The future - 2038

2038:
CHALLENGES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
JIM ISAAK
SEPT 2018 – CONCORD & NASHUA

Trigger Warning
There won’t be any
I apologize in advance for raising issues and
challenges that may keep you up at night

A Look into the Future
• Considering some recent pundits
• Some old music
• Some current events
• And mostly emerging technology and it’s
implications on our future

Rolling Roads – looking forward when
things were not moving so fast

Start by Looking Backwards
• Aristotle, Plato - seeds of humanism
• Pythagoras - religion of mathematics
• Archimedes - normalized mathematics
• 300-1300 theocracies
• Rome combine the Church and “right of kings”
• Islamic takeover of middle east and into Spain
• (China, India, etc??)

Renaissance
• Black Plague 1350
• Gutenberg - 1440 printing press (movable type)
• DeVinci – 1452-1519
• Columbus sails the ocean blue 1492
• Copernicus 1500
• Machiavelli's Prince - 1513
• Galileo 1564-1642– “looks up”
• Newton born 1642 - normalizes physics ...

Industrial Age (1700….)
• "1700"s the first machine age - power to replace muscle
• Humanism emerges -- Kant, Hegel, Hobbes
• Adam Smith –Wealth of Nations 1776 (Capitalism)
• Dickens Christmas Carol - 1843
• 1750s "Electricity" ala Franklin
• Steam power

Humanist age
• Revolutions:
• US - 1776
• French – 1789-99
• applied humanism (Citizen)
• Steam ships
• Luddites – 1811+
• Photography – 1825…
• Communism (Marx – 1840’s)

Scientific Age
• Astronomy – Neptune (1846), Galaxies (Hubble 19xx)
• Chemistry – Hydrogen 1766; )Oxygen (1774), PeriodicTable (1860s “octaves”)
• Faraday (1791-1867) , Maxwell, (1831-1879) – Electro-magnetism
• Darwin (1809-1882), Mendel ( 1822-1884), Pasteur ( 1822-1885)
• Trains (1770’s on the level – self powered)
• Curie 1890+ radio activity
• Cars (1700+ steam cars – 1885 gas engines)
• Einstein's golden year 1905 - quantum theory, relativity
• Airplane (1903+)
• Revolutions: Russia, China -- applied Marxism/totalitarianism (Comrade)
• Edison,Tesla,Westinghouse 1890s-1920s - electrical power

Communications Age
• Bell phone 1876 “Watson come here…”
• 1940s first computers - ENIAC,Turing- Colossus
• TV; nuclear power/bomb; rockets/ missiles, jet aircraft
• 1950's transistor - 1960's Integrated circuit - 1970's
Microprocessor
• 1953 DNA double helix model (Crick &Watson)
• 1969 the Internet, Man lands on moon
• 1980s PC's
• 1990’s theWorld Wide Web

The “New Age?”
• Anthropocene Epoch – longer than an age
• CyberAge
• AI Age?
• … What is the tipping point?
• … when will/did
we pass that point?

The Big
Questions
HOW DO WE KEEP EARTH ALIVE
AND
HOW TO WE THRIVE

What are the challenges
and opportunities we face?
• This is the real focus of this class ….
• There are external “extinction level” events
• Asteroid Strike
• SuperVolcanoes (likeYellowstone)
• Reversal of the magnetic field – radiation exposure
• A super pandemic
For the most part, the rest is up to us!

A look into the foreseeable future
• Building on the insight of some interesting sources
• HD: Homo Deus – A Brief History ofTomorrow,Yuval Noah Harari (2017)
• MT: Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence; MaxTegmark (2016)
• TF:ThankYou for Being Late;Thomas Friedman (2016)
• Gore:The Future – Six Drivers of GlobalChange; Al Gore (2013)
• PD,: Abundance, Peter Diamandis (2012/4)
• WW: A Short History of the Future,WarrenWagar (1990)
• Soonish:Ten EmergingTechnologiesThat'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything,
Kelly & ZachWeinersmith (2017)
The challenges we face will affect us and the next generations
The answers and investments we make will affect the outcomes
Those who have the privilege to know
have the duty to act
Albert Einstein

A “short” list
• Rate of Change
• Threats – ! Nuclear, Custom Bio, Cyber
• ! Climate Change – a rising tide sinks key cities
• ! AI – emergence of non-human interests
• ! Genetic Engineering & BioTech
• Robo-Sourcing – the future of unemployment
• Homo Deus – Homo Sapiens 2.0
• Privacy , influence, persuasion
• Designer Drugs and the Happy Pills

