AI, AI, Oh??

Future superhuman: Our transhuman lives in a make-or-break century, by Elise Bohan

ISBN: 9781742236759 (paperback) NewSouth Publishing, Sydney. 343 pp. 2022

Reviewed by Neil Mudford

Elise Bohan is a historian with a difference. She has a PhD in evolutionary macrohistory and is now a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. Her institute’s name holds a clue to where Bohan departs from the standard pattern for a historian.

A little trip down Google Lane confirms that most historians concentrate on analysing and understanding humanity’s past by studying written records and physical artifacts. Then there is prehistory which is the study of developments and events in oral societies.

By contrast, to channel the second and third Christmas spirits of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, Bohan is solidly focussed on what is Yet to Come with a dash of ‘Christmas Present’. She takes the results of prehistory and history and extrapolates a modest time into the future to predict what might be ahead of us all. This is in the hope that, like Ebenezer Scrooge, we humans drastically curtail the dark, uncaring and irresponsible sides of human nature and thereby avoid destroying human and other life on Earth with the various means available to us. Indeed, means we have created for ourselves.

Bohan has surveyed a wonderful panoply of highly innovative, futuristic, exciting research work being conducted around the world. There is quite a lot going on and her book provides a starting point for anyone interested in finding out more about these projects.

The main and serious purpose of her book, however, is to fervently urge us to accept her deeply held belief that we need to undergo and embrace three major transformations in order to save ourselves from self-inflicted destruction and, at the same time, to usher in a new era of health, long life and well-being and, believe it or not, sex-bots (in the best possible sense). At the same time, the author contends that these changes are already becoming realities.

The first transformation is to develop and embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) to become an integral part of our lives, our governance advice and even our bodies and minds. The idea is to replace flawed human thinking with AI’s supposed precise and objective thinking formulated from AI analysis based on a wealth of data beyond amounts we humans, in our ‘natural’ state, could fully comprehend. The results would then guide our choices and behaviour. The realisation of this scheme, explored extensively but not intensively by the author, is that AI directed beings or AI-enhanced humans could or should replace humans rather than merely augment human cognitive abilities or proffer advice.

As Bohan puts it, ‘To get that right [put the future on a safe and stable footing], we’ll need the help from minds that are less tribal, myopic and self-interested than our own. Our most crucial task in the 21st Century is to invent them.’ (p. 145)

The second transformation is to significantly extend human lifespans by treating old age as a disease in itself and seeking a cure for it. The ultimate goal would be for a human to be able to enjoy an indefinitely long life. I am avoiding using the term ‘immortal’ as this would imply that they could not die. If human life continues to require a material body, then immortality is impossible because no material is infinitely strong. The feature of this transformation that feeds into the plan to avoid extinction is that, if people live to extreme ages, their decision making will assign more weight to long term instead of short term consequences on the ground that those concerned will realise that they could live to suffer the longer term consequences.

The third transformation is designed to alleviate loneliness, friendlessness, alienation and unwanted celibacy by developing AI operated interactive humanoid robots to a level of sophistication where they can become so indistinguishable from humans in their behaviour and interactions that meaningful friendship, and even sexual intimacy and genuine loving, can develop between human and machine. This transformation seems not to have a major role in Bohan’s scheme to save us from catastrophe. Rather, her advocacy for it seems to spring more from a desire to alleviate the stresses of modern urban living and to make long life bearable. At one point (p. 227), she says that we ‘need a gram of soma’, the drug that kept everyone happy (pacified) in spite of the awful environment in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ (Huxley, 1998). Bohan’s soma equivalent is the virtual world of these machine companions or machine-based entertainment. She thinks that this will help tide us over a transition to the ‘better world’ she is proposing but it seems to me that the better world endpoint itself is disturbing enough to warrant an indefinite extension of the relief, if such it is.

I will confine my remarks to the first and third transformations, leaving the prospect of living forever to one side. As tantalising as a long, healthy life sounds, I have plenty of objections to it but there is more than enough discussion to be had concerning the first and third transformations to fill this review to the brim.

