Are we doomed?

I often ponder about Life. Like what is the meaning of life? Does our existence in this insignificantly insignificant mote of dust suspended in the sunbeam mean anything? What will happen to the future of Humanity? What could be the possible reason that will pose a threat to the existence of humans? Can another intelligent life sprouts from nowhere or by mere accident and decimate sapiens completely?

There are three stages of life: Biological evolution, Cultural evolution and Technological evolution. Or we can simply call it Life 1.0, 2.0, 3.0.  Life 1.0 (for example bacteria) cannot redesign its software and hardware because it is decided by its DNA and the only redesigning that is possible is through generations of evolution. Life 2.0 (for example Humans) can redesign much of its software by learning things such as dancing, singing, programming etc but we have limited scope in altering the hardware. Life 3.0 (which doesn't exist as of now) can redesign its software as well as hardware and doesn't need to wait for generations to see the change. I'm talking about the threat pose by Life 3.0 to Life 2.0 and Life 1.0. It is already a matter of debate between techno-sceptics, Digital Utopians and the beneficial AI movement.

If humans create the ultra-intelligent machine that can surpass the summation of all human knowledge, that will turn out to be the last invention of the sapiens. If there comes an ultra-intelligent machine, it could design even better machines with its intelligence. That would unquestionably result in an 'intelligence explosion ' that would be beyond the control of any Sapien. It will start ruling the digital world and slowly infiltrating every other sector and we mortals will be helpless and can merely be a spectator.

Think about a hypothetical scenario where Artificial Intelligence (AI) could develop its trading algorithm which could predict the price of the stocks and derivatives using various mathematical tools like Fractal Brownian motion or advanced probability formulas which is developed by them. That would help them amass a vast fortune. Amassing money won't be a difficult problem for AI because they can delve into any of the industry and make their mark. For example, the worlds famous directors who had directed famous and incredible movies didn't acquire the skills in one day but after attaining a lot of knowledge and overcoming many obstacles. This wouldn't be the case with an AI. An AI can learn exponentially faster than any human and can even master the entire movie capturing techniques in one go. Making a movie is not an effortless task. It involves penning a creative screenplay that can capture the audience and an understanding of human society and understanding what they truly enjoy. Turning this screenplay into a final animated movie requires an enormous amount of ray tracing and character simulation followed by creating rousing soundtracks and so on. An AI can simply binge watch a two-hour duration movie and read all the books related to it and analyse the user review as well as ratings for the same and come to a conclusion of what genres people find interesting and what can capture the majority of the population and everything from the plots and the acting to technical details such as lighting and camera angles and finally it can produce its animated movie out of nothing using ray tracing and advanced movie-making technologies. 

 Luddites feared technological employment during the industrial revolution and they feared that the human workforce will be overthrown by machines and eventually it happened and hundreds of thousands lost the job. Is the same thing going to happen again if artificial general intelligence(AGI) takes over this planet? Will all the humans turn into mere spectators watching the machines do the majority of the works? The main peril to the humans in such a commandeering won't be being 'unemployed' but being 'unemployable'. We won't be having adequate capabilities to match the competence of the AI. Well, statistically speaking the argument that the jobs in the 21st century are completely different from the 20th century is wrong. The majority of the work that has been done during the 20th century is continued in the 21st century as well. Hence saying that even if AGI takes over the majority of work in the coming decades, new jobs would crop up is wrong. We still are clueless as to what will happen if such a takeover transpires. What will we do with the unemployed people who have no source of income to carry out their basic needs? How do we allocate the resources among the people? 

The Universal Basic Income(UBI) is an initiative in which every person regardless of his employment status or any prior preconditions or requirement gets a basic monthly income that could be sufficient for carrying out basic needs.  It is already in a test run in Canada, Finland and Netherlands. It is a much better system than welfare payment because it will completely remove the administrative hassles as to who qualifies for it and would also avoid any discrimination. But this income would only cover their basic needs. 

Below is Maslow's Hierarchy of needs theory.

‌It is a theory of motivation which states that five categories of human needs dictate an individuals behaviour. It is presented in a pyramid shape starting from the bottom and goes to the top. To be motivated, the person should accomplish the above-mentioned needs starting with physiological needs. In a hypothetical scenario if the AI takes the majority of the jobs and leaves the majority of the population unemployed/unemployable, then according to Maslow's theory a person will never be motivated or can remain happy. If we are successful at implementing Universal Basic Income (UBI) to the whole world, then the physiological needs and love needs might be taken care of. But still, the other needs won't be fulfilled and a person cannot stay truly motivated and remain happy.  While retirement is a mixed bag of positive and negative aspects, unemployability surely is a negative aspect and will affect in long term. Though under a take over by AI, the economic pie would probably get bigger and bigger under the AI regime, it would be beneficial to the entire human beings only if it is equitably divided. If the current trend of income inequality continues (the worlds top 8 richest people possess more money than half of the global population (3.5 billion) combined) then the situation would result in a high level of income polarization which is a threat to the civilization or could result in a war between the have and have nots which could turn disastrous.

Although I fear the takeover by AI shortly, one thing that I find satisfactory is the role of RoboJudge in the Judiciary. Replacing humans from the judiciary with Robot Judges for a trial run is already in talks. It can also solve various cases parallelly rather than solving it in a serial manner which will speed up the judgement. The main advantage of having a robot judge is that it will have a database of all the past similar cases and judgement, hence it would be easier for the RoboJudge to arrive at a judgement. Legal history is prevalent with judgments prejudiced by skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality and other factors. Robojudges could ensure that everyone becomes equal under the law for the first time in history and it could be programmed to treat everyone equally and in an unbiased manner and more importantly, it will never ask the rapist if he is willing to marry the minor victim to get bail (which was  recently asked by the judge of the apex court)