Some positive trends
• PD – three transformative indicators
1. The Maker Movement – individuals taking control
and leveraging tech & each other
2. Techno philanthropists (Gates & Malaria,Ventner
& the Genome, Kamen & CleanWater, …)
3. The Bottom Billion – web, microfinance, …
more folks have cell phones than toilets

Humanism – the pervasive faith (HD)
• Protagoras (5th century B.C.E.):
Man is the measure of all things
• Science & rationalism have impacted religion
with a counter attack from irrationality?
(or Metathesiophobia – fear of change)
• Harari – Humans rather than God or unchanging moral
laws are the ultimate source of value
• Social Humanism – benefit for the community (communism)
• Liberal Humanism – benefit for the individual (“western”)
• Evolutionary Humanism – Benefit of the fittest (Nazi)
Are there others? (Gaia?)

We (humans) are in control
• Famine
• Pestilence
• War
• Death
(“Conquest” was
separate “back then”
– vs pestilence)
Albrecht Dürer

Famine
• We currently produce enough food to feed the world
(6+ Billion people)
• Logistics and policy choices/interference prevent delivery
• Often war zones, or implicit genocide
• Diet choices affect projections
• Plant based diet would allow us to feed 10 Billion
• Population projections level off at 10 Billion
TEDVideo – Hans Rosling
HD: More people die of obesity than
Starvation + malnutrition

Has Rosling – 2012 pop projection (13min)

Pestilence
• Infectious disease is in rapid retreat
• Focused immunization programs
• Small pox, polio, and more to follow
• Rapid advances in antibiotics (Teixobactin, 2015) (bionics)
• Rapid response to outbreaks
Often it is the absence of intervention that leads to death
The human abuse of antibiotics has a negative impact
HD: More people die of old age than
die from infectious disease

WAR
• Indicator: corporations no longer plan for the contingency
of nation-state wars
• The concept of a “righteous war” appears to be
deprecated by all major religions
(with the obvious exceptional schisms and middle east?)
• It is broadly accepted that armed conflict is under the
control of human choices
HD: More people die of suicide than
armed conflicts + terrorism + crime

Some numbers (HD)
Obesity 3 Million Famine &
Malnutrition
1 Million
Suicide 800,000 Armed conflict
Terrorism
Crime
120,000
<10,000
500,000
Diabetes 1.5 Million Gunpowder 620,000
2012 56 million deaths world wide
Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder

The Human Agenda (HD)
• Pre-1970 – avoid famine, war, pestilence…
• Now
• Be Healthy – defeat disease, overcome limitations
• Be Happy
• Don’t Die – Virtual Immortality
• Control everything --- be divine (homo deus)
(your mileage may differ)

We are not the only show in town
• Homo Sapiens – currently the apex players
• What’s the competition?
• AI’s w/o consciousness
• AI’s with consciousness
• Corporate entities? (or other institutions)
• Augmented Humanity – bio-mechanical, genetic, connected

How do “lesser” species get treated?
• Elimination – mammoths, dodo’s ….
• Domestication – horses, cows, chickens, dogs,…
• Zoos & preserves – apes, lions & tigers & bears (oh my)
Some cultures have recognized some species as sentient:
New Zealand – many land animals, octopuses
“explicitly that they can experience both positive and negative
emotions including pain and distress”
The folks that brought you
“All men are created equal”
held slaves and did not include women

What differentiates humans?
Large scale flexible collaboration (HD)
• Ants are not flexible
• Apes cannot collaborate beyond their “tribe”
• Humans can collaborate with total strangers in
large numbers
Put 30,000 chimps in a football stadium and chaos
will ensue – for humans this is typically not the case

Harari: know your narratives
choose which to adopt and which to abandon
“The cold hand of the past emerges from the
grave of our ancestors,
grips us by the neck and
directs our gaze towards a single future”
“Much of power today depends on the ability to
force fictional beliefs on a submissive reality”
Examples include national borders, laws,
numeric grades in schools, etc.