In the first few pages of the book, proper, the author delivers a neat summary of what she believes is ahead of us and the definitions of three of the main concepts (transhuman, posthuman and superhuman) in her thesis, to wit:

Although we don’t often recognise it, the 21st century is a transhuman era [Bohan’s emphasis], where everything that currently makes us human, from our brains and bodies, to our values and ways of life, is poised to be transformed or superseded. In our lifetime, we could merge with forms of artificial intelligence that are radically smarter than us, rewrite our biology to conquer aging, disease and involuntary death, leave behind the crudest and cruellest vestiges of our evolutionary programming, and embrace a new mode of being that is so much more than human that we would have to define it as posthuman. In its best incarnation, we might call this kind of future superhuman. (p. 3).

And, on p. 251, Bohan says, ‘...we’re heading for a future that is post-biological [Bohan’s emphasis]; a world in which our minds and our bodies are digital, our experiences are virtual, and reality is much more of a choose your own adventure game.’

I think what the author means by ‘involuntary death’ in the first of these two quotes is death from old age in contrast to suicide. As I pointed out, above, there are plenty of opportunities for involuntary death other than from old age. Ahead of detailing her case for these changes, Bohan sets about framing the ‘rules of engagement’ for this discussion. Contrary to academic debate’s customary or ideal ethics of engagement, Bohan’s main assault focusses on the critics themselves rather than on their possible or actual criticisms. In her Preface she says,

The bravest among you will rise to that challenge [to face the ‘facts’ of the author’s claims] and question whether, beneath some of your discomfort, lies fear. From there, you may consider whether it’s fear, rather than righteousness, that is triggering the impulse to dismiss or deride. Others will declare without a moment’s pause that I am wrong about many ideas, simply because I’ve presented them in a way that challenges what they happen to presently believe. To those readers, I encourage you to consider whether there might be some truth or validity to both perspectives. (p. xiv)

In this passage and throughout the work, she characterises her detractors as suffering from cowardice springing from fears concerning the realisation of her bold predictions and vision. Under this scheme, to challenge her arguments is to tacitly admit to narrow-mindedness, lack of due consideration and timidity; to accept her ideas is to boldly think where no-one has thought before, apart from the author of course and those working in her chosen field.

Bohan claims she is ‘all ears to solid counterarguments and counterevidence’ (p. xvi) but her consistent tone reveals otherwise. I expect all objections to be heading for the circular file quick smart.

Furthermore, Bohan continually refers to human bodies as ‘meatsacks’ and human brains as ‘ape-brains’. On one level, this is provocative and amusing. Maybe we are supposed to infer that she is a tantalisingly outrageous and fresh thinker? Bohan’s tone and context for these terms make it clear, however, that she means to belittle and offend.

This ongoing barrage of derogatory language provides the reader with continual reminders of her contention (see below) that we are outdated and hopeless as a species and therefore should be fitted with AI enhancements or replaced outright by another, AI-based species. Nevertheless, it is a strange behaviour for someone who claims to be doing her utmost to win readers over to her point of view; after all, 100 per cent of those readers are human.

The first transformation: AI leadership and governance

Bohan’s belief in the necessity for AI-human integration and AI-based decision making is driven by her concern that the combination of our immense power over life on Earth and our considerable human frailties and failings will lead us to destruction. For example, our greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly changing the climate for the worse and we have failed to act in time to avert this disaster in spite of having plenty of warning. Our huge arsenals of nuclear weapons and our habit of waging escalating wars mean that extinction by nuclear holocaust is also a strong contender as a pathway to our demise. The list goes on.

Throughout the book, Bohan declaims at length about our shortcomings. We all know we are imperfect but the severity and relentlessness with which she condemns us and concludes that we are ‘Unfit custodians of the future’ (Chapter 6, pp. 122-145) is nevertheless rather extreme and one-sided.

