Gerd Leonhard & Peter Vander Auwera: Chapter 2: Tech vs Us

Hello, this is Gert Leonhardt, futurist, CEO of the Futures Agency and author of Technology vs. Humanity. Today we're doing a podcast together with Peter Van. Peter is a content curator for the Futures Agency and Peter has been diving into my book and looking at the interesting parts so that we can have a conversation with updates and more examples. Last week with the chapter one, which you can also find on my website, futuristgert.com this week is chapter two. And Peter, just say hello and maybe maybe just briefly say what chapter two is all about.

Hey. Hello, Gert. Yeah, Chapter two. Title of chapter two is Tech versus Us. If I would give a sort of high level summary of this chapter, it's the chapter where you are examining the nature of ethics and as a human signifier and differentiator. So I made.

I remember that.

Yeah, you wrote that.

Oh, yes, yes, I did. Yes.

Yeah. So I made a lot of notes and I tried to organize some of the questions in like little mini chapters for this post postcast. So in the beginning, you. You go quite deep in basically two questions. What defines being human? And what defines happiness? Let's maybe first look at human. What defines being human?

Yes. Well, okay. I think a philosopher once said that what defines being human is the ability to suffer. I thought that was quite interesting. You know, the. Given that machines don't exist in the sense of consciousness or sentience for the time being, they don't really have the capacity for suffering. And they can simulate feelings, but their existence is limited to simulation. And I think as humans, we have many quantities that are very unique to us that may eventually be copyright in some sort of way. But at this point, I think many things like emotions and compassion, understanding, intuition, you know, things that we take for granted, they're extremely difficult for machines. I think Martin Minsky once said, the founder of AI Whatever is very simple for a computer is very hard for a human, and vice versa. So what makes us human, I think that I would say is a combination of things that are unexplainable and other ones that are very explainable, like science and biology and chemistry and so on. But I think for the time being, there's something about us that is still unexplainable in many ways. And I would say that's probably correct, that in 50 or 100 years we can explain most of it, but the question is whether we want to. That's a different answer.

Yeah. There was in that part of the book an elaboration on the difference between comprehending and existing as we Do. And I see in many of your talks as well, you make the difference between understanding and being. If I can say it that way.

Yeah. There's actually three levels. One is sort of knowledge and data information, which machines can excel. And they have lots of knowledge in parenthesis that's based on data. So if they read a million books about philosophy, they will know all about the writers and the words, but they will not understand philosophy. They will not be a philosopher. That's called understanding. Okay. And beyond understanding is the things that are creative, like wisdom, you know, and coming to conclusions and transcending the information. So if you're looking at this, I think the computers for the hands on beat us at all of the stuff that's just logic and numbers, you know, binary. And since I wrote the book, I've moved on in that discussion by saying that computers are binary and we are multinary. Ah, multinary being sort of a new word in this context. But I think that it's not impossible the computers would become multinary eventually, given that they may have an IQ, in theory, of 100,000 or so in 20 years. Like singularity. Right. But the question is whether we would want that or whether that's a good idea. Technically speaking, I think it is feasible to simulate enough to look like it's real. But to go back to the question, the German word dasein, which means existence, is a very big word in philosophy, and it describes the concept of existence rather than mere sort of calculation, you know, processing and computers don't exist. So therefore everything that has to do with existence, like suffering, you know, making mistakes, serendipity, this is completely misunderstood by machines. And since I don't have a body, as I think many, many philosophers have said, including Moshe Feldenkrais and others that were in the sort of area of body awareness, have said that we think with the body, not with the brain. And so that's, that's basically beyond machines, you know, for, for quite some time.

And that taps in your definition of happiness, that to be actually happy you have to have embodiment.

Yes. And I think this is one of the things that, you know, we can take as a side note that we're seeing this disembodiment today. Basically your body doesn't matter because you can be on the Internet, right? And you know, nobody knows your dog and so on, but, you know, basically you're on the Internet, you don't, you don't need a body, just need a brain and eyes and everything else becomes superfluous, which is ridiculous considering you know, how interwoven we are with body and thinking. To then say that, you know, I want to just, you know, upload my brain, you know, I mean, that's kind of like saying that you want just the milk from the cow, but the rest of the cow can go, yeah.

