Introduction
I wrote this piece after reading some papers (I don’t remember exactly which) on attempts to define the moral framework for ethical Artificial Intelligence development and application. It was pretty clear that people who have raised ethical concerns were looking at the ethical A.I. problem from within their own ethical framework, struggling to break free and give up the attachment and bias even temporarily. I can observe the same approach in the field of bioengineering. I must admit that it is natural to cling to our own beliefs when dealing with any dilemma, including foreign and unknown problems. Still, it may also reduce the number and plasticity of our solutions. The danger lies in the assumption that we are dealing with the men-like entity. And using men’s ethical codex for our predicament maybe the last thing to do.
We are in uncharted waters and have no sight of the shore. Using Protagoras’ way of measuring may lead us astray.
Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not
If we are to bridge the gap, then approaching the problem from both ends is a more sensible thing to do. Another dangerous assumption people seem to be making often is that the found ethical framework or code of conduct is stable and will remain unchanged. Knowing that morals are as fluid as ideologies, one must take Nietzsche’s approach – become immoralists to see things clearly and arrive at some workable long lasting prototype. These thoughts beg for a separate article, and I shall defer a more detailed analysis to a later time.
In the last few years, ethical research has definitely picked up, but not much changed in its direction. Some attempts are still weak and clumsy, e.g., backward-looking and stationary. If we keep up this attitude, the resulting framework will almost surely be backward-looking and stiff as a rock. While we are struggling on the ethical side of the fence, the pace of development on the technical side has increased. And it is imperative to keep them in sync. One could even argue that this must be a principal ethical imperative of ethical development of an ethical technology (yes, the repetition of words ethical is intentional).
We are running out of railway, can we stop the train safely?
It becomes more and more evident that we are in a downward spiral of our own destruction. Modern politicians are unable to improve this trajectory. What is not so clearly explained is why they are constantly failing at that task. However, we feel that it would be incorrect and premature to assume that only the politicians are unhealthy, but the rest of the society is healthy. Let us then attempt to review the situation and discover its origins.
To do so, we will depart from the following assumptions. Firstly, we will have to admit that political science, politicians, and society, in general, are failing to recognize and use one simple truth as the first principle in all their actions and decisions – we cannot live a sustainable and happy life without being in harmony with each other and with Nature. And when we reflect on this statement, we have to remember that harmony should include everything we can perceive and understand. Thus, this principle dictates that we have to act responsibly concerning all of us, plant and animal life, both current and future generations. Perhaps even extending this gratitude to inanimate objects and machines is not as an odd idea as it may sound at first, for we have to admit that our new knowledge has constantly proved us wrong in our former primitive understanding of life.
Secondly, we cannot avoid speaking about human progress. It is intertwined with human evolution so tightly that we have to assume that human progress plays a major role in leading to and regulating our current situation. We will also discover other important factors, which we will have to analyze accordingly as they appear.
With that in mind, let us proceed with our inquiry and determine the kinetic nature of human progress. From that perspective, our progress looks like a moving train on a long railway that starts in time immemorial and ends a little beyond our time. While the train is in motion, we are constantly building the railway that directs it. Ironically, but correctly with respect to proportions, political science plays a crucial but relatively small role in this picture. These are the people and body of knowledge that allows us to safely steer the train and find the optimal direction and speed. The people with that knowledge in hand are charting the railway in front of the train.
In the beginning, they could easily keep up with the speed of the train because it was old and slow, and more people were finding the right path, charting it, preparing the foundation, and laying down the tracks. As time passed, more people boarded the train and made it faster. Consequently, fewer people worked on the railway. Thus, the speed of laying down tracks has slowed down, and the train’s speed has increased to a point where the train started to close the distance to the end of the tracks.
Now, we have no means to speed up charting and building the railway and safely stop the train. In other words, our progress has such kinetic energy that we have no means to absorb it without a catastrophe, and our society is about to experience life beyond social and natural rules. At least beyond those rules that we can and have time to carefully craft or understand for such occasions. Then, it becomes clear that catastrophe is imminent if the time to rebuild the breaks is longer than the time it will take for the train to reach the rails’ end. Of course, we speak in relative terms to the total railway distance of many thousands of years. Next, we will discuss these and other aspects of this phenomenon in detail.
Let us clearly think this through. What does it really mean “no means to stop the train safely”? How might it have happened? By this, we mean that human civilization doesn’t have any means, neither technical nor ethical, to prevent the explosive pace of progress without a catastrophe. We are like a virus that multiplies until all living tissue that it has access to is consumed. At which point it deactivates. For it cannot be active without replicating using living tissue. But it also is not without detriment to our own life. We had become so dependent on the fruits of the technical progress that it is undeniable it cannot be slowed down or turned off at our will or quickly.
