The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (54 page)

N
ED
:
These superintelligences won’t eat food. They won’t breathe air. They won’t reproduce through sex. . . . So just how are they human?

R
AY
:
We’re going to merge with our technology. We’re already starting to do that in 2004, even if most of the machines are not yet inside our bodies and brains. Our machines nonetheless extend the reach of our intelligence. Extending our reach has always been the nature of being human
.

N
ED
:
Look, saying that these superintelligent nonbiological entities are human is like saying that we’re basically bacteria. After all, we’re evolved from them also
.

R
AY
:
It’s true that a contemporary human is a collection of cells, and that we are a product of evolution, indeed its cutting edge. But extending our intelligence by reverse engineering it, modeling it, simulating it, reinstantiating it on more capable substrates, and modifying and extending it is the next step in its evolution. It was the fate of bacteria to evolve into a technology-creating species. And it’s our destiny now to evolve into the vast intelligence of the Singularity
.

CHAPTER SIX

The Impact . . .

The future enters into us in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.

                   —R
AINER
M
ARIA
R
ILKE

One of the biggest flaws in the common conception of the future is that the future is something that happens to us, not something we create.

                   —M
ICHAEL
A
NISSIMOV

“Playing God” is actually the highest expression of human nature. The urges to improve ourselves, to master our environment, and to set our children on the best path possible have been the fundamental driving forces of all of human history. Without these urges to “play God,” the world as we know it wouldn’t exist today. A few million humans would live in savannahs and forests, eking out a hunter-gatherer existence, without writing or history or mathematics or an appreciation of the intricacies of their own universe and their own inner workings.

                   —R
AMEZ
N
AAM

A
Panoply of Impacts.
What will be the nature of human experience once nonbiological intelligence predominates? What are the implications for the human-machine civilization when strong AI and nano-technology can create any product, any situation, any environment
that we can imagine
at will? I stress the role of imagination here because we will still be constrained in our creations to what we can imagine. But our tools for bringing imagination to life are growing exponentially more powerful.

As the Singularity approaches we will have to reconsider our ideas about the nature of human life and redesign our human institutions. We will explore a few of these ideas and institutions in this chapter.

For example, the intertwined revolutions of G, N, and R will transform our frail version 1.0 human bodies into their far more durable and capable version
2.0 counterparts. Billions of nanobots will travel through the bloodstream in our bodies and brains. In our bodies, they will destroy pathogens, correct DNA errors, eliminate toxins, and perform many other tasks to enhance our physical well-being. As a result, we will be able to live indefinitely without aging.

In our brains, the massively distributed nanobots will interact with our biological neurons. This will provide full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses, as well as neurological correlates of our emotions, from within the nervous system. More important, this intimate connection between our biological thinking and the nonbiological intelligence we are creating will profoundly expand human intelligence.

Warfare will move toward nanobot-based weapons, as well as cyber-weapons. Learning will first move online, but once our brains are online we will be able to download new knowledge and skills. The role of work will be to create knowledge of all kinds, from music and art to math and science. The role of play will be, well, to create knowledge, so there won’t be a clear distinction between work and play.

Intelligence on and around the Earth will continue to expand exponentially until we reach the limits of matter and energy to support intelligent computation. As we approach this limit in our corner of the galaxy, the intelligence of our civilization will expand outward into the rest of the universe, quickly reaching the fastest speed possible. We understand that speed to be the speed of light, but there are suggestions that we may be able to circumvent this apparent limit (possibly by taking shortcuts through wormholes, for example).

. . . on the Human Body

So many different people to be.

                   —D
ONOVAN
¹

Cosmetic baby, plug into me
And never, ever find another.
And I realize no one’s wise
To my plastic fantastic lover
.

                   —J
EFFERSON
A
IRPLANE
,
“P
LASTIC
F
ANTASTIC
L
OVER”

Our machines will become much more like us, and we will become much more like our machines.

                   —R
ODNEY
B
ROOKS

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
.

                   —W
ILLIAM
B
UTLER
Y
EATS,
“S
AILING TO
B
YZANTIUM
”

A radical upgrading of our bodies’ physical and mental systems is already under way, using biotechnology and emerging genetic-engineering technologies. Beyond the next two decades we will use nanoengineered methods such as nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs.

A New Way of Eating.
Sex has largely been separated from its biological function. For the most part, we engage in sexual activity for intimate communication and sensual pleasure, not reproduction. Conversely, we have devised multiple methods for creating babies without physical sex, albeit most reproduction does still derive from the sex act. This disentanglement of sex from its biological function is not condoned by all sectors of society, but it has been readily, even eagerly, adopted by the mainstream in the developed world.

So why don’t we provide the same extrication of purpose from biology for another activity that also provides both social intimacy and sensual pleasure—namely, eating? The original biological purpose of consuming food was to provide the bloodstream with nutrients, which were then delivered to each of our trillions of cells. These nutrients include caloric (energy-bearing) substances such as glucose (mainly from carbohydrates), proteins, fats, and a myriad of trace molecules, such as vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals that provide building blocks and enzymes for diverse metabolic processes.