It'S this old separation of mind and body. It's like you can replace the mind and put it somewhere in the clouds without, without, without the body. But we live with our whole being with our mind and body, of course.

Yeah. I mean, I call that machine thinking. It's basically saying that, okay, humans are machines, so therefore, what do we need with all the other stuff? We just need the thoughts, the intellectual firepower. And, you know, I mean, Roshkov talks about that in his new book also a lot. Right. I think this is a ridiculous thinking that we can be boiled down to some sort of total science where nothing can be unexplained.

I was intrigued by this sentence in your book. Simulation is not the same as duplication. And that led into a whole series of questions that you raised to gouge new scientific and technology breakthroughs. I mean, there was lately also a new site called does it exist or should it exist? And I think the questions that you have are also going into that direction. Could you pick some of those questions that we should ask if we look at technology versus Humanity?

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of questions about this, like this, this, this basic question of, you know, is it, is the technology that we're going to look at and that we're going to invent, is it going to really result in human flourishing? Or is it just another mousetrap that we're building? Or is it just a duplication, a cheap way of duplicating the real thing? You know, and those are all questions that we have to ask all the time now because some things may be initially quite beneficial, but like Facebook or so. And then they're turned into sort of a giant AI like Facebook has become. Right. And their only business is to interject themselves in our communications and that's what they become. So I think that's one of the key questions I have. You know, is it really going to enrich my existence in many ways? You know, take examples like Spotify or so where I say, yeah, clearly that's enriching. Right. And, you know, of course we pay for that, but it's, you know, it's a clear cut proposal. While other things, like, you know, for example, what's that said? Replica. Right. That replicates who you are on an app and those kind of things, I mean, they're jerk tech, what I call jerk tech. You know, it's basically just stuff that is ideas that can be done, but they're utterly clueless and senseless, and there's so much of that around these days. So I think that's some of the questions that we have to ask.

Yes, there were a couple of questions that were going on a much on an almost meta level. Like the question, does this idea put traditional GDP centric thinking over the most basic human needs? And does it replace the human quest for happiness with mere consumption? Which is more than. Is it just a nice gimmick that can do what we already can do?

Yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah, I think a lot of the. A lot of the ideas that we're looking at here, they're kind of like a poison that tempting us to do something. Like in many ways, for example, in dating or online relationships or. So we have this kind of thinking that we can, you know, we can only do 5% of the work and achieve 100% of the results. Like I call this wormholing, you know, creating a wormhole, you know, to where like. And that's always very tempting, like saying, oh, you know, you don't have to learn languages, you just use this fabulous app. In the end, I would say, well, that's amazing. I can do that. And I like this app, but, you know, it's not the same. That's like I make love to a robot. That's not the same.

I guess so. I never tried.

Yeah, I never, you know, I never tried either, but I can imagine, I mean, even if it was the same, physically speaking, it's not the same. And I think that what technology is giving us this kind of illusion that we can just bypass all of the work. Like, you know, we can learn all this stuff online and then we have a PhD. You know, it's like, yeah, we can learn the information, but do we really understand? Have we developed wisdom? Have we actually gone anywhere different or are we just also simulating.

Yeah, yeah. There is something much related, obviously also in this chapter of your book, which was about preference. Could we end up developing a preference for technology over humanity and why that would be bad?

Yes, Well, I think this is, of course, it's very related to the drug issue, right. So we use drugs in different ways, all of us, you know, cigarettes, alcohol, whatever. But, you know, we develop a preference over things that are real or not real or sort of in the middle somewhere. But if we lose ourselves in a drug, you know, or do too much, then. Then we were completely devoid of what used to be somewhat neutral. And I'm wondering about this preference of essentially saying it has to be convenient, it has to be quick, it has to be instant, it has to be free. And that's all our preference. And we end up with a mountain of garbage because the preference means that we will never get the real thing because we're always looking for the preferences to be. Be fulfilled. As I, as I've come to say recently, convenience over consciousness.

And it creates addiction.

