Photo: blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk
Stop us if you’ve heard this before: computers will soon be taking over from humans and will become the only life form on our planet. The future has already started.
Unlike other futurist theories of the kind, James Lovelock’s stands out because, NBC News says, it’s based on decades of research and experience, and a life lived to the fullest for 100 years. Lovelock explores the idea in the book “Novacene,” in which he describes how cyborgs will come to be the final era of life on our planet.
This is both a good and a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Lovelock stops short of saying what form cyborgs will take or how they might react towards the humans who made them, but he does say this: they’re already on the way. He’s referring to the computer program AlphaZero, which taught itself to play Go and soon became the world’s best Go player.
The moment humans created an artificial intelligence system that could build and / or improve itself is the moment Novacene – the new new age – has started, he says.
“Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end,” he says in the book. "The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call ‘cyborgs’ that will have designed and built themselves,” Lovelock writes.
The environmentalist imagines cyborgs could consider humans in 2 ways: they could dismiss us as part of the background or they could appreciate us as we do plant life. He’s hoping for the latter but underlines that in both cases, human life would soon cease to exist. When our planet becomes too hot even for synthetic life, in about a billion years or so, cyborgs will die too – or migrate to another planet, if they become advanced enough.
“I think of cyborgs as another kingdom of life,” he says. “They will stand to us in much the same way as we ourselves, as a kingdom of animals, stand to plants. The Novacene will probably be the final era of life on Earth.”
Don’t call Lovelock a pessimist, though. Fully knowing that all living things must die, so must our planet and this scenario with the cyborgs is actually an optimist one, he says.
So... we’ve had a good run.
This is both a good and a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Lovelock stops short of saying what form cyborgs will take or how they might react towards the humans who made them, but he does say this: they’re already on the way. He’s referring to the computer program AlphaZero, which taught itself to play Go and soon became the world’s best Go player.
The moment humans created an artificial intelligence system that could build and / or improve itself is the moment Novacene – the new new age – has started, he says.
“Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end,” he says in the book. "The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call ‘cyborgs’ that will have designed and built themselves,” Lovelock writes.
The environmentalist imagines cyborgs could consider humans in 2 ways: they could dismiss us as part of the background or they could appreciate us as we do plant life. He’s hoping for the latter but underlines that in both cases, human life would soon cease to exist. When our planet becomes too hot even for synthetic life, in about a billion years or so, cyborgs will die too – or migrate to another planet, if they become advanced enough.
“I think of cyborgs as another kingdom of life,” he says. “They will stand to us in much the same way as we ourselves, as a kingdom of animals, stand to plants. The Novacene will probably be the final era of life on Earth.”
Don’t call Lovelock a pessimist, though. Fully knowing that all living things must die, so must our planet and this scenario with the cyborgs is actually an optimist one, he says.
So... we’ve had a good run.
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