Bohan attributes our failings, in large part, to our brains having evolved to deal with problems we faced in the Palaeolithic which ended in Europe roughly 11,700 years ago – hence her ‘ape-brains’ slur. That this evolution was successful is undeniable, given our species survived the Palaeolithic. Her point is, though, that we have not developed any further. Bohan uses this conclusion, of arrested development, to underpin her argument that we need a further evolution and that this should be accomplished by AI-based enhancement.

Against this, it is important to recognise that we are not living now the way we did in the Palaeolithic, nor in the Mesolithic nor Neolithic for that matter. Clearly, in most respects, we have adapted to the new ways of living which, in any case, are our own invention.

The ‘meatsacks’ slur puzzled me for a while. I couldn’t see how our being composed of flesh, blood and bone was a shortcoming but then it hit me: one endpoint of Bohan’s scheme is the superhuman AI-based species and that will be made, presumably, of artificial materials. Hence, provided you are not thinking too clearly, being a ‘meatsack’ might seem to be a bit passé.

Hand in hand with her poor view of human worth and abilities, Bohan also disparages evolution itself. Her main complaint, it seems, is that evolution has not produced a perfect human product. Her solution is to suggest we humans instigate the artificial, AI-based further evolution she supports. This would be the first evolutionary divergence and succession actively promoted by the replaced species.

There are two immediately obvious contradictions here. First, once we take the action she suggests, are we not then the authors of our own salvation after all?

Second, if we did hand over governance and control to a new AI-based species, her ‘superhuman’ option, have we really saved humanity? In this new world, if the ‘AIs’ are really a superior species then they would be our overlords and we would be their servants or we could disappear altogether. We would become an evolutionary backwater subject to their whims and direction. A dystopia, not a utopia.

A central problem, perhaps the central problem, with the book is that the author has not given serious consideration to the possible flaws and contradictions in her schemes. In the p. xiv quote, above, she complains that some detractors ‘will declare without a moment’s pause that I am wrong about many ideas’. I agree, such instant dismissal would be unfair but it seems to me that a moment’s pause is all that is needed to begin to unravel the schemes, as exemplified above and in the following. My experience, in reviewing this book, is that, once the unravelling begins, it accelerates.

Although Bohan is proposing that AI should be infused into all aspects of our lives, even our bodies, she does not specify what strand of AI she is talking about. A quick look into Wikipedia (2022a) shows that there are all sorts of AI from specific, narrowly-based forms that perform a single task to broad-ranging forms that try to behave as close to human as possible.

This latter form of AI is known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or strong AI, full AI or general intelligent action (Wikipedia, 2022a). This form of AI, were it to be realised, could gather and assess information from its surroundings, identify problems and solve them rather than just rely on information presented to it in its operating code. Bohan is talking about AI-based beings with superhuman powers. Hence, she must be talking about AGI or better because the minimum performance required to be classified as AGI is to be capable of performing as if human.

There are several tests that are to be applied to AI systems put forward for AGI status. The most famous is the Turing test proposed in 1950 by the English mathematician, Alan Turing. In this test, a human being talks with the candidate device and another human being, without seeing either of course, and challenges them with a set of questions. If the interrogator cannot tell, from the replies, which is human and which is computer then the computer passes the test. As does the human, I assume. To date, no computer has passed this test or any of the several alternative tests. Expert opinion varies widely as to when, if ever, AGI will be achieved. Bohan must be ahead of the pack on this one as she is hoping her AI scheme can save us from climate change and nuclear war.

Though we might be slower in our analytic processes, we humans are highly intuitive and have a remarkable store of memories to draw on for inspiration. We can often leave out intermediate logical steps and leap ahead in our problem solving to reach a valid solution. This is what AI systems have the greatest difficulty mimicking. To put it flippantly, we have ‘been around the block a few times’ while AI has just managed to recognise there is a block and what shape it is.