Yeah. And you know, sometimes it's okay. Convenience over consciousness when it's not material, like Google Maps. Yeah. It's convenient and it works well enough so you use it, but, you know, losing all of your skills because there's always a convenient bypass, like dating, like talking to people, like creating things, like doing your own investments, like, you know, basically doing things that are. Require your own firepower. Use it or lose it. Right. And this is called in, in the airplane. And they are in the travel business and airlines, they call this the glass cockpit problem. You know, it's, it's a pilot only has glass instruments. It doesn't, doesn't have real instruments. They just displace. And because of that, they eventually forget how to fly because, because they're always using these things. And it's like, it's like being in a video room. And especially when you do long, like in the U.S. you know, three, four hours. They may only fly themselves three minutes in the entire flight.

Yeah, yeah.

And so if we had this glass cock problem in our whole society, like in relationships in media and music and, you know, and the app is saying, do this, do that, you know, we may end up being just sort of, you know, basically, let's leave our brain behind.

Yeah. Your good friend William Gibson once remarked, technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. And there's a whole number of pages in chapter two that dive deeper into that. I recently heard in a Davos conversation, somebody who was running a big data broker organization saying, well, you know, AI is just code. It's software running on hardware. So technology is neutral. I think. You disagree.

Well, I disagree primarily because when we invent technology that can amplify itself and change itself, that's. That's a whole different cup of tea. You know, if we invent technology like, like the mobile phone or, you know, then, then, then we're sort of still material to it developing. You know, it can't do anything without us. But we invent Technology as deep learning and machine learning, neural networks. It could eventually create giant black boxes where we would have no idea what they're doing. We just want the positive results and we'll let them do it. Right. And I think that's, that's bad for most instances, not for every instance. But maybe a black box for driving a car is fine, but not for medical purposes or for justice systems or probation or. You know, I think that that's the moment when we can sort of say, okay, the computer always knows better. That's kind of like a religious statement, right? It's, it's, there's some super authority that we just bow to.

Yes, but you also were leading into responsibility. And with great responsibility or with great power comes great responsibility. And you also are alluding to, I think you called it an Oppenheimer moment that may be needed for us to start seriously tackling these issues.

Yes, I think human nature is a little bit. That we're more reactive. You know, we tend to cruise along and be more lazy about being proactive because we haven't. It's hard to imagine what could happen, especially now with all the exponential change. So the Oppenheimer moment refers to the fact that Oppenheimer built the nuclear bomb primarily because he didn't want the Germans to have it first. That was the idea back then. He didn't think that his own government would use it, but of course they did. And he wasn't happy about that, as far as I know. And he said many things like he's become the purveyor of evil, you know, from the Bhagavad Gita. What is it called? The Indian script. Anyway, he then said that this was a very bad thing that happened. But we can learn from history here. After that happened, we had two bombs and then we decided we don't want everybody to have a bomb.

Yeah, the non Proliferation Treaty.

Yeah. And that took 25 years. You know, I think it was 1970 ratified for that to happen because, you know, the bombs weren't that far along, it'd be that many anyway. But we did figure out a way how to keep it in check. And now I think we're facing artificial intelligence, we're facing human genome editing and we're facing geoengineering and that's essentially the same kind of arms race. So the question I have, are we going to succeed in saying that look like in human genome editing, Are we going to get together and figure out what is good for us or not? Or do we have to have a viral Epidemic of some sort where 100 million people die first or, you know, I mean, it could be a hundred thousand that die, for example, in an air control disaster where the AI has taken over and that sort of thing. It's not just a question of security, is it a question of standards? And you know, I mean this basically. So that's something I'd be worried about.

My kids, my daughter is 13 years old and so they are being bombarded these days by going in to study stem, and I feel very uncomfortable by it. And when I was reading your book, you came up with an alternative suggestion. I think you called it core. C O R E. Could you expand a bit what that stands for?

Yes, well, in fact, you know, the formulation in the book, after much deliberation between me, my publisher back then and various people, we called it core because, you know, stem and core have some sort of connection. Right, Stem and core. But originally this was called Hecky. H E C I. So basically humanity, ethics, creativity, imagination. And ever since the book came out, I have gone back to hacky because the core idea was interesting, but the hackie idea was, is superior. So let's, let's talk about that. Even though, even though that's actually post and prior to the book. But so when you study stem, it's about science, engineering, math, logic, and if you study humanities, it's about things like conscience, understanding, philosophy, ethics, creativity, you know, sort of murky, ephemeral things. Right.

