The future is never as we think

 

Imagine living in a major European city at the beginning of 1900. The entire world seemed to be under the influence of England, Spain, France, Portugal, or some other empire of the region. Europe enjoyed unprecedented prosperity thanks to the advancements of the first Industrial Revolution and the full formation of the Nation-State with Parliaments and a power distinct from that of the crowns. International trade had become so significant that no one imagined a war would come to disrupt this state of peace. The future seemed guaranteed for Europeans.

 

Now imagine Europe in 1920. Its main capitals had been ravaged by the bloodiest war in human history. The Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian empires had disappeared, and millions of people had died. Communism had taken control of what was now called the Soviet Union, and other countries outside Europe were beginning to show their power. The worst, although not anticipated, had already happened, and would not happen again, as Germany had been condemned to limit its future military power through the Treaty of Versailles. Once again, we were ready to continue with progress.

 

Snap of fingers, now we are in 1940. Germany did not comply with the Treaty it had been forced to sign. It rose from the ashes and went on to conquer all of Europe under the direction of the most reviled man in history, Adolf Hitler. Germany and the Soviet Union had divided Poland’s territory, and only England had managed to withstand their onslaught. Nothing seemed capable of reversing the situation; Germany would continue to control the Eurozone for many decades to come.

 

Now we move to 1960. Germany was once again trampled after the end of the war, being defeated just five years after 1940. Europe was divided into two parts, one under the tutelage of the United States and the other by the Soviet Union, while both countries competed to dominate each other, leading to an unprecedented arms race with nuclear warheads; hence, the entire world began to prepare for an imminent nuclear war that could end everything as we knew it.

 

Now let’s move to 1980. The United States had lost the war after years of intense combat; but not against the Soviet Union, rather against Vietnam. The powerful Northern nation saw itself humbled before the rest of the world, and we did not witness any nuclear missile exchanges between the two great nations of that time.

 

One more effort and we are now in the year 2000. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and the United States was the undisputed world power. China, ostensibly communist, was practicing a certain degree of commercial openness and was turning towards capitalism with more vigor than ever. The world seemed to be heading towards a new era of prosperity and progress at the pace of the Dot-com boom.

 

Well, we arrive in 2020, and the world rests on a multipolar order, with the United States at the forefront, yes, but with China practically on par, and countries like Russia, Germany, France, England, Japan, Canada, Australia, and many others of smaller size, exercising their share of power on the international stage. We did not witness any new world wars or the disappearance of any other major nation from the international stage. Have we now found the path to continuous progress and peace? Of course not, as it can be seen, there are no magical twenty-year periods. In any case, we must emphasize the idea that any logical assumption always seems wrong once we have the Monday morning newspaper in hand. Not to go far, and contrasting the previous period, remember how in September 2001 the entire world was turned upside down. Eras come and go, and our forms of social organization and the technology we use also change.

 

In the recent infamous 2020, humanity faced a rapidly spreading virus. A virus that, to date, has been lethal to more than six million people worldwide, and until a known vaccine was developed, we had to combat it by frequently washing our hands and taking basic sanitary precautions in the context of a pandemic, such as restricting contact with other people or using masks that cover our noses and mouths to help prevent the virus from spreading. Thus, while past generations were forcibly sent to fight bloody wars, far from their homes, in trenches, we had to face the most significant epidemiological battle of our lives with recommendations that begged us to please stay at home. Even so, the virus defeated us for longer than desired, due to the lack of controls and the usual suspects who ignored the warnings of their governments and the World Health Organization.

 

What can we say about the advance ordered by the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, against Ukraine? Attempting to predict future events is certainly difficult. The range of current problems is diverse, from the imminent environmental crisis to the replacement of the human workforce by robotics in the medium term, although perhaps, as Salmon Kinley[1] points out, we will never run out of work until we have run out of problems to solve.