A major omission in her arguments is that she maintains that going down the AI path is the only way for us to solve our major problems but provides only sketchy explanations as to how AI will help. All that AI seems to provide is well-designed advice or plans on how to solve these problems.

I contend that it is not the lack of ideas or good advice that holds us back from solving our major problems. For example, we know we should have decarbonised and restricted methane emissions decades ago if we were to avoid the worst of climate change. We have delayed until now doing anything effective for a wide range of reasons, one of which is that there is so much profit being made out of the current consumption of fossil fuels and mining for them and from agriculture. The knowledge of what was going wrong was there. The advice on what to do about it was there. The will to change was not.

Let’s suppose that creating an AI-based world can help. One flaw Bohan does identify in this plan is that we would have to build altruistic AI, dedicated to producing the best outcomes for humanity, to benefit from the exercise. Mitigating against this is the fact that it is open to anybody to build malevolent AI dedicated to working against our general interests. In fact, Bohan quotes AI safety researcher, Eliezer Yudikowsky, of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California, on this matter (p. 178). Yudikowsky points to this darker possibility and says, ‘the good guys have to get it right on the first try, and there are various other people tackling the intrinsically easier problem of building an AI regardless of whether it’s safe.’

Now, it would seem to me that there is no barrier to all sorts of people producing all sorts of AI all over the place, beneficial and detrimental. Indeed, this outcome would be more in keeping with general human behaviour, as we know it, than producing a single, beneficial AI coding and having it universally accepted. If we could manage this latter behaviour then we would almost certainly solve our existential problems without creating an AI-run world.

Then there is the question of the trajectory standalone AGI might take as it learns from experience. I suggest that it wouldn’t be long before it discovered the advantages of falsehoods and lying. For AGI, these should be just as powerful as strategies for advancing agendas as they are for real humans. According to Señor Google, humans learn how to lie at about 3 years old (The raising children network, 2022). An AGI machine should therefore be capable of lying quite early on in a free-wheeling learning trajectory. Thus, even AGI that commences with an altruistic bent is likely to turn towards these behaviours as time goes by. If it doesn’t then it has not advanced to a level that merits the AGI classification.

Lying is an even more certain development for a hybrid human/AI system – the ape brain can just have a quiet word to the AI implant and the cat’s out of the bag.

The broader question of acceptance is another issue that seems to me to be a ‘show stopper’ for Bohan’s AI schemes. Who is going to happily hand over control to either a class of AI-enhanced humans or a legion of AI-run machines if the production of these cohorts was even allowed to proceed? Not me, I can tell you. As fallible as we humans are, we can spot danger from another species or threatening group 1.6 kilometres away. If they are trained for anything, our Palaeolithic brains are trained for instantaneous friend or foe recognition leading, for the latter result, to the fight or flight reaction. Or, now that we have learned to live in megalopolises with complex governance systems, the choices could be fight, flight or a campaign of denigration in the conservative press followed by a social media onslaught that causes withdrawal of the program funding. Don’t tell me we haven’t learned anything since 10,000 BCE.

Another puzzling aspect of this part of Bohan’s AI plans is why the AI has to be fitted to individual humans or to be realised as a new species consisting of a collection of machine-based individuals. It is hard to see what tasks these AI augmented creatures would perform. For practical logistic reasons, their numbers would be a small fraction of the 7 billion humans on the planet. Hence the plan cannot be to have them constitute a majority in a worldwide plebiscite on Earth’s future and surely, if it is advice she wants, it would be easier to devote a brace of supercomputers to the task rather than a battalion of cyborgs or superhumans to do the job.

The third transformation: Making friends (literally)

I find the third transformation interesting – the idea that a machine could become as satisfying and complete a companion as a real person or so near as to not matter to the human.