Art.

Art, yeah. And, you know, all the related things there. So that's why I said, okay, what we need to do in the future is clearly everybody has to understand technology. There's no way around that. But is being a scientist or an engineer really the key to the future? And my thinking is, yeah, temporarily right now it is because the jobs are all there. But in 10 years, will the computers be scientists and parenthesis doing lab experiments? Will they understand engineering and will they do all the things that our programmers are doing? And the answer is yes. So what do we have then? You know, can a computer be a philosopher? No. So that's a pretty safe job to have. And it can't be a philosopher because a computer does not have the wherewithal to think of. Things are never ending. You know, it is, I think. What was your musician score the other day? Nick Cave, right, who said basically, yes, a computer can write music, but it cannot write great music because it doesn't.

Have the guts, doesn't have the nerve.

The nerve, yeah. And it's like, okay, and that is the difference. This Is why I'm thinking, okay, I think having more education in the humanities is the future because just about everything else in 20 years and Singularity 2050, computers will do it for us.

I had the impression that in this chapter you were looking at less than 10 years. So for people familiar with Horizon 1, 2 and 3, it's probably Horizon 2. Not short term, not long term, but less than 10 years like that. What sort of things do you expect to happen in this horizon, in this time horizon?

Well, I tend to look at this sort of time frame 5 to 10 years, because I think 20 years is very much science fiction because everything is off the table as a inhibiting factor. I mean, 20 years, basically a lot of things could happen. That's really fantasy to a large degree. But five to 10 years I can imagine. For example, what we see right now clearly is complete voice recognition, natural language processing of machines will be achieved to 100% in that and very soon. So speaking to machines, being spoken to by machines, machines masquerading as humans in audio and video in a complete interface change. So no more typing, no more apps, just say, hey, do this. That's there. Quantum computing, I think, not in that final stage of it, but what I would call more like 3D computing or supercomputing. That's imminent. So we can go in the cloud and we can do the DNA in four seconds. Yeah, 5G large scale connectivity. 90% of people connected to the Internet in 2030, that's the estimation for most people. I mean, we're talking about fundamental changes. Basically, as I like to say jokingly, sometimes technology would be virtually unlimitedly capable. In 10 years there'll be almost no limit as to what it can do.

But it's most of the things that you list have to do with augmentation of human senses because there are those technologies like, or will be like 5G speak recognition and so on and so on. But who will be responsible for defining the principles of that human augmentation or augmentation of human senses?

Yeah, I mean, we didn't touch on AR&VR and mixed reality and extended reality much yet. But I think the problem is not so much that these things will become so dominant that everything else goes away. It will be that they're utterly confusing to us. So I think that is the big challenge for us. If we speak to a computer, we would tend to think of that as being a lot more human than when we type. And then we change our attitude like, this is a person in there, or, you know, it's real or something. And then when we go into a virtual reality room with our goggles, you know, as a doctor or as a lawyer or judge or. So then we take it off that it will be so utterly boring. It's like getting off the crack or something, you know? Yeah.

It's getting again back to that topic of preference. Preference for the faking versus the real thing and getting addicted to it.

Yeah. And this is why I, you know, I think I'm. I'm getting on this agenda where I say, you know, we should refuse the fake stuff. You know, just like we may refuse today the fake food or things that are not real. And it's okay when we have some of it, but when we have a lot of it, then we become fake because you are what you eat. Right. Parenthesis. And so I think this is really. It's too much of a good thing can be a very bad thing. And so somebody has to be involved with creating a balancing act. Social contract, laws, regulations, things that we agree on, things that just don't happen because we all agree that it shouldn't. And there's all different variations. It's not just regulation.

I mean the extreme of doing whatever is possible. Then we are getting into transhumanism. I know you have some strong opinions about transhumanism. I think you're against it, but last time I heard you, it was a stronger opinion than just against.

