McKibben shifts his focus away from climate change and towards the rise of artificial intelligence.

In part three of Falter, McKibben shifts his focus away from climate change and towards the rise of artificial intelligence. Modern technology, such as genetic engineering and AI, has drastically changed the landscape of the “human game” by introducing a new dimension to our existential inquiry. While climate change directly challenges our ability to survive on the earth in the immediate future, modern technology challenges our very purpose and place on the earth. Homo sapiens, wise men, seem to be on the precipice of losing their exalted status as “wise” if general AI is able to do everything that humans are capable of, but better. Even if we navigate through the current climate change crisis, what role do humans have to play on a planet where our inventions have rendered us unnecessary?

We are currently living through the artificial intelligence renaissance and are beginning to transition from “weak” to “strong” AI. Weak AI is a narrow form of intelligence in which a computer is extremely good at a single specialized task, such as playing chess or recognizing a face. Strong AI is broad intelligence that has “the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.” (McKibben, 136) Whereas weak AI is extremely useful in aiding humans but only has the capability to replace human work in specific sectors, strong AI threatens to replace humans at nearly every capacity as it is not bound by the biological constraints that humans are. For strong AI, there exists a threshold point at which a chain reaction of evolutionary AI begins. Consider a computer that is capable of coding and producing itself better than a human. It can do so on a very short timescale and that subsequent computer with a more intelligent software design has more capability to repeat the process at a higher level, etc. At this point, the AI has become its own master and humans are intellectually left in the dust.

Computers are naturally unbounded by biological constraints and with recent developments in genomic sequencing and editing, it appears that humans may be artificially unbounded as well. Jennifer Doudna, of Cal Berkeley (where I’ll be this fall 🙂 ), is the face of the current revolution in genome engineering due to her work with the CRSPR-Cas9 system that has the ability to selectively target “preprogrammed” sections of genetic code to make a precise incision at that point. CRSPR is so powerful because it is a type of genome surgery that opens the door to rewriting genetic code, like a wordprocessor can alter a text document. In Doudna’s words, “practically overnight, we have found ourselves on the cusp of a new age in genetic engineering and biological mastery.” (McKibben, 140) There are two major implications for how this technology may be used.

First, it can be used in “somatic genetic engineering” where patients whose genome contains mutations related to disease can be cured by genetically engineering cells containing their DNA but with the mutation fixed. This has vast potential to reduce the suffering of millions of people with diseases such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. The second implication is that genetic engineering can be done on germ cells that are heritable. This opens the door to “designer babies” where the genetic sequence of a baby is altered before germination to select for desirable traits such as intelligence, height, happiness, and nearly anything characteristic that science is able to correlate with gene phenotypes. As in the case of strong AI, the ability to create ever increasingly smart and beautiful offspring creates an evolutionary cycle that is so rapid that everything and everyone becomes obsolete within years as they are replaced with more capable people and computers.

The rapid rise in AI and genome engineering technology that has occurred in the last two decades begs the question: is this something that we want? To some extent, this progress has a scientific inertia behind it that seems unstoppable but it also poses serious threats to the human game. McKibben summarizes, “these technologies are about replacing people who are doing their work perfectly well; it’s just that machines can do the work more cheaply.” (McKibben, 154) While it’s nice for the top management to have the ground level work done more cheaply, this has the consequence of displacing many people’s jobs without offering foreseeable replacement work in which people can find both livelihood and meaning. Self-driving cars will replace truck drivers, the “single most common occupation.” What jobs are truck drivers supposed to find once this occurs so that they can continue to feed their families? The job displacement imparted by AI will completely restructure our economy and society. Some individuals predict that the entire middle class will become a “servant class” that caters to the needs of the ultra-wealthy in tasks that robots are unable to do, such as “service jobs of love” (McKibben, 155). Unless the entire economy is restructured in some Marxist form of communism, this will leave the majority of people in our society destitute and competing to “accompany an older person to visit the doctor.” Is this the future that we want? McKibben answers with a resounding no. The pace, scale, and complexity of modern advancements in technology and resultant climate change have seemed to disconnect humanity with the grounding reality of the human game, i.e. what it means to be human and how we choose to spend our lives. McKibben reminds us that “the story is the point” (McKibben, 165). He uses the story of Lance Armstrong to exemplify how hollow the story becomes when the result is pre-engineered from the start. Before knowing that Armstrong was known to use PEDs, his story inspired hope and positivity to millions as they watched him persevere with grit and determination to accomplish extraordinary feats. Once it was known that he’d cheated, the whole story became devoid of any positive meaning. It didn’t matter what he’d accomplished because his journey hadn’t been authentic. Similarly, how can children who have been pre-engineered as embryo’s to be hyper-intelligent take any satisfaction by being admitted to Harvard? They were designed to do so and the gratification of the accomplishment is in essence stolen from them. They are living in a situation where they either live up to expectations or they fail. Humans are born penniless and naked and they die so. All of the accomplishments, money, and accolades obtained in life are trinkets that do not give human life meaning. The journey is the goal and forgetting this by emphasizing only the end result, strips human life of its humanity.

