To write HI (human intelligence) code into AI technology so that the product serves us instead of making us subservient to it. #transhumancode

Today’s technological world was built, and is governed, by the minds and resources of a few hundred thousand people. As a result, we are living in a society in which the richest 1% — most of whom made their fortune in technology — have now accumulated more wealth than the rest of the world put together. Through our concession to technology we have unknowingly authorized an economy for the 1% instead of creating an economy that works for the prosperity of all, for future generations, and for the planet. This imbalance will be accelerated if we don’t collectively remember the value inherent in humanity at large and begin to put the rights of people ahead of the rush to profits.

We-the-global-community have the opportunity to tap the minds and resources of 7.5 billion people interconnected by more than 50 billion devices through the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) — the aggregation of all connected devices around the world. Consider the implications of this. The most efficient supercomputer in the world right now — a multi-billion-dollar technological marvel from IBM and the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) called “Summit” runs on a total of a 200,000 CPUs (Central Processing Units or computer brains) capable of processing 200 petaflops, a computing term that amounts to approximately 200 quadrillion (or 1 followed by 15 zeroes) calculations per second.[1] By comparison, IBM researchers have estimated that a single human brain can process 36.8 petaflops or approximately one-sixth the computing power of the Summit. Said another way, six humans sharing resources equals one Summit. Consider what this means for humanity’s ability to create, innovate, and problem-solve in a swift manner on a massive scale. If we can use technology to access the processing capability of the entire population — the original vision of World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee — we can ignite the equivalent power of more than a billion Summit supercomputers. It’s no stretch to assert that the best future we can imagine for the most people is more available than we think. We just have to seek it more than short-term convenience.

This solutions and improvements we desire are within our grasp, many of them within our lifetimes, if we take the necessary steps to cement ourselves in the seat of authority and accountability, one technological advancement at a time, those already created and those still to come.

“At the center of every significant change in our lives today is a technology of some sort,” writes Kelley. The foremost matter that will determine what the world becomes is how we will use technology — not what we will use. Technology is here to stay, as a primary catalyst and dominating force. It is becoming, and will continue to become, a greater and greater part of our lives. This is very exciting news if we know that our place in the universal ecosystem is at the apex. The critical question is whether we will continue allowing technology to erode our prominence or reassert ourselves as the authors and perfectors of technology whose job is to ensure that what is created, embraced, and proliferated always produces, first and foremost, better, healthier humans.

“We are different from our animal ancestors,” explains Kelley, “in that we are not content to merely survive… This discontent is the trigger for our ingenuity and growth.” The decision we must make is to be wise stewards of our supreme ingenuity and growth. We must constantly ask ourselves: what is prevailing — humanity or technology? And we must do what is necessary to ensure our answer is humanity, and always humanity, the world over.

Some believe we should unconditionally render control of our future to the machines. They base their beliefs on something called technological singularity, which hypothesizes that the artificial intelligence already present will eventually cause an intellectual explosion resulting in a powerful computer super-intelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human capabilities. Sci-fi author Vernor Vinge says in his essay “The Coming Technological Singularity” that this will signal the end of the human era, as the new super-intelligence would continue to upgrade itself and advance at an incomprehensible rate. We would, in other words, become subservient to the machines.

The great fault in this hypothesis is that is does not account for the spiritual and moral mores of humanity that set us apart from every species on the planet — characteristics like intuition, empathy, vision, conviction, and, to Kelley’s point, ingenuity that stems from a constant desire for better. There is a critical reason why Elon Musk recently confessed that humans are underrated. A robot will never know how it feels to suffer from cancer or lose a child to starvation. Artificial Intelligence will never comprehend the magnificence of childbirth, an ocean sunset or the fulfillment of a decade-long dream. Computer programs will never match human complexity, its range of emotions and tribal characteristics.

The best technology can do is prioritize its efforts according to our administration, our design, our programming. The key is making sure the priorities we assign to it and the governance we ascribe to it are in the best interest of all humanity. How? In general terms, the solution is to codify the core human attributes that set us apart from every life form on the planet, into the technology we create. To write HI (human intelligence) code into AI technology so that the product serves us instead of making us subservient to it.

Technology only has the freedom to go as far as we allow it. To this point, we’ve been lethargic about its freedom. The manipulation of the U.S. Presidential election was perhaps a turning point. In the least, it has served as a global wake-up call. But the truth we must grasp is much smaller: we’re all complicit in the Facebook platform’s capacity to manipulate. We created it, embraced it, and empowered it for years, knowingly and unknowingly.

[1] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/271005-ibm-department-of-energy-unveil-summit-the-worlds-fastest-supercomputer?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=extremetech&utm_medium=title