Like any other major human biological system, digestion is astonishing in its intricacy, enabling our bodies to extract the complex resources needed to survive, despite sharply varying conditions, while at the same time filtering out a multiplicity of toxins. Our knowledge of the complex pathways underlying digestion is rapidly expanding, although there is still a great deal we do not fully understand.

But we do know that our digestive processes, in particular, are optimized for a period in our evolutionary development that is dramatically dissimilar to the one in which we now find ourselves. For most of our history we faced a high likelihood that the next foraging or hunting season (and for a brief, relatively recent period, the next planting season) might be catastrophically lean. It made sense, therefore, for our bodies to hold on to every possible calorie we consumed. Today that biological strategy is counterproductive and has become the
outdated metabolic programming that underlies our contemporary epidemic of obesity and fuels pathological processes of degenerative disease, such as coronary artery disease and Type II diabetes.

Consider the reasons that the designs of our digestive and other bodily systems are far from optimal for current conditions. Until recently (on an evolutionary timescale) it was not in the interest of the species for old people like myself (I was born in 1948) to use up the limited resources of the clan. Evolution favored a short lifespan—life expectancy was thirty-seven years as recently as two centuries ago—to allow restricted reserves to be devoted to the young, those caring for them, and those strong enough to perform intense physical work. As discussed earlier, the so-called grandma hypothesis (which suggests that a small number of “wise” elderly members of the tribe were beneficial to the human species) does not appreciably challenge the observation that there was no strong selective pressure for genes that significantly extended human longevity.

We now live in an era of great material abundance, at least in technologically advanced nations. Most work requires mental effort rather than physical exertion. A century ago 30 percent of the U.S. workforce was employed on farms, with another 30 percent in factories. Both of these figures are now under 3 percent.
²
Many of today’s job categories, ranging from flight controller to Web designer, simply didn’t exist a century ago. Circa 2004 we have the opportunity to continue to contribute to our civilization’s exponentially growing knowledge base—which is, incidentally, a unique attribute of our species—well past our child-rearing days. (As a baby boomer myself, that is certainly my view.)

Our species has already augmented our natural lifespan through our technology: drugs, supplements, replacement parts for virtually all bodily systems, and many other interventions. We have devices to replace our hips, knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists, jaws, teeth, skin, arteries, veins, heart valves, arms, legs, feet, fingers, and toes, and systems to replace more complex organs (for example, our hearts) are beginning to be introduced. As we learn the operating principles of the human body and brain, we will soon be in a position to design vastly superior systems that will last longer and perform better, without susceptibility to breakdown, disease, and aging.

One example of a conceptual design for such a system, called Primo Posthuman, was created by artist and cultural catalyst Natasha Vita-More.
³
Her design is intended to optimize mobility, flexibility, and superlongevity. It envisions features such as a metabrain for global-net connection with a prosthetic neocortex of AI interwoven with nanobots, solar-protected smart skin that has biosensors for tone and texture changeability, and high-acuity senses.

Although version 2.0 of the human body is an ongoing grand project that
will ultimately result in the radical upgrading of all our physical and mental systems, we will implement it one small, benign step at a time. Based on our current knowledge, we can describe the means for accomplishing each aspect of this vision.

Redesigning the Digestive System.
From this perspective, let’s return to a consideration of the digestive system. We already have a comprehensive picture of the components of the food we eat. We know how to enable people who cannot eat to survive, using intravenous nutrition. However, this is clearly not a desirable alternative, since our technologies for getting substances in and out of the bloodstream are currently quite limited.

The next phase of improvement in this area will be largely biochemical, in the form of drugs and supplements that will prevent excess caloric absorption and otherwise reprogram metabolic pathways for optimal health. Research by Dr. Ron Kahn at the Joslin Diabetes Center has already identified the “fat insulin receptor” (FIR) gene, which controls accumulation of fat by the fat cells. By blocking the expression of this single gene in the fat cells of mice, Dr. Kahn’s pioneering research has demonstrated that the animals were able to eat without restriction yet remain lean and healthy. Although they ate far more than the control mice, the “FIR knockout” mice actually lived 18 percent longer and had substantially lower rates of heart disease and diabetes. It’s no surprise that pharmaceutical companies are hard at work to apply these findings to the human FIR gene.

In an intermediate phase nanobots in the digestive tract and bloodstream will intelligently extract the precise nutrients we need, order additional nutrients and supplements through our personal wireless local-area network, and send the rest of the matter on to be eliminated.

If this seems futuristic, keep in mind that intelligent machines are already making their way into our bloodstream. There are dozens of projects under way to create bloodstream-based BioMEMS for a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
⁴
As mentioned, there are several major conferences devoted to these projects.
⁵
BioMEMS devices are being designed to intelligently scout out pathogens and deliver medications in very precise ways.