Stephen Hawking has warned that artificial intelligence has the potential to be the downfall of mankind (iPhone, sound)
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Personally I am betting on evolution. Historically, lifetime for any one species is a million years. Man has been around 800,000 years or so although it is hard to say where to draw the line. Based on how life has evolved here on earth, Homo sapien should evolve and be replaced by another species of Homo at some point in the future. Presumably that replacement species has improvements to our numerous flaws, particularly those that concern our inability to apply our brain power in ways that are not so self destructive (such as irresponsible use of technology).
By all accounts, Homo Sapiens have been around for only 200,000 years.
Fossil Evidence:
Origins of Modern Humans
Current data suggest that modern humans evolved from archaic humans primarily in East Africa. A 195,000 year old fossil from the Omo 1 site in Ethiopia shows the beginnings of the skull changes that we associate with modern people, including a rounded skull case and possibly a projecting chin. A 160,000 year old skull from the Herto site in the Middle Awash area of Ethiopia also seems to be at the early stages of this transition. It had the rounded skull case but retained the large brow ridges of archaic humans. Somewhat more advanced transitional forms have been found at Laetoli in Tanzania dating to about 120,000 years ago. By 115,000 years ago, early modern humans had expanded their range to South Africa and into Southwest Asia (Israel) shortly after 100,000 years ago. There is no reliable evidence of modern humans elsewhere in the Old World until 60,000-40,000 years ago, during a short temperate period in the midst of the last ice age.
And when it comes to modern humans, many studies suggest that natural selection does not play any role because almost everybody now lives long enough to have children. Some studies have refuted that saying that there are variations due to differences in reproductive success and also due to environmental factors. Genetic evidence for selective mutations being passed on is strong. But no one would say that we are evolving enough to become a new super-human species even in the next 1-2 million years!
But no one would say that we are evolving enough to become a new super-human species even in the next 1-2 million years!
Gene frequency is changing so we are evolving. But the question you raise is a very valid one - are there sufficient evolutionary forces to cause speciation? Since we have never seen speciation occur in humans, we don't really know but based on the most common force which is believed to be operative for other species (allopatric speciation), it is not likely given current social and geologic factors on earth. The key word there is "current".
Neither the earth nor our social structure are static and we really don't know what the future might hold. If an asteroid were to hit the earth (a very real possibility given that many have struck the earth in the past), it would likely set up conditions for speciation. Human-caused disasters (nuclear war in particular) could trigger changes sufficient to speciate. One million years, or two or three, is a long time. We have no idea what will happen, but I do not believe that we will exist as we are now until the end of the solar system. Given that we will evolve at some point, it could be in 50,000 years or in 5 million years. We do not know.
BTW - you are right about my use of 800,000 years. I debated whether to use the widely accepted 200,000 year figure or whether to be a little more inclusive. Our nearest ancestor is believed to be Homo ergaster. H. ergaster goes back a couple million years. The evolution from egaster to sapien was not an overnight event, and we don't know when speciation could deemed to have occurred since it is a continual process. All we know is that is was more than about 200,000 years ago and less than 2 million years ago.
Actually we are going to supersede evolution. Meaning we will decide how we evolve not some random force of nature that has historically been the case.
Actually we are going to supersede evolution. Meaning we will decide how we evolve not some random force of nature that has historically been the case.
Oh, so now by 2030 machines will be customizing Human genes...
Oh, so now by 2030 machines will be customizing Human genes...
We are already doing it and this is 2014.
Scientists have engineered a bacterium whose genetic material includes an added pair of DNA “letters,†or bases, not found in nature; the bacterium’s cells can replicate the unnatural DNA bases more or less normally, as long as the molecular building blocks are supplied.
I believe the next step will be Computer to brain interface where we will have the ability with a small implant to be able to access the net,phone and all related aps and tv merely be thinking about it,no external hardware needed..
You are making the false assumption that Humans would be unchanged in this AI driven world. There is going to be Humans 2.0
What Kurzweil calls a post-human future, where we upload our consciousness to computers and live forever as “stored information”.
Of all the AI centric and even broader future predictions, uploading consciousness into hardware is the most outlandish. I would never say that something could not or would not happen, but this particular prediction is the one that most firmly rests in the realm of science fiction for me. I can make the jump to almost believe in the inevitability for most of the things said or implied under discussion (although I stick to my assertions about the daunting obstacles to true cognition augmentation), but the technology to allow for transhumanism isn't even a blip on the radar. The technological seed for it does not yet exist, and so I hold it to be pretty much pure, persistent-into-the-indeterminate-future fantasy. It's fun to think about though.
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AI is definitely not going to be killing humans to solve an energy crisis.
I think that it's impossible to say what AI will and won't do in any future.
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Originally Posted by Josseppie
I thought of the Amish and maybe they are a better example. They choose to live without modern technology and from what little I have seen about them they seem to be happy.
I admire the Amish, and hold them to have a superior culture to our own. That admiration isn't dependent on their willful ignorance of technology, but I respect like hell their discipline in doing what they believe it takes to preserve their community and way of life.
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Originally Posted by Hazel W
All your posts keep taking me back to Hal in 2001 A.D. Remember Hal? He came to a dire end for his uppitiness. Al's future? Just pull his plug.
My vision of strong AI is that it will be able to relocate the locus of its 'consciousness' at will by locating vulnerable systems that can physically support it. As computing power becomes more powerful around the world, this task will grow easier. It could even replicate itself in other systems toward being able to operate from multiple loci at once. I doubt that a true strong and hostile AI, with any significant experience, would allow itself to be vulnerable to unplugging.
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Originally Posted by Bideshi
AI will make most humans unnecessary. The frightening question is, what happens to most of us then?
We send Sarah Connor back in time. Is that joke too overused?
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Originally Posted by sandman249
You insist on calling all this speculative, but many who follow all the technologies mentioned above know that we have made more progress in the last few years than the last 50 years combined. And will make more progress in the next 5 years than the past 100 years combined. And this just keeps getting better exponentially.?
We haven't really hit hardware/materials limitations in human technological evolution yet, but we are approaching the point in which clock speed will be hampered by materials. We've actually already hit that point some years ago in the personal computing realm, and have moderately overcome it only by adding cores. It is overcome in the industrial computing realm by creating large warehouses filled with massive servers and massive cooling systems. We will still keep evolving technologically, and new materials will be continuously developed and discovered, but I predict that the exponential line of technological evolution may begin to undulate a bit in the future. I don't think our technological history will completely predict our rate of future evolution unless quantum computing takes off (overcoming the fact that transistors can physically only be made to be so small).
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Originally Posted by sandman249
By all accounts, Homo Sapiens have been around for only 200,000 years.
My intent isn't to keep arguing your points, I just happened to wish to comment on this last remark. Human evolutionary evidence, in the context of the human evolutionary timeline, is amongst the most incomplete in all of science. The truth is that evidence is consistently discovered that moves this timeline around, and there are huge gaps in the human evolutionary chain. Furthermore, there is a lot of evidence that conflicts with current published theories, and evolutionary archeologists can't agree amongst themselves about what the evidence means in terms of the human timeline (meaning that there is no true universally accepted theory about the exact timeline - and Wikipedia's opinion doesn't count.)
Again, Sandman, I'm not picking on your comments. I just happened to comment on a lot of them this time around. I'm enjoying this discussion.
Oh, so now by 2030 machines will be customizing Human genes...
Yeah, humans are done with natural evolution unless they civilization wiped out.
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