How do sapiens cope?
Harari’s first book was called “Sapiens”
• We have shared fictions/cultural narratives
– tribal, national, etc
• Religion
• Political parties
• Nation states & boundaries
• Corporations
• Money
• Etc.
A monkey will not accept a green piece of paper
in exchange for a banana
But a total stranger in a store will

Sept 2018 Scientific American
• “Two key features created the human mind”;
Thomas Suddendorf
1. Ability to form nested scenarios, and inner
theater of the mind – envision different situations
and anticipate outcomes
2. Our drive to exchange thoughts with others
(allowing dialog, education, collaboration…)
i.e. Story (scenarios)Telling (thought exchange)

The scientific narratives
have undermined the religious ones (HD)
• No confirmation of non-physical interpretations of reality
(Harari is not religious)
[aside: absence of proof is not proof of absence]
• But the impact and import are real
• Harari sees religion and science pursuing different
objectives:
• Religion focuses on “order”
• Science focuses on “power” (control of physics, chemistry, bio..)
Society does not use science to question the humanist dogma,
but rather to implement it.

Counter trend since 70’s
(or maybe much earlier, Luddites)
• An anti-science resistance
• Fort Collins “Flat Earth” meetings
• Folks looking for easier answers, traditional points
of stability, “our way back”
• Organizations threatened by change or emerging
facts – commercial (tobacco industry, oil… ),
religious…
Some such as ISIS, are leveraging these concerns

Change !!!
Resistance is Futile
BOB DYLAN – THE TIMES THEY ARE A 'CHANGING

HD:“When genetic engineering and artificial
intelligence revel their full potential,
liberalism, democracy and free markets
might be as obsolete as flint knives and …
communism.”

Accelerating Change
30 linear steps vs 30 exponential steps (to moon)
(Ray Kurzwiel, Google/ Singularity University)
2018 to 2040
will see as much change
as the middle ages to 2018
We might not be socially ready for this

The trajectory of the
Anthropocene:
The Great Acceleration
•WWW.IGBP.NET
•WWW.STOCKHOLMRESILIENCE.ORG
•WWW.FUTUREEARTH.INF
•WWW.GLOBAIA.ORG
•WWW.ANTHROPOCENE.INFO
T. Friedman’s set of charts

Steffen et al. The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration (Anthropocene Review) 16 January 2015. Design: Globaia
Org. for EconomicCooperation & Development
Brazil, Russia, India, China (South Africa?)

Steffen et al. The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration (Anthropocene Review) 16 January 2015. Design: Globaia

The momentum towards control
is, ironically, beyond our control
• No authority or person can stop it
• No one knows where the breaks are
• No one can see it all or anticipate the full impact
• There is no “line” between “repair” and “upgrade”

Enter: Friedman, stage right
• Not just a little bit of change,
but accelerating
and on many fronts
• “Disruption” – someone does something clever that
makes your company obsolete
• “Dislocation” – alteration of the whole environment so
quickly that folks feel they can’t keep up
• More impact than the Printing Press – reformation …

Rate of Change (TF)
• Hopping from the 10th century to the 11th there
would be minimal “disruptive change”
• In 1900 it might take 30-40 yrs to adapt to
disruptive change (e.g. cars, planes)
• In 2016 the disruptive change cycle is 5-7 years
faster than humans can adapt
• => cultural angst

Friedman – ThankYou for Being Late
• Three major forces
1. Acceleration of technology
2. Globalization
3. Mother Nature
• Climate
• lost diversity
• population

Technology
• Intel 1971 4004 processor up to today (Moore’s law)
• IF applied to a 1971VW Bug ….
• 300,000 miles per hour
• 2,000,000 miles per gallon
• Cost 4 cents
• (and die with a blue screen of death every few weeks)
But it’s not just “computers” – it’s storage, networking
Sensors – everywhere, and connected
100,000 fold increase in network traffic since 2007

TF: pivotal year: 2007
• iPhone (followed by the APPs market)
• Google buysYouTube – streaming explodes
• Amazon introduces Kindle, eBooks emerge
• IBM builds Watson
• Introduction of solar & wind power at practical levels
• Patents in BioTech “take off”
• Genome mapping costs plummet
• Anthropocene epoch enters “Great Acceleration”
• Psycho-Graphic Research – 1st analytics

It’s all Digital
• Every thing is being digitized
• And stored
• And aggregated
• And analyzed
• (And applied)
----
The “exhaust” from the engines of commerce are
providing the data for de-privatization

So what* (TF)
• Paypal is using this to provide loans
• Facebook, Google, etc to provide ads
• Breaking news: Zuckerberg is seems to be advocating
community over commercialism as of 2018
• More breaking news (3/17) Facebook/Cambridge Analytica
privacy investigations (Brixit and 2016 elections)
• Maybe to “Nudge” users
• NSA to track terrorists, et al
• * de- privatization