Part 3

What’s the difference between “weak AI” and “strong AI”? Compare and contrast each the evidence McKibben discusses on pages 136 thru 138.

The fundamental difference between “weak AI” and “strong AI” rests fundamentally in the scope and versatility that these two types of artificial intelligence possess. A weak AI system, for instance, is by definition extremely task specific, and has a limited ability to learn from its environment. An excellent example of this is our contemporary use of suggestions in word processing technology offered on many computers, tablets, and smartphones. While it may be uncanny in terms of suggesting a set of responses built off the context of what is written or dictated, it is fundamentally unable to wash dishes or evaluate athletic performance for instance. This is different in “Strong AI” systems which is when the “computer [is] as smart as a human across the board” (author’s italics) (McKibben 137), meaning that the machinery of a computer could independently be capable to something approximating rational thought across the whole litany of situations and experiences that humans typically have.

In having a machine as intelligent or more intelligent than the average human, one could think of this “strong AI” as a sort of philosophizing machine rather than a sophisticated yet specialized and specific for of AI in its “soft” sense. In the latter case the AI is not much more than a sophisticated cog in a machine designed towards efficiency in a particular set of tasks, while in the former, as McKibben relates in his conversation with Tim Urban, the AI is building upon itself transversally and beyond any particular ordinance, it is capable, in essences, of independent thought and inquiry, and to build upon itself at staggering speed, reaching possible quadruple digit IQ capacity in a relatively short time.

Of all of the previous breakthroughs on genetic engineering discussed in the opening of the chapter (139—40), nothing is more consequential than CRISPR. What makes CRISPR so powerful of a game changer? Discuss at least two examples McKibben discusses on pages 140 thru the top of 142.

As is the analogy made in Mr. McKibben’s book, the discovery and instrumentalization of CRISPR DNA structures in order to identify genomes of different species in a much more efficient and cost-effective way. The CRISPR technique was analogue to a genetic “word processor” (McKibben 141), making editing of genetic information and instruction a stunningly easy process. Some of the examples that are given as to how this technology has been used is to edit the muscularity of dogs, generating beagle specimens with “’Schwarzenegger-like supermuscular physiques’ by making ‘single letter DNA changes to a gene that controls muscle formation’” (141). Another example given is the inactivation of pig growth genes to create what are now fairly common pets such as mini pigs.

The possibility of having a technology that makes it so very easy and inexpensive to “editorialize” the genetic conformation of all sorts of genomes brings into question a huge moral and philosophical conundrum of whether or not these techniques and gene treatment should be applied to enhance human DNA towards various ends, and if the answer to that initial question was not hard enough, the following question would be for what and under what circumstances should these bioengineering experiments happen on humans?  Will this lead to a speciation of Homo sapiens as McKibben, Yuval Harari, and even Nietzsche’s Ubermensch would suggest are likely and even unavoidable in the long term?  This is the game changing nature of the ability to quite literally become Prometheus playing in the clay, the consequences of which may yet be that of the mythical pandoras pithos (box) brought to reality.

What evidence does McKibben provide in support of Jennifer Doudna’s statement “If you think our world is unequal now…just imagine it stratified along both socio-economic and genetic lines” (emphasis original, 153). List two examples from pages 151 to 154.
The evidence that McKibben supplies to support the idea of genetic modification in humans as a prospect that would dramatically increase inequalities in both opportunities and outcomes for those who are able to have access to the gene enhancement technology and make what would become the “naturals” uncompetitive for highly qualified positions and opportunities. These inequalities will not be subject to circumstance as they are in most cases today, they will in fact, be quite literally engraved into the DNA of those whose parents are able to afford genetic enhancement.

The examples that McKibben and his interviewees illustrate are societal and biological inequality. The societal influence would be that of arranged or highly selective mating partners chosen for a GenRich child or at least heavily pressured to mate and procreate with other gene enhanced specimens as to not dilute the parent’s investment in the enhancements, which would potentially create a new caste system for GenRich and “natural” people. The biological example is almost more disturbing, given that it posits that there would be a speciation event in a few generations between natural humans (poor and middle class) and the genetically enhanced oligarchy, rendering them to have “‘no ability to crossbreed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee.’” (153)

The ideas that many of the most influential people, especially in Silicon Valley are openly discussing that anxiety, depression, and addiction are the result of “‘malformations of the brain” sends a chilling reminder of the times in which phrenology was a respected practice among the medical community and the havoc and horror that it wrecked on the world. This mindset of those with power and wealth makes the prospect of speciation and moral certainty in genetically editing Homo sapiens out of the wealthy genome is more of a possibility than one gives credit.

In Your Second and Third Post Replies to Other Students (est. up to 500 words)…Respond to at least TWO other students and offer some comparisons, contrasts, critique, analysis, and suggestions of your own as related to their analysis as compared to your own. Look for similarities and differences, and be sure to cite specific examples, critiques, and ideas you’ve discovered along the way.