 

Having said that, let us remain situated in the present and imagine that there are only two doors to the future[2]. If we open the first door, we enter a future where technological progress stops, freezes abruptly. In this future, we simply cannot continue to build smarter machines than the current ones, nor automate new tasks. What could stop us in such a way? A crisis? Monetary? Financial? Natural resources? A virus? Our own morality? Clearly not a war, because throughout history, the military sector has driven countless technological advances. From airplanes to the internet that we use every second, to receive new text messages, entertain ourselves on a social network, or read the news. Frankly, we would have to be destroyed by something first, as there is no real way to limit the progress of science and technology, no matter how much we try to corner it bureaucratically. Needless to say, the recent crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than delaying processes, forced the adoption of technologies that had been available for years but that governments had been reluctant to accept, such as telemedicine or telework. In fact, if we talk about the coronavirus, we should put on the table the event of December 30, 2019, when the Artificial Intelligence of the Canadian company Blue Dot launched one of the first alerts about a circulating virus in Wuhan[3]. This algorithm also predicted its next arrival in Bangkok, Seoul, and Tokyo due to the different sources of information that feed it, including news in more than sixty-five languages, disease outbreak reports, and air travel routes.

 

This invalidates the first door and leaves us only with option number two. If we open the second door, we enter a future where we improve the quality of our machines day by day until the moment comes when they are smarter and more capable than us, an event known as the Singularity. Before this happens, various Artificial Intelligences will replace us in most of the known jobs today. We do not need exponential technological growth or Moore’s Law to hold true, as any advance will constantly bring us closer to that end. We just need to keep moving forward, and we will. We will continue to improve our machines and their algorithms, but this will not be free for our current system of economic and social organization.

 

As Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum, told me in an interview, young people must be the explorers and guides to ensure that older people understand change in a positive way, taking advantage of the opportunities that arise. Well, this book is aimed at anyone who wants to delve into the changes ahead, regardless of your age, as long as you are ready, with an open mind to receive new information that we will discuss together. The narrative you are about to read is far from rosy as we will not omit uncomfortable discussions. We tend to favor ideas ingrained in popular belief because they are ideas we frequently encounter on a personal and professional level, but this limits us from thinking outside the box, preventing us from questioning our beliefs and assumptions, thus distancing us from new ideas that allow us to say “Eureka.”

 

It is clear that there will be a paradigm shift in our worldview, what is not clear is what the outcome will look like. According to my research, it will be both exciting and problematic. Threats range from massive unemployment to strictly moral issues that modern philosophy still seems to have not discussed in depth. Government and the market will have many tough discussions ahead, and we cannot be mere spectators of them.

 

Already Aristotle, around 350 BC, wrote in his book Politics that if every tool, when ordered, or even by itself, could do the work assigned to it… then there would be no need for apprentices for the master craftsmen, nor for slaves for the masters.

 

The future of humanity seems to be being discussed and decided in the absence of the vast majority in this unprecedented debate. It doesn’t matter if you are not part of the discussion because today, reality forces you to focus your energies on other extremely important tasks, such as worrying about what your children will eat tonight or who will take care of your elderly parents tomorrow. The discussion about how to regulate Artificial Intelligence is really a discussion about how to regulate humanity under a new paradigm. It’s not about regulating algorithms; it’s about regulating and shaping human thought. The consequences of the decisions made by others will end up impacting your daily life, and that’s not fair. No one said history is fair. After all, the saying goes that history is written by the victors.

 

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[1] Salmon, K. Jobs, Robots & Us: Why the Future of Work in New Zealand is in Our Hands. Bridget Williams Books, 2019.

[2] Harris, S. (2016). Can we build AI without losing control over it? TED. Viewed on June 15, 2021, at: https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without_losing_control_over_it.

[3] Stieg, C. (2020). How this Canadian start-up spotted coronavirus before everyone else knew about it. CNBC. Viewed on March 18, 2020, at https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/bluedot-used-artificial-intelligence-to-predict-coronavirus-spread.html.