Reaping the rewards of capitalism
• Our institutions are driving towards
Growth, efficiency => automation and
“the un-working class” (HD)
• Entry level jobs may be easiest to automate,
leaving displaced employees with limited
opportunities to enter new fields
• When a job is automated, it does not put just one
worker out of work, it puts all of those workers out

Also in the Sept 2018 Scientific American
“AI will serve our species, not control it”,
Prof. Pedro Domingos, UW
•
“…the effects on society [of job displacement] will likely
be similar to previous forms of automation.”
• Farmers adapted over the last 200 years
• BUT – this ignores the rate of change
• He also assumes the current commercial/political
incentives to persuade individuals will defer to more
ethical and other funding models.
[My letter to editor is titled “To Serve Man”]

Robot Real
Estate
WSJ March 2, 2018
“’The robots REX places in homes
are far more intelligent than a
real-estate agent.’
Mr. McNealy said”
9/7/201871

Tech Driven Inequality
(McAffee, Brynjolfsson at MIT)
• Job skill requirements increase ->
• 25% increase in grad salaries (post 1970)
• 30% decrease in non grad income
• Productivity drives $ to owners vs workers
• “winners” are superstars (JK Rowling, Elon Musk, etc.)
not a “normal distribution”
9/7/201872

Consider Jobs/Employment
• WSJ, Feb 20, 2018:
College Grads Aren’t Ready for anAIWorld
• McKinsey & Co Report:
50 Million U.S. workers impacted by 2030 …
JosephAoun, Pres. Northeastern U. (Robot-Proof)
• Technology literacy – what computers can do
• Data literacy – how to navigate & make sense of big data
• Human literacy – what can humans do (our advantages)
• Innovation, creativity, empathy, teams, cultural agility
9/7/201873

Job Retention into the future
[Tom Friedman, “Thank you for being Late”]
• Reading, writing & Math
• 4 C’s: Communications, collaboration, Creativity, Coding
• Grit, self motivation,
• life long learning habits
• Entrepreneurship
• Improvise
At every level of employment
9/7/201874

Tom Friedman advocates
“Intelligent Assistants” (IA’s)
• Rethink our social contract assumptions
• Employment (AT&T continuous reEd/deployment)
• Education
• Citizenship
• Automating tasks vs Jobs
• ATMS=>more tellers
• POS => more check out clerks
• Human 2 Human relations of value
9/7/201875

Machine Intelligence (AGI)
Machine intelligence is the last invention that
humanity will ever need to make
-- Nick Bostrom
[Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the
anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and the
reversal test]
9/7/201876

Machine Intelligence (AGI)
Machine intelligence is the last invention that
humanity will ever need to make
-- Nick Bostrom
[Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the
anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and the
reversal test]
9/7/201877

The Anthropomorphic Problem
• Does “It” have to be humanoid?
• Mirror neurons in humans “echo” the actions of others, perhaps
essential to developing empathy
• Can we “identify” with “it” if not humanoid?
• Can “It” identify with us ….
9/7/201879

The small problem of
Consciousness
“are you conscious?” (to computer)
Response (after some consideration):
“No matter how I answer this question you will not be
able to determine if my answer is correct.”
(Stand on Zanzibar, John Bruner)
“Why did you issue a check for $1,000,000”
(to computer)
“I thought it would be funny.”
(The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlien)
9/7/201880

“Super Intelligence”
• Significantly beyond
AGI (human capabilities)
• How much is a mater of scale
10 % better
10 x better
How much better are we than Dogs, than Chimps,
than primitive man, than …
9/7/201881

MaxTegmark’s AI Myths
We have an example of 1x better, i.e. us
Can humans get to 2x?
“Impossible” is a sucker term (as is “never”)

A very useful phrase: “Misaligned goals”

Jim disagreement –
There is no evidence that Internet is required
(captive in a military, corporate or other off-net system may be sufficient)

IEEEAI Ethics phrasing:
“Should affective systems be designed to nudge people for the user’s personal
benefit and/or the benefit of someone else?”
[Advertising, Brainwashing, Education,
Psychotherapy, Motivation, Evangelizing, …]

The problem with this response is the use of the use of “it’s” … “they are” is more
accurate
For “Narrow AI’s”, post-human capabilities already exist
No known AGI’s exist at this time
AGIs at 110% … 200% … when does Super apply
(or more correctly, when does “Sufficient” apply)

