Humanity is in danger of oblivion under the power of artificial intelligence, and it just needs to develop the ability to communicate with machines directly, or be ready to face the risk of becoming useless, said the beloved billionaire, engineer and inventor Elon Musk in his usual pretentious manner.
“I think over time, we may see a convergence, a fusion of biological and digital intelligence,” Musk told the audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he also announced Tesla's entry into the United Arab Emirates market.
"It will largely depend on the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and your digital version."
In fact, the idea of human-computer symbiosis is far from new. About 57 years ago, the American psychologist and computer pioneer Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider colorfully described his theory of "cooperative interaction between humans and electronic computers." His amazing insight has profoundly influenced generations of scientists and engineers.
“The hope is that in the relatively not-too-distant future, the human brain and computer machines can become very tightly interconnected,” Licklider wrote in his 1960 work “Man-Computer Symbiosis”.
"And the result of this symbiosis will be a mind that will think like no human brain has ever thought, and like no other computer machine has ever processed information."
Today, perhaps the clearest examples of the current level of this symbiosis are technologies such as the Gen III Helmet Mounted Display System for F-35 fighter pilots, or perhaps the more civilian Oculus Rift virtual reality helmet. A small remark. Ironically, Musk was speaking on the day that a new trailer for Ghost in the Shell, a Hollywood film adaptation of the popular Japanese manga and anime, appeared on the web, which depicts a future where people can replace parts of their bodies, including the brain, with cybernetic counterparts.
Musk's use of the term "bandwidth" in his speech is not at all accidental, since it will become the cornerstone in the relationship between the human brain and the machine. Elon explains this by the fact that machines are able to communicate with each other through the transmission of "trillions of bits of information per second", while people who communicate mainly with their smartphones are limited to only 10 bits per second.
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“High-bandwidth interfaces connected to the brain will be what will help humans enter symbiosis with machine intelligence and, possibly, solve the problems associated with our fears of losing control over them and becoming useless,” said the head of SpaceX and Tesla …
According to Musk, the human mind needs to continue to evolve in order to gain the ability to quickly receive information and transmit it to artificial intelligence. How to do it? No one knows for sure yet, but don't worry, again because Musk is most likely already working on some cool solution.
By the way, he already spoke about one of these concepts. It is called "neural lace". It is an interface between a machine and a person, which is a neural network (this is not a neural network, but rather an implant that looks like a fishing tackle), literally woven into the human brain. As conceived, it will allow, for example, to access the Internet without a computer, since it will itself be a complex computer with a wireless network, working in symbiosis with human thinking. It may even be able to store backups of a person's mind in case they die physically. Let's hope that in the end we don't end up with something like the Borgs from Star Trek, but anyway - sounds very cool, you must agree.
In his comments on the context under discussion (the issue of the problem of a person's ability to become useless), Musk noted as an example how great the risk is that drivers may soon be replaced by autonomous vehicles. According to Elon, self-driving cars will certainly be able to significantly increase the level of safety on the roads …
“However, the world is full of people whose work involves driving. In fact, I believe that driving as a phenomenon is one of the biggest employers for people. Driving comes in a wide variety of forms and applications. Therefore, we need to start now to consider the issues and analyze options for new roles for such people. It will definitely be painful. But this must be done as soon as possible, because a considerable layer of the planet's population is already at risk of becoming useless in the near future."
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK
