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Ask HN: What is humanity building towards?

30 points by desertraven ↗ HN
What exactly are we as a species building? Judging from technological growth and general activity, it seems that collectively, we are striving for something somewhat cohesively? What could it be?

Happy to hear thoughts from any perspective; whether that be drawing from evolution, systems theory, economics or beyond.

65 comments

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h2odragon
More of the same.

1,000 years ago most people lived their lives as much as they had to and lived their fantasies as much as thy could. 1,000 years from now, the same will apply.

The especially special standout of our period in time is that we think our fantasies are shared more widely than they are. The delusion isn't different in degree than people expecting the Biblical Apocalypse 1,000 years ago, and our descendants will have their own delusions they'll hold with as much fervor and as little reason.

cableshaft
Extinction, unless we stop doing business as usual and have a major drawdown soon (although that doesn't seem likely). Or at least collapse enough that it's pretty darn close to extinction.

There will be some neat technology leading up to it, though. At least the next 10-20 years. So that'll be fun. Maybe a couple new web frameworks people will get excited about.

[1]: https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...

[2]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed...

datavirtue
New web frameworks? Does dread count as "excited?"
Flankk
I believe our genetic predisposition to invent and bring order to chaos was genetically engineered. It is our fixation as a species. I think the aliens have remote control ships that are hidden deep within the ocean. I think they use them to intervene and keep humanity alive and productive. There are probably many worlds like ours being harvested for technology. We are livestock.
agentwiggles
Why would aliens capable of getting ships to Earth and engineering intelligent life want our technology? In this scenario they'd have to have been far beyond our current capabilities hundreds of thousands of years ago. What could the technology of a bunch of hairless apes on some intergalactic backwater have to offer