Nonbiological Man: He’s Closer Than You Think
The very nature of what it means to be human is being both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. The rate of this “paradigm shift” is now doubling every decade, so the 21st century will actually see 20,000 years of progress at today’s pace. Computation, communication, biological technologies (for example, DNA sequencing), brain scanning, knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating at an even faster pace, generally doubling in performance, capacity, and bandwidth every year. Three-dimensional molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level “strong” AI well before 2030. The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse-engineering of the human brain, a process well under way. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, we will ultimately merge with our machines, live indefinitely, and be a billion times more intelligent…all within the next three to four decades.
We will connect our biological neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud. This will be done by using medical nano-robots that go into the brain through the capillaries and provide wireless communication between our neocortical modules and the cloud in the same way that your smartphone today has wireless communication with the cloud. And the same way that your smartphone today amplifies its capabilities by connecting to many computers in the cloud, we will do the same thing with our neocortex.
This is a 2030s and 2040s scenario. Our thinking then will become a hybrid of the biological and nonbiological thinking in the cloud. As a result, we will become smarter, more musical, funnier, etc. But our thinking will become increasingly nonbiological as we extend further into the cloud and as the cloud becomes more powerful.
[Don’t worry about AI, says Garry Kasparov. Authoritarianism is the greatest threat to our future.]
Digital processes are inherently backed up, and we in turn will be able to back up our “mind file” or at least most of it. Being backed up is not an absolute guarantee of “living forever,” which will be clear to anyone who has ever lost a file, but it does provide another layer of protection. I don’t like to speak about immortality but rather indefinite extensions to the existence of our mind file. The mind file is not just an abstraction—there is literally information in our brains that defines our memories, our skills, and our personality. And it is not backed up today. Its survival is dependent on the survival of one piece of hardware. So being able to back up our mind file or most of it will provide significant added protection.
But it is not an absolute protection. I won’t be able to come to you at some point in the future and say, “I’ve done it, I’ve lived forever,” because it is never forever.
This essay was originally published in 2018 in Encyclopædia Britannica Anniversary Edition: 250 Years of Excellence (1768–2018).