The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the potential of bioengineering and AI to enhance human capabilities and the unpredictability of such changes in desires and intentions.
Yuval Noah Harari discusses the concept of superhumans who harness advancements in bioengineering and artificial intelligence to augment their abilities. However, he warns that if individuals modify not only their physical capabilities but also their very thoughts and desires through these technologies, it leads to an unknown future where their goals and intentions could deviate significantly from what we currently understand. This raises important ethical and philosophical questions about the trajectory of human evolution and autonomy.
In practice
This quote can be used in a technology conference to spark discussion about the future of AI.
We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights.
I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.
Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe.
The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be, 'What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?'
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability - you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.
You go to a Japanese restaurant and have a wonderful dish, and the thing to do is take a picture with your phone, put it on Facebook, and see how many likes you get. If you don't share your experiences, they don't become part of the data processing system, and they have no meaning.
Yes. I'm a doctor, an epidemiologist, and lots of my professional colleagues flip back and forth between industry and medical roles. I know them; they are not bad people. But it is possible for good people in bad systems to do things that inflict enormous harm.
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.
It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.
DNA was my only gold rush. I regarded DNA as worth a gold rush.
God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.
Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.