Well, you know, I'm a humanist, so how can I be for transhuman? I think we haven't even fully realize what we have, the potential that we have as humans. So for me, the idea of transcending humanity is a sales pitch because somebody else will. Somebody will sell me a product where I can transcend humanity. But, you know, not considering that I actually all. I already have that entire potential, you know, so, yeah, I mean, everybody would like to transcend humanity when it's about controlling your cholesterol or something like that. Right. But we talk about entire. This is the question of scope. You know, when you take a pill of cholesterol, that's a different scope. By saying then you're going to implant Wikipedia in your head. If and when that becomes possible, if they're still around, then.

I mean, the closing sentence of this chapter has really to do with this. I mean, reading I'm on a mission and the mission is what would the future feel like that carves a path between the transhumanists and the exponential humanitarians like yourself.

Yeah, I think this is obviously not an easy conversation to have And I know many transhumanists and also singularity people that I quite like. I just, I think it's a, to dehumanize society or societies or life because it is a monetary factor that to me is not excusable. If you want to dehumanize because you feel like humans are toast and you know, and they just don't belong there, that's a whole different story. But to do it for commercial purposes like you know, humanity, Human Longevity Inc. Or you know, those kind of ideas are like, okay, you know, if it's a philosophical discussion, yes. But if it's about selling stuff, you know, as I again I sometimes say that the biggest business today is to sell out humanity.

So it's about exponential humanity, humanism, if I can call it that way. There was also Joy Ito and his team with their new council. They call it Extended Intelligence. I think there are some on some interesting ideas there as well.

Right. I think that technology will make it possible for us to rediscover ourselves in many ways that have already been surfacing in the past, but we didn't pay much attention to. I mean, imagine a society where we don't have to spend all this time doing mind numbing work, you know, just because we're trying to gather a dollar. I mean, there was a joke years ago, you know, that millions of people are spending their time trying to figure out how to sell people stuff on the Internet. Imagine if we spent that time on actual human things, you know, trying to understand who we are, trying to create a larger story, trying to help each other, trying to solve large problems and all these things rather than, you know, following the path of accumulating things that could unlock a huge potential. Like, you know, there's hundreds of millions of jobs in the social arena of doing social work for each other. Taking care of your kids, building a house, building a kindergarten, taking care of your grandmother. You know, doing all these things that are social voluntary jobs today. And many, many of us would like to do some of that, but we can't do it because we're locked up somewhere else. Right. So I think we can rediscover all these things when it's no longer going to be about, you know, scoring to get ahead when it's more abundant and technology will deliver abundance. I'm totally with Diamandis on this one, except that I don't think it's going to do any good if the government is not going to distribute that abundance in some way that everybody gets a piece of it.

Well, diamond is Also said a lot is possible if we ignore the moral and ethical aspects of it.

Yes, well, you know, I think that, I mean, I think most of that is pretty well meaning, but I lack the enthusiasm and technology as being the final sort of save all kind of idea. You know, I think it's potentially extremely powerful, but without us making sense out of it and having wisdom. Because technology doesn't have wisdom, how can it possibly have wisdom when it doesn't exist? I mean, that is. That is a complete paradox to me. So we need to have wisdom to use that technology, not reject it or put it back in the can, which we can't. But there has to be some wisdom that goes with any large powerful thing.

I think that would be a better title for this chapter too. Is wisdom and existence are more important.

Yeah, I mean there may eventually be a rewrite. You know, I mean, I'm looking at the potential announcements.

Announcements.

So I think we should wrap up here. There was a very good conversation. Peter, thanks very much. If you want to find out more about the book Tech vs Human.com TechVsHuman.com of course, I'm future with Gerd.com and Gertube is my video channel and Peter can be found at, what is it? Etervan on Twitter. Right.

Yes, that's quite. Peter Van. That's it.

Peter Van. Like the van.

And we have a newsletter on digital ethics.

That's right, yeah. We just launched this three weeks ago. So all of you listening may like to dial up. It's Digitalethics co. You can sign up there. It's of course free and giving you all the new morsels every week. So next week we'll go through chapter three. So stay tuned and thanks very much, Peter and talk soon.

Have a great day. Bye, Gertrude.