A key observation
• An “AI” entity does not have to be conscious
(by whatever metrics)
Or have a humanoid form to:
Have significant impact on Society
• Cure diseases, game the stock market
• Drive a car, target drone munitions
• Provide companionship, leverage personal understanding and trust
• Apply psychographic analytics to mass persuasion for
commercial or political ends
9/7/201889

What if?
• We used all of the social media, and other available data …
• And analyzed which persons were most likely to:
• Commit suicide (most common form of gun violence)
• Attack a church congregation, school, concert, employer, …
• Initiate a terrorist attack
• “Subject 47, psychographic profile “3-5-W”, has bought 3 assault rifles in the
last week and 300 clips of ammo”
What would/should we do?
9/7/201890

9/7/201891
Input:
Pixel Stream
(color value of 25,200 or so pixels)
Score
Output
“button 1” or “button 2”
Maximize “score”
System must learn that buttons change screen, and intercepting “ball”
pixel changes it’s direction, and different colors score different amounts,
etc.

Impact Examples
Self driving cars
Smart grid
Financial analysis
Mnfg devices
Health care
Pharma analysis
Genome analytics
Sensor/monitoring
Devices/systems
Radiologic
Robo judges
Truth evaluation
Warfare
Killer “Bees”
assassination
Ethnic cleansing
(2016 letter of concerned techies)
Jobs –
income
purpose
9/7/201892

Consider Health Care
• At what point is augmenting Dr’s diagnosis
with AI the norm
• At what point is it required by Insurance
• At what point is failure => malpractice?
• 2015 as good as radiologist at diagnosis
• 2016 better than radiologist … (specific diseases)
9/7/201893

The Real Risk
• May be competence not malice
• What Goals?
• Maximize Paperclip factory output
• (with nano-tech capable automated manufacturing)
Alignment with human values/goals
9/7/201894

Ultimate
Goal
9/7/201895
Capability
Enhancement
Goal
Retention
Better
Hardware
Better
Software
Better
World Model
(truth)
Self
Preservation
Resource
Acquisition Curiosity
Info
Acquisition
Tension

“ Artificial intelligence is the future,
not only for Russia but for all humankind.
Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere
will become the ruler of the world.”
Vladimir Putin September 2017, in a live video message beamed
to 16,000 Russian schools.
9/7/201896

“This is our Sputnik moment”
R. Work former deputy Sec. of Defense
RE:
July 2017 Chinese unveiling of
“plans to become the world’s dominate power in
all aspects of artificial intelligence, military and
otherwise, by 2030”
(WSJ “The AI Arms Race”, 3/4/2018)
9/7/201897

We will now take a short,
twenty nanosecond break,
to allow our AI colleagues
present
to establish a definitive defense
against unfriendly AI’s

The Flaws of Humanitarianism
• Science is gradually trending toward two conclusions (HD)
• 1 – the delusion of free will
• FMRI analysis: decisions emerge from subconscious to be rationalized
• Even quantum probabilities do not justify the idea of “agency”
• 2 – the delusion of self
• Split brain patients can literally find the right hand & left hand in conflict
• Parallel processes in brain – “experiencing self” , “narrating self”,
“recording self” …

HD: Facebook & predictive analytics
• Harari describes research done with Facebook in
combination with personality profiling that provides a
potential for personally focused “psy-ops” – influence
via psychological methods
aka: “psychographics ”
• Put to publication in early 2016 he hypothesizes the
potential (ab)use of these in politics
• Cambridge Analytica applied this in the 2016 election
• The ethics of ‘nudging’ is a current topic in IEEE

Psycho-graphic Persuasion
“Psychological targeting as an effective approach to
digital mass persuasion”
• by S. C. Matz, M. Kosinski,G. Nave and D. J. Stillwell
Proceedings of the NationalAcademy , 11/2017
• "In three field experiments that reached over 3.5
million individuals with psychologically tailored
advertising, we find that matching the content of
persuasive appeals to individuals’ psychological
characteristics significantly altered their behavior as
measured by clicks and purchases"

What should an AI do when it knows
you better than you know yourself?
• Pushing your hot-buttons to action (affective nudging)
• Buy this product
• Adopt this set of alternate facts
• Vote this way – or perhaps don’t vote (the other way)
• Providing you with custom
education/opportunities
• Here is the education you need
• Here is a job well suited to your capabilities/preferences
What does freedom of thought, speech, etc. mean?

