Homo Deus
I just finished reading the follow up to Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens, Homo Deus, and the following is my summary of what I’ve taken from it:
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“In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.” Humans and technology are likely to continue merging together until we’re no longer purely organic beings—Sapiens. This is from which the title, Home Deus, is derived. A species in which we’ll have evolved with our own due power.
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A.I. and machine learning exemplifies intelligence decoupling from consciousness. Because of this, human capabilities are gradually being undermined, automated, and outsources. Soon enough, technological innovations will far surpass the mental and physical capacity of humans, and thus humans’ most valuable resource to then offer will likely be our personal data. The power of artificial intelligence lies in algorithms, and algorithms rely on data.
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“The shifting of authority from humans to algorithms is happening all around us, not as a result of some momentous governmental decision, but due to a flood of mundane personal choices.”
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As our lives become more and more digitized, and as we choose to share more of our personal lives, thoughts, and decisions through social media and other technological means, these algorithms will continue learning until they know us personally, and our species as a whole, better than we know ourselves. I personally hold optimism for this to foster a more utopian than dystopian future. My hope is that through automation and outsourcing, our species will finally be able to live a life of leisure and pleasure, devoid of stress and worry.
Ellie Rex
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