As Homo sapiens becomes increasingly mechanized through the development of cyborg engineering and artificial intelligence, will it spell the end of life as we know it? It may not be the end, but the beginning of the evolution of a new form of existence. Yuval Harari’s Homo sapiens offers insights into how the convergence of technology and humans will change the future of humanity.
Homo antecessor, Homo florensis, Homo ergaster, Homo rudolfensis. What do these four words have in common? At first glance, they sound like spells that wizards in the Harry Potter novels might memorize. Unfortunately, they’re not magic spells, but rather biological terms that refer to humanity’s past existence. So, in 2018, what are the words we use to describe humanity today? Most of us have come across this word in TV shows, on the internet, and in books. It’s Homo sapiens.
Homo sapiens means “man of wisdom” in Latin. Homo sapiens is a human being who developed the Paleolithic culture from 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, and has the characteristics of bipedalism and a larger brain capacity than other types of humans, so it shows similar behavior to the people we see around us. Homo sapiens, the current human species, is well adapted to life on Earth. Most people believe that, barring a large-scale natural disaster like the extinction of the dinosaurs, the human species will not become extinct for many centuries.
However, Yuval Harari, the author of Homo sapiens, thinks differently. According to his book, Homo sapiens will end sooner rather than later. The end of Homo sapiens means the end of the human species. But how will we end, and what does it mean to end? Does it mean disappearing from the planet or evolving into a new species? Yuval Harari believes that we are gradually transcending our biological features and moving closer to the realm of the divine, and in the process, many of the characteristics of Homo sapiens will disappear, and the end of Homo sapiens will be the disappearance of the characteristics of Homo sapiens.
There are many reasons why he believes this will happen, but we’ll focus on cyborg engineering. Before we dive in, let’s take a look at cyborgs. What is a cyborg? The book describes it as “a partial synthesis of animate and inanimate matter”. The word “synthesis” doesn’t just mean the process of combining animate and inanimate blocks to create a single entity, like a Lego toy. You can think of a human being as being made up of biological blocks, and when one of the biological blocks fails or has a problem, you replace it with a mechanical block. The result of this process is called a cyborg.
The idea of humans disappearing from the planet as cyborgs is already familiar to the existing population of Homo sapiens. Numerous movies, books, and TV shows have depicted the fierce competition and war between cyborgs and humans. James Cameron’s “Terminator” is a great example of a movie in which machines create human-like humans, and the humans in turn try to eliminate the machines and take over the planet. However, the cyborg apocalypse in the book is a little different from what we know from the movie.
Yuval Harari believes that when a part of the human body, such as the brain, is replaced by a machine, it is no longer truly Homo sapiens, and that this state of affairs is “the end of Homo sapiens” because most of its genes are gone. Let’s assume that a pure human being, unreplaced by any machine, is 100% filled with Homo sapiens genes. But what if a machine is more than 50% of a human being, or even more. At the extreme, if more than 90% of my body is made up of machines, am I a machine? Or am I a person? Or if only my brain is replaced by a machine, am I truly Homo sapiens, because I am not perceiving and thinking with a human brain? The answer to both of these questions is that, at the very least, a machine-mixed person is not a “perfect” Homo sapiens.
If we become 1% “less” Homo sapiens every 100 years, simple math tells us that in 10,000 years, we won’t look like Homo sapiens at all. In other words, Homo sapiens is doomed.
This raises one question. Machines have developed alongside human history. Advances in engineering have made it possible to realize different organ systems, and soon, all of them. Unlike other organs, the brain is quite difficult to replicate because there are still many unknowns, which is why the final goal of engineers is to replicate it. Consider the recent epic Go match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. It pitted a human brain against an artificial intelligence called deep learning. AlphaGo won 3-1, which was a defeat for humans, but in terms of cyborg development, it was a welcome sign that machines could soon replace the human brain.
In addition, artificial retinas and cochlear implants have begun to replace disabled people’s tissues and damaged and dysfunctional organs. As technology advances, machines are overcoming human deficiencies, creating a society in which humans cooperate with machines. It is inevitable to avoid this trend. In the end, humanity is bound to be influenced by machines, and technological advancements can replace most of our jobs, making Yuval Harari’s hypothesis of the end of Homo sapiens even stronger. Artificial intelligence technologies like AlphaGo will eventually contribute a lot to the creation of cyborgs, which will eventually lead to the end of Homo sapiens.
If you look at the history of technological advancement, humanity has always evolved alongside technology. By using fire, creating tools, and developing language, we began to dominate nature, and now we’ve reached a stage where we’re trying to use technology to push beyond our biological limits. We’re not just an accessory to machines, we’re co-evolving with them.
Now we can answer the question in the title. Can AlphaGo destroy the human race? The answer is yes. AlphaGo will bring Homo sapiens to an end. However, it will not be a simple destruction, but an evolution to a new form of existence. We may lose some of our characteristics as Homo sapiens, but in the process, we will discover new possibilities. Our convergence with technology will set us on a new path, and that path will lead us to a future we have never imagined.
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