Context For Your Questions

As an undergrad the central question was whether there was “technological determinism.” Turns out that technology, broadly speaking, predated humanity. Moreover, it is now evident that the success of human evolution is directly correlated with a symbiotic relationship technology.

Societies progress mainly by creating, assimilating, or adapting [technologies]….Because technological innovation in society is on a whole irreversible, the arrow of time in history is consistent with the arrow of time in physical and biological realms of evolution…[It’s an] evolutionary progression toward more dynamic and autonomous systems…through correspondingly more complex social structures. [Laszlo & Salk]

Ultimately, this leads to some key observations (my Ph.D. thesis, A Passion to Evolve):

• genetics is an information/knowledge storage system to accelerate biological evolution
• the systematic storage of information/knowledge in technology by humans accelerated the evolution of both
• technology evolves in the same way biology evolves
• evolution of both biology and technology are part of the same, larger cosmic evolutionary process
• biology was able to self-organize self-replicating autonomy first
• short of self-destruction, humans will precipitate the emergence of self-organizing self-replicating technological autonomy

Said differently, humans are the host for the evolutionary emergence of technological species. This is a continuation of cosmic evolution (Macroscopic Evolutionary Paradigm). This evolution seems driven to maximize the evolvability of every major evolving system, and thereby maximize the evolvability of the cosmos itself ( Kevin Kelly calls this the “infinite game.”)

Therefore, we know where technology comes from and where it is going — it will become autonomous and evolve to explore and populate the cosmos.

In the context of the larger cosmic maximizing evolvability process, whether this occurs as a result of our human efforts or not, this technological species will inevitably emerge somewhere. This is a “determinism” written into the cosmos, not simple technological determinism.

The question Winner, you and others raise is what happens next and how it affects humanity. Here you are correct that “most people don’t want to engage in, even as a thought experiment.” This intellectual dishonesty is most prevalent and pronounced today among those in the artificial intelligence community (Why You Should Fear Artificial Intelligence-AI).

Together, the mix of this intellectual dishonesty, a global artificial general intelligence (AGI) arms-race and obsolete and dysfunctional medieval political and electoral systems devoid of substance, creates a fertile soil for hubris to precipitate a bad outcome. (Doc Says — Our Emotions, Institutions and Technological Capabilities Are Mismatched, Who Controls What Happens with the Prime Directive?).

But, the cosmos is agnostic about us. There is no determinism for a bad outcome. In theory, we can influence a positive outcome. The result would be a post-scarcity, self-actualizing civilization.

That said, it may be useful to reconcile the idea that autonomous technology is our progeny. Thus, in the final analysis, as with biological progeny, that go on long after we have returned to dust, we should content ourselves in how we contributed to the betterment of the universe.

Nice work, Howard!

Doc Huston