtual world" is making humans useless. We should be prudent towards potential disasters. It will be a common phenomenon for the virtual world to compete with the real world for resources.
The conservative view towards technology is advisable. Conservatism towards technology can be understood as: we should develop or choose technology in a way that respects the interests of all at the moment. To be specific, we should adhere to the highest principle that the application of new technology can improve, or at least be harmless to, the interests of all; society should prudently accept new technology – such new technology should be able to benefit all of the people at the moment in a Pareto Improvement way; And the technology of which technical consequences are unknown will not be applied.
Accordingly, new technology should be fully and comprehensively evaluated and demonstrated before being applied, and the public (laymen) should be able to get involved in the evaluation and demonstration. It can be seen that conservatism towards technology does not mean a restriction on the use of new technology, but a prudent attitude towards their use.
In fact, people have been thinking about how to constrain the development of robots or AI. In 1950, Isaac Asimov, a famous American science fiction writer, proposed the famous Three Laws of Robotics in his book I, Robot. However, AI or robots built according to Asimov's Three Laws is slave-like. They operate in society to help humans, but is their slave-like status what we humans want? Is this an ideal form of a technological society? What is the ideal man-machine relationship like?
AI should not only improve the overall material welfare of mankind, but also meet the spiritual needs of mankind. So the concept of "friendly AI" has been proposed, i.e. since friendliness is mutual, an ideal AI society would be one in which humans get along well with AI.
In thinking about the future, scientists and technologists tend to be optimistic, while philosophers tend to be conservative – such a conservative attitude is a kind of protection and love for human nature. In such thinking, however, philosophy seems to fall short of its wishes, and literature seems to be more attractive. What we need now is a grand narrative about mankind, life, and the future of mankind that may not be philosophical, but implies profound philosophy for sure; such a narrative transcends the science and technology connected with AI itself, and offer an original understanding of human nature. And, most importantly, such a narrative can truly shed light on the supercode behind our world.
Issued on March 24, 2022