Human condition in the 21st century
• Free from famine, plagues and war (HD)
• Expanded potential for life, even “super humans”
• With limited employment opportunities
a loss of “agency” in personal and scientific senses
and perhaps even a disintegration of “Self”
• (TF) but – write your own narrative
– reputation tracking inTurkey,
Education in India, …

The Homo Deus Challenges
• We need a new cultural narrative that provides
direction for the mass of humans that are under
employed, minions of personalized media, lacking
a sense of self and of independence
• Harari identifies a few paths forward
• A “systematic” model
• A “dataism” model
• A “domesticated humans” model (my term)
• A “homo deus” model

The World of Friends (TF)
• Facebook concept- connect “enemies”
• Israel/ Palestine; India/ Pakistan, etc.
• But – tendency towards confirmation bias
• And if the platforms are being manipulated based
on de-privatized analytics
– your “friends” may not be trustworthy
• Consider: is Watson on Facebook (just once)
and who is influencing it’s dialog?

Fake-News – Alt Facts
• How are the channels managed?
By whom, and with what agenda?
• Face 2 Farce communications …
with real, or virtual personas
• Heinlein's “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”
• April 2018 Scientific American:
AI’s can construct realistic facial images
(now: voice, soon videos with lip sync)

The Systematic Model
• The rational, efficient, sustainable course of action
when humans are no longer of value,
but do impose costs
is to reduce the quantity of humans
There are varying methods, timescales and
end-games for this approach

The “Dataism” model
• “Information wants to be free” – the first new
“value” since the emergence of capitalism (1700s)
• Open access to all data, open use of all data,
open software, open publications
• This might be an objective of AI’s, particularly with
emerging consciousness, self-direction, etc.
• Or a movement driven by “technocrats”
or by opportunists in emerging economies

The Domesticated Human
• Homo Sapiens have their value
– they may be worth saving
(at least as pets, in zoos or laboratories)
• There are creative perspectives that may not emerge
from other intelligences
• Assimilation into the network-of-all-things
would be needed
• Feral humans might be problematic
(if you are thinking “Borg” or “Brave NewWorld”, …
but also consider the connected species of Avatar)

Augmented Humanity: Homo Deus
• We start by “fixing” things
• Prosthetics – eyeglasses, hearing aids, replacement hips, ..
• Chemical – pharmaceuticals, supplements, …
• Bio – transplants, transfusions, etc
• Genetic – repair, correct, eradicate - inheritable
• And move to “upgrading” things
• Extended sight, hearing, strength, immunity, IQ
But for who? - once again multiple “Homo” species

Homo “left-behind-us”
• The “Good Life”
• Virtual Reality that is immersive, personalized,
and fully engaging
• Pharmaceuticals that fulfill the pursuit of happiness
• Food, shelter, medical care
(we should be able to do as well as a zoo…)

Daniel Pink – Drive (motivation)
• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose

Enter Peter Diamandis stage left
• Abundance – theTED talk
Pyramid: specifically inspired by Maslow
3 Health & Freedom
2 Energy, Education, Communications/Information
1 Water, Food, Shelter

http://worldhappiness.report/
“One of the most robust findings in the economics of
happiness is that unemployment is destructive to
people’s wellbeing. We find this is true around the
world.The employed evaluate the quality of their
lives much more highly on average as compared to
the unemployed. Individuals who are unemployed
also report around 30 percent more negative
emotional experiences in their day-to-day lives.”
Harvard Business Review March 2017

Cultural Assumptions &
Presumptions about employment

Soonish – the “Top?” ten
1. Cheap access to space
2. Asteroid mining
3. Fusion power
4. Programmable “Stuff”
5. Robotic Construction
6. Augmented reality
7. Synthetic Biology
8. Precision Medicine
9. Bio Printing
10. Brain-Computer Interface

Programmable “Stuff”
MIT has developed ingestible
robots to work inside the
digestive system (2 min)

Synthetic Biology
• Humans have been doing GMO for centuries
• Breeding plants, animals – un-natural selection
• Hybrids … long before Prius
• But …
• Insulin generating eColi – tip of the iceberg
• Growing “human” organs in other hosts
• Genetic Engineering – Plants,Animals, Humans

