A few months ago, an AI researcher from Europe attended a dinner party in Silicon Valley. During one of the many courses, the host addressed his guests, all of whom worked in AI. The researcher paraphrased his message like this: \u201cIsn\u2019t it amazing that we are the last generation of humans who will need to think about procreating biologically? We were lucky enough to be born at a time where we can simply upload our consciousnesses instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t see that coming,\u201d the researcher told me. \u201cI was just enjoying my fish.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the host was serious. His words struck the researcher as the kind of comment a well-informed person might have made 100 years ago, once antibiotics had been invented: \u201cAren\u2019t we lucky that we came after?\u201d<\/p>\n
Suddenly all the guests were talking about \u201cmind children\u201d, and the researcher turned to their neighbour to ask what this phrase meant. \u201cHe said, \u2018Oh this is the book,\u2019 and, \u2018Haven\u2019t you read the book?\u2019 and, \u2018Oh my God, you should really read the book.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation markIs humanity staring down its own last act?<\/p>\n
The book in question was Hans Moravec\u2019s Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, which was first published in 1988, and which at the time, according to economist and futurist Robin Hanson of George Mason University, caused a big splash in a small pond \u2013 the community of robotics and machine-learning experts to which Moravec belonged.<\/p>\n
Moravec\u2019s book is more philosophical treatise than technological manual, but the central idea is that cultural evolution has long since taken over from biological evolution as the most powerful force shaping humanity, and the logical extrapolation of this is that the information that encodes our future selves would soon be packed into hardware and software rather than DNA. These mind children could be equipped with soft, squishy bodies, like real children, but they could also take a kaleidoscope of other physical \u2013 or indeed non-physical \u2013 forms.<\/p>\n
Moravec observed that the ultimate consequences of this revolution were unknown, but he also appeared to welcome it. Within a century, he wrote, machines would exist \u201cin whom we can take pride when they refer to themselves as our descendants\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hanson shares his conviction that the revolution is inevitable, as soon as AI attains something experts agree to call human-level intelligence. \u201cWe are going to generate an explosion of things like us in the future, who will be different from us in many ways,\u201d Hanson says. \u201cTo the extent that they have minds somewhat like ours, they are our mind children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angela Aristidou, who studies the real-life deployment of AI at University College London, is not surprised that Moravec\u2019s book is enjoying a revival. She says that what in 1988 might have read like science fiction \u2013 and still might to most of us \u2013 looks eminently realisable to those in the know. Elon Musk\u2019s pronatalist stance is the exception among tech types, she says, while the idea that the clock is ticking on biological reproduction is far more common \u2013 and the harbingers of that (perhaps self-fulfilling) prophecy are there for all to see. Delegates to this year\u2019s Nvidia GTC in San Jose, California, a major AI conference, were treated to an AI avatar<\/a> of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, for\u00a0example.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the phenomenon of human-AI weddings. Such unions obviously can\u2019t produce biological offspring, but since the human in the relationship has usually created their ideal romantic partner in the AI, Aristidou asks, rhetorically: \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t they also devise their ideal child?\u201d.<\/p>\n In thinking about this post-biological future, though, we have to stretch our concept of \u201cchild\u201d. The new entity could be an AI that human parents lovingly and jointly sculpt to meld the perceived best parts of themselves \u2013 as is already technically possible with gene editing in biological reproduction \u2013 but given that we\u2019ll be doing away with birth, death and generations, as these concepts are ordinarily understood, it could also be something quite different.<\/p>\n A human could simply upload their own consciousness so that it outlives their physical shell, in which case the child is something closer to a clone. The human could transfer some of their consciousness into their AI companion, or conversely devise an AI companion that they perceived to be the opposite of themselves, in the belief that opposites attract. In all cases, a new entity emerges, but the line between self, partner and offspring is blurred. If that sounds incestuous, remember that there\u2019s no risk of the medical conditions associated with inbreeding, though there could be others.<\/p>\n Aristidou doesn\u2019t doubt that AIs can augment human relationships. They have been shown<\/a> to be helpful as assistants in a therapeutic context, for example, or in overcoming<\/a> loneliness. But she\u2019s concerned about what happens when AIs become human substitutes. If a human can delete their AI spouse, she says: \u201cHow does that work as an equitable marriage the way we understand it?\u201d<\/p>\n She also worries that a two-tier society will emerge, in which a tech-savvy, well-resourced elite customises its AI creations for high realism, maintaining control over their settings and updates, while everybody else has to make do with cheaper, off-the-shelf products that place them at the whim of developers \u2013 \u201cas if there\u2019s three entities in this relationship: the human, the AI companion, the AI developer\u201d. Among the many ethical, legal and practical issues this throws up is whether the developer would be considered a co-parent to a mind child.<\/p>\n Hanson says there are legal scholars and ethicists thinking about such things, but until society takes its postbiological future seriously, the safeguards they are\u00a0proposing have no hope of being debated, let\u00a0alone\u00a0implemented.<\/p>\n Nor is anybody discussing arguably the thorniest issue of all: is humanity staring down its own last act? Hanson says that the emergence of more complex lifeforms doesn\u2019t necessitate the extinction of older, simpler ones \u2013 or there\u2019d be no more bacteria on Earth. But if that thought strikes you as less than reassuring, take a leaf out of Moravec\u2019s book and focus on the positives. \u201cVery little need be lost in this passing of the torch,\u201d he wrote in 1988. \u201c[It] will be in our artificial offspring\u2019s power, and to their benefit, to remember almost everything about us, even perhaps, the detailed workings of individual human minds.\u201d<\/p>\n Further reading<\/p>\n Empire of AI<\/a> <\/a>by Karen Hao, (Penguin, \u00a312.99)<\/p>\n