AI End of the World or Life, or Not?

Man vs Man – Living Forever?

 All this worry about AI self-learning and becoming sentient and seeing humans for whom they are – dangerous and murderous,  something we already know, is probably misdirected.  Why go looking for a new threat to humanity when we already know who it is and what the tools are.   It is us and the weapons we create – whether physical or cyber. History is full of humans killing other humans – for any number of underlying causes and reasons – hate, status, spouses, money, land possession, jealousy, greed and similar.  AI is not the enemy, it could be, but look no further than over your shoulder at your neighbor, your colleague or a family member.  AI represents one threat in the future but nothing that out of the normal from man killing man over time immemorial.

Have to remember that the AI pulls from the length and breadth of human history of killing and hatred plus some other more honorable endeavors.  So AI, unleashed by the history of mankind and its cruelty, has plenty of ammunition to come up with reasons to kill off mankind, either out of spite or compassion.

A second threat, at a level equal to AI, but even more threatening is the research and efforts into how to live forever.  The tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has spent millions of dollars over the past four years implementing the latest discoveries in longevity science to reverse aging and lengthen his lifespan.  One should remind these pioneers with a history lesson from myths and the Bible.

First lesson comes from Genesis where Eve and then Adam get into trouble and are banished from the Garden of Eden for wanting to be like God and be immortal.  Second example is where building the Tower of Babel also has negative consequences for wanting to reach the heavens.  Not to forget that Lucifer- Satan wanted to be god as well. Outside the Bible, Icarus flew to close to the sun as another lesson to be learned. 

So mankind is currently going to end from either the cyber threat of AI or from the narcissistic tendency to live forever, with the rationale of Transhumanism, which  is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being.

So either the collective wisdom of mankind with all its biases and hatred collected into a digital database on the internet empowered by algorithms and machine learning will kill us or an understandably interest in living forever that has historically and mythologically ended badly.