Augmented Humanity
• Glasses, Hearing Aids, Canes, Artificial legs, arms, hips
• Implant hearing assist, laser eye surgery
pace makers, valves, organ transplants
• Genetically informed therapy
• Gene “fixes” – target organs, whole body, gamete cells
Juan Enriquez –TED talk (17 min)

Bring in the clones,
there ought to be clones …
no matter there’ here
• Adolfo Cambiaso, world’s #1 Polo player
• Argentina ranch ..And a few favorite horses
Alan Meeker started horse cloning in 2010
Looking for best horses – Adolfo was ready
“there are more than 100 clones
from several of their best horses”
Dec 2017 – he’s riding a number of them in the “world
cup” game --- and wins in overtime
They have been asked about human cloning but declined

Human Cloning
• Who?
• Male – rich and/or powerful
• Where
• Countries where the ethics guidelines are not a concern
• And where they have the technology to make it happen
• And eventually where they want to demonstrate leadership
• Why
• Pass leadership onto, well - Myself
• Parts is parts – transplants from a clone should be low risk
• Probability of Xi ye, Xi er, Xi san is non-zero
• Xi Jinping – General Secretary 2013 … maybe by 2023 we may know

Precision Medicine
• Full Genome mapping
• Then Proteome
• Then everything-ome
• We will know what you are like, what treatments
will work or not work … cancer, etc.
And
• Encapsulated delivery with genetic targeting
• Custom virus attaches to specific cells/pathogens…
• Or training your “T” cells to attack specific targets

Bio Printing
• Already doing “Food”
Army’s Natick Labs creating “custom” supplements
for individual soldiers
• Some cellular printing
• Skin
• Surface level
• Blood vessels are a key issue
ARMI center of excellence in Manchester
Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute

Brain-Computer Interface
• EKG – MRI – fMRI
• Surface level interface
• Deeper probes
• Connections in eyes for sight
• Cochlear implants for hearing
• Prosthetic arms, legs, hands ….

Soonish: “honorable mention”
1. Space based solar power
• too expensive
2. Advanced Prosthetics
• overlaps brain-computer
3. Room level super conductors
• insufficient ROI
4. Quantum Computing
• too complex to address

White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane
• One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall
• And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call
And call Alice, when she was just small
• When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice, I think she'll know
• When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head, feed your head
• Written by Grace Wing Slick • Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group

What’s next???
Questions of choice
• diet for a small planet
• choosing to feed everyone
• what are 21st century "rights“
• work: hours, training, subsidies
• health care for whom, what care
• free time, non-employment
• continued extinction
• "nation-state" assumptions
identifying where change is possible, and
what changes to make

Capabilities
• Robot/AI job displacement
• designer drugs for disease; depression
but maybe motivation, purpose,
happiness, sympathy and understanding
• prosthetic enhancements
• extended life span
• dramatically lower energy costs
• lunar and Martian colony
• Monitoring residents to ID:
suicide, domestic violence, mass violence
• augmented education
• monitoring humans - sensors, social media
•

nightmares
• intentional pandemic
• persuasive jihad recruiting
(by more than one culture)
• AGIs decide we are as problematic as we accuse
our “others” of being

Or just maybe
• Equitable distribution of abundance
• Meet global need for the “basics”
• Enable individuals to rise to their potential
• Reverse existential risks to environment, war, etc.
• Health care & enhancements available
• Understanding of human nature, and a focus on
productive, purposeful, happiness
• Partner with the AGI’s as they join us

Is there Intelligent Life
• September 1959: physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and
Philip Morrison article
"Searching for Interstellar Communications."
in Nature
• 1961 Frank Drake hosted a
"search for extraterrestrial intelligence“
meeting on detecting their radio signals.The
meeting was held at the Green Bank radio
telescope facility inWestVirginia
Therein was born the Equation

Drake’s Equation
N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L
• N =The number of civilizations in the MilkyWay galaxy whose
electromagnetic emissions are detectable.
• R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.
• fp =The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.
• ne =The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.
• fl =The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.
• fi =The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.
• fc =The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases
detectable signs of their existence into space.
• L =The length of time such civilizations
release detectable signals into space.

We currently have a sample of one

The length of time such civilizations
release detectable signals into space
Why might it stop?
• A better form of communication is adopted
• More efficient – less E-M radiation
• Does not use E-M
• Consider “connection” in the movie “Avatar”
• Or telepathic links, or …
Or they (we) lose the capability
“Hello, is anyone there?”

The future - 2038

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