But enough of this. Let us proceed to seek an answer to the second question, for which we must think about our distant ancestors (or truly any animals in the wilderness) and compare them with our society. The contrast between their lifestyle and ours is striking.
Early human development was predominantly regulated by nature. In the past, many factors had been controlling the human population. Scarcity or abundance of natural resources, natural predators, illness dictated its size. As we conquered many of these factors, we have lost almost all of the control over the population size. What is more, neither our ancestors nor we have learned to ethically self-regulate our population in harmony with the overall resource pool and kindness to future generations and other living beings. On the contrary, scientists are looking for medicine that prolongs the life of an individual. Probably at the expense of some other individual or the entire human civilization. But let us not dwell on the negative effects of the medicine any longer. Instead, we will let the bioethics debate about prolongation of life, at least for now.
Another contrasting difference between our distant ancestors and us is also evident. Their desires and means of subsistence were quite simple. Our, over the years, had acquired intellectual and technical nature. What we have lost in bodily strength we have acquired as intellect and technology. Consequently, our needs and desires had increased and developed with the growth of intellectual capacities beyond those of our distant relatives. Obviously, as our needs and desires increased in quantity and quality, so did the means to satisfy them.
This peculiar feature is undeniable – without control, new progress advancements create new needs that require new progress advancements. This spiral has neither a clear beginning nor an end. And the proportion at which we have lost in bodily strength to that which we have compensated in intellect, automation, and technology is enormous. So is the proportion between the necessities of life versus the needs of modern society. Here our logic arrives when it is clear that the mass and speed of our train are constantly increasing, but there is no sign of restoring the breaks to adequate condition.
But where are we rushing to if not towards self-destruction? It will not be so difficult to prove that human civilization did not come even close to clearly defining, let alone agreeing, on principles of its life and its organic development since ancient times. Its ends are uncertain, and its recklessness is evident. And the results of the progress with undetermined focal points are so more profound due to its incredible acceleration. So, what we found so far is that human progress has no clear aim, it is accelerating, and it doesn’t have breaks.
Think how profound these advancements are on our body and mind. Our body and intellect progressively become outdated. Without any effort at all, we have lost practical knowledge of craftsmanship, hunting, and cultivation. Parents, schools, colleges, and our own life experiences do not teach us anything of that sort. It has become habitual to think about them as primitive. Calculators, computers, and smartphones have encroached on our intellectual functions. And as we contemplate the progress and its effects, we start to understand that there is no limit to the depth of this rabbit hole. We are falling and have no way of slowing the pace or getting back up if we ever need to. The more we go down, the less effective any possible solution is.
Conclusion
As I am re-reading this piece now, it fills me with dread. I must have watched or read something very impressive to produce this. But we should not be panicking. Instead, if you value human life, health, and natural abilities beyond a few generations ahead, educate yourself, help those who are still able to think about ethics outside the box. The cutting-edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, gene therapy, and Internet will change men’s nature and social order for many years ahead. But they are also yet another powerhouse added to the locomotive, pulling the train I’ve described. Battle those who finance or develop them without also investing in and working on ethics. People need to take a breather, step out of the train, and think clearly and rationally. This technological rush is not normal, and cookie cutters, such as millions of lives will be saved, etc., are only a deception considering the fact that billions of lives of those who are not yet born could be jeopardized. They do not even get a say in this dialog, as we hadn’t for the decisions of our fathers. If people really want to insist on true democratization, let them find a way to bring future generations into the decision-making. Until this is discovered, it’s better to take it easy and measure twice or even thrice before making that cut. Let us also not forget Nobel prize laureates for the discoveries we later abandoned and declared inhuman.
People must be vigilant and unbiased when making long-lasting decisions. Emotions are not a good advisor in these matters. The empathy that overwhelms some people in Human Nature Documentary Film about CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology from Wonder Collaborative is only experienced in connection to a limited number of individuals and sometimes even from self-pity. Still, the decisions made under its influence may negatively affect many generations of people for countless centuries without their consent. Once we let the djinn out, as will all technological advances, we will not be able to tame it back should we find unwanted side-effects later on.
Speaking of the djinns that we let out, look at the cowboy science from the technologies as recent as Facebook, Google, and alike. /the social dilemma_ documentary offers a lot of insight into the unforeseeable issues with the Internet-based cutting-edge technologies.
Lastly, as you can see this piece is written against my own unpopular judgment that we should leave normal biological evolution to lead the way to a healthy human as it did for millions of years. Still, I understand that it’s unfeasible to attain that level and we most likely will want to be at the steering wheel. Even so, we should certainly look back at nature and instead of treating it like a thing to be tamed, we should try to learn from her. As Daniel Quinn has said in Ishmael:
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.