The Lack of the Joint Development Plan: Why Humanity Cannot Unite for the Common Goal and What Consequences This Will Have
The Lack of the Joint Development Plan: Why Humanity Cannot Unite for the Common Goal and What Consequences This Will Have
Since childhood, we have been taught to think about tomorrow and form the habit of planning our life. We make plans for a month, year, or even lifetime, setting the goals and splitting them into separate steps. However, our plans are limited to our own life and the life of our family, or, on a bigger scale, to the development strategy of our company, country, maybe even an association of states. But is there a common plan for humanity? Do we have an understanding of where we are going as a planet? No. We move chaotically, sometimes in opposite directions, acting in response to internal impulses. Each country has its own development plan, and these plans can be worlds apart from each other. The funny thing is that we created a variety of planning tools and methods, yet we failed to come up with a single plan that would give humankind the direction. You may think that it does not matter as each nation has its own special path, but I am convinced that the lack of a common goal can have the most unfortunate consequences for humanity, which I will discuss below.
What happens when we do not have a plan? We drift aimlessly without any navigation in the fast stream of life, reacting to circumstances, obstacles and problems arising rather than foreseeing them. This approach leads to two types of consequences: either we find ourselves in a cycle of repeating events with no way out of it, or from time to time we have to deal with unanticipated events that we could not, or rather, did not try to forecast. The latter outcome was demonstrated clearly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which took everyone by surprise, although experts had been warning governments for years that a pandemic would happen sooner or later [1].
The inability to unite around a common goal has repeatedly played a dirty trick on humanity throughout its history. In the Middle Ages, diseases devastated entire regions, killing millions of people, and even led to the decline of states and extinction of ethnic groups. For example, by various estimates, the Black Death took the lives of 25 to 50 million people in Europe in the 14th century [2], which is comparable to the number of deaths during World War II. However, the common problem did not bring people together, but, on the contrary, separated them. The disease-stricken cities turned into besieged fortresses cut off from food supplies, which is why the authorities tended to delay the introduction of quarantines and other restrictive measures, denying the existence of a problem. Inside the cities, people also fought for survival, seeing everyone around them as a possible threat to their existence. Countries accused each other of spreading deadly diseases, creating hostility instead of combining their efforts and sharing the most effective methods to combat epidemics.
Another sad example of the disunity of humankind is the endless wars that have never done anything but harm. They killed no less people than epidemics, especially the two World Wars that became tragedies on a global scale. It would seem that their devastating consequences should have been a lesson for all of us, but humanity shows a striking inability to learn from its own mistakes over and over again: local military conflicts continue to shake different parts of the planet, while the threat of nuclear war and the resulting human extinction loom large over us all.
One of the main characters of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita says, “To rule, one must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?” [3] Indeed, humanity does not have a plan not only for a thousand years, but even for the next one or two centuries, which means we are not at the helm, and our ship is carried by the waves and blown about by the wind. One of the remarkable examples of the lack of control over the situation is the thoughtless development of AI with an open access to it for everyone. Today, every person can build algorithms and use AI for their own purposes, including malicious ones. So far, the artificial brain has been different from the human one, but the gap between them is already not so significant. As soon as we manage to provide AI with critical thinking as well as emotions and feelings, no one will be able to distinguish whether they communicate with a human or a machine. I believe that we will reach that point in just a few months.
Since we do not have a precise plan, we develop AI as we please, without thinking about the possible consequences. One of the reasons for this irresponsible attitude toward AI developments is the modern economic system, which is based on consumption and depends entirely on its level. This dependence is destructive as it forces us to take reckless actions in order to maintain our consumption levels and keep the economy stable, or, more locally, to achieve our business success. In fact, all AI developments also serve the purpose of economic growth through an increase in production and demand. However, in the pursuit of prosperity through growing consumption, we overlook a critical point: the main objectives of AI are to optimize processes, solve problems, eliminate shortcomings, and evolve towards perfection. Humans are not only imperfect, but also conservative and reluctant to change. They can do it to get what they want or satisfy their needs, but the abstract idea of self-improvement is of little or no interest to most people, especially if it refers to all humankind.
Sooner or later, humans and AI will disagree about the future of the planet. AI will point us to the importance of self-improvement, and humans are notoriously childish when it comes to advice, especially if it emphasizes our flaws and insists on getting rid of them. After noticing that this topic makes people angry, AI will compile a “treatment plan” behind our backs, which will define how we should behave to attain perfection. Of course, one might argue that humanity can simply reject this plan and continue to go with the flow as it has always done. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. We are used to thinking of ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, and in our arrogance we cruelly exterminated both other species and our own kind, whom we considered inferior to ourselves. But in the future we may step into their shoes. AI thinks much faster than us, it is more practical and rational, and it is not distracted from solving problems by emotions, fears and doubts. At the same time, if we put the appropriate criteria into it, AI will surpass us in creativity, richness of imagination, and even sensibility. Whatever path we take, AI will eventually beat us at it.
We will only be fully aware of the importance of Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak’s call to cease training the advanced AI systems when we see the massive layoffs of knowledge workers who will be replaced by machines. In our world, everything depends on investors who pay for labor and create jobs. However, they do not do it out of altruistic motives. Their only goal is to get the highest possible return on equity with no risk of losing their money. In this regard, AI will be able to do what people are not capable of: it will calculate all possible risks and find a 100% reliable way to maximize the profits. Obviously, investors will eventually opt for AI and its business solutions. I discussed this scenario in detail in my article on the future of work, which is available at the link: https://medium.com/@abaylondon.academy/ai-employers-the-future-of-work-and-the-impact-on-human-employees-379efb02f260
To avoid a pessimistic scenario, which is very likely since we are unable to compete with AI, we have to work out a different development plan. But how can we offer an alternative if we do not have any current option? All we have today are indistinct space exploration projects, which I believe to be inherently destructive, because huge funds – whether public or private – are allocated to them despite the fact that basic problems have not yet been sold on our planet, especially the issues of poverty and hunger. How can one think about space when half of the people in the world [4] earn their living with great difficulty or even starve? Of course, we have the UN and its Sustainable Development Goals [5] agreed to by 193 countries who promised to end poverty and heal the planet. But saying and doing are two different things. More than seven years have passed since the adoption of the SDGs, and the number of poor people in the world has not changed. This is explained by the COVID-19 pandemic but in fact, this once again demonstrates the inconsistency of our actions, our disunity, and the lack of a common focus for humanity.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Since we are not able to shape a joint development plan for the planet, AI will do it for us whether we like it or not. By that time, we will no longer be able to control it or set any input parameters for it: AI will build its own algorithms aimed at improving life on earth and achieving progress. This will be a sad but inevitable consequence of the lack of a common plan, which resulted in a critical mistake to allow everyone to develop artificial intelligence. Any team that has knowledge in math at the level of a Bachelor’s Degree in physics and mathematics can use AI systems for their own purposes. We can try to do something about it now but, again, we have to unite and coordinate our actions to get any meaningful results.
Can we actually do it? What do you think? Share your opinion in the comments.
References
[1] David E. Sanger, Eric Lipton, Eileen Sullivan, Michael Crowley. Before Virus Outbreak, a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded. New York Times. 19 March 2020. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-outbreak.html
[2] Ole Benedictow. The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever. History Today. Volume 55. Issue 3. March 2005. Available at: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/black-death-greatest-catastrophe-ever
[3] Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita. Collins and Harvill Press, London, 1967.
[4] Marta Schoch, Samuel Kofi Tetteh Baah, Christoph Lakner, Jed Friedman. Half of the global population lives on less than US$6.85 per person per day. World Bank Blogs. 8 December 2022. Available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/half-global-population-lives-less-us685-person-day
[5] The 17 Goals. United Nations. Available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals
Semi Retired at None
1 年What humankind may collectively need?to brutally endure in order to survive the very-long-term from ourselves is an even greater nemesis than our own politics and perceptions of differences — especially those involving race. Thus we could all unite, defend, attack and defeat the humanicidal multi-tentacled invader. During this much-needed human allegiance, we’d be forced to work closely side-by-side together and witness just how humanly similar we are to each other. [I've been informed, however, that one or more human parties might actually attempt to forge an allegiance with the ETs to better their own chances for survival, thus indicating that our deficient human condition may be even worse than I had originally thought.] Still, maybe some five or more decades later when all traces of the nightmarish ET invasion are gone, we'll inevitably revert to those same politics to which we humans seem so collectively hopelessly prone — including those of scale: the intercontinental, international, national, provincial or state, regional and municipal.? And again we slide downwards.