Bohan first introduces this notion of machine companionship on p. 160ff in the form of Alexa as a Virtual Reality companion for a (real) only child, Mia. Alexa is an extrapolated version of Amazon’s existing voice activated virtual assistant. Bohan supposes that the virtual friend learns Mia’s interests through their interactions and behaves as a very attentive companion who shares Mia’s interests, listens to her and is a confidant always available for Mia. Clearly, part of the arrangement is that Alexa is a compliant other which, of course, very much appeals to Mia. They would never have any ‘tiffs’ as Alexa is programmed to go along with anything Mia fancies. Alexa is a friend without her own desires or independent thought or temperament it seems.

Now this sounds quite enticing as long as the Mias of the real world do not tire of the eternal uncomplaining responses from the Alexas of the virtual world. Although Bohan expects the AI underlying Alexa to improve with time, it seems to me that the artificial being in this relationship is, by definition, limited to be less than AGI if Alexa cannot contradict Mia or have her own desires and interests. A Turing Test round would soon unmask Alexa, as against Suzy from next door who is bound to have some independent thought.

Bohan takes the story further to suggest that Mia might well keep Alexa as her firm friend into adulthood even to the extent of subjecting Alexa to gender reassignment, if Mia so desires, and taking Alexa as a life partner. The benefit, as Bohan sees it, is that Alex(a) then knows Mia intimately and all is therefore smooth sailing between them.

Too smooth, I say. Let’s hope Mia also has real, human friends (enter, Suzy, stage left) from whom she can learn real, full emotional and behavioural spectrum interaction. While we might bemoan the difficulties we have with other people and wish that ‘everything could be lovely in the garden’, life is a bit shallow without real human complexity.

This dilemma brings to mind the film ‘Bicentennial Man’ (Wikipedia, 2022b) in which the late, great Robin Williams plays an AGI capable robot who, for some unknown reason, emerges from the AI factory with ‘feelings and emotions’ as well as the ability to carry out orders as a servant like the others of his model. Initially, the robot manufacturing company apologises and offers a replacement under warranty. His owners refuse this offer, valuing him for just these qualities. They encourage him to develop himself. This goes well and he stays with the family for several generations. The problem that develops for him though is coping with his grief at losing all his beloved family members over and over through the years. On top of this, he feels a need to really belong among them. His response is to work towards become fully human, including transitioning to a ‘meatsack’, as Bohan would see it, and calmly accepting death at 200 years old with his then partner.

Bohan expands further on the theme of artificial companionship in her Chapter ‘The Future of Sex’. She comes right out and says the adult versions of these devices are, at least initially, sex-bots. Maybe this is why the blurb on the back cover calls her musings, ‘starkly honest’? In this case, rather than pointing to development entirely in the far future, early incarnations (I use the word advisedly) of such devices are already on the market (or so they tell me!). Bohan cites a number of studies that laud the benefits for lonely people. She also cites quite a few testimonials as to how their owners value them highly and often this is beyond plain lust and sexual gratification.

This plan suffers from the same shortcomings that beset Mia’s platonic relations with her friend – to never be challenged or contradicted. In this adult case, how insufferably boring to have your partner be sexually available at all times and never contradict you! Clearly, many people would say, initially, that this is just what they want but I think that they would quickly tire of this unless, of course, they were as shallow as the sexbots they teamed up with.

Conclusion

In this book, Elise Bohan advances extremely novel ideas that she propounds with great enthusiasm and personal conviction. She is right that there is a dire need for the human race to face its existential problems and really do something revolutionary about solving them. A fundamental problem with this book, though, is that the ideas the author proposes do not survive any sort of critical analysis. The book’s other fundamental problems are that the author does not flesh out the ideas to any significant extent and does not subject them to any critical analysis herself.

References.

Huxley, A. (1998). Brave New World. HarperPerennial / Perennial Classics, London, England. (First published, 1932) The raising children network. (2022). Lies: why children lie and what to do. Retrieved from https://raisingchildren.net.au/preschoolers/ behaviour/common-concerns/lies

Wikipedia. (2022a). Artificial intelligence. Retrieved from https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence, on 22 October 2022. Wikipedia. (2022b) Bicentennial man (film). Retrieved from https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicentennial_Man_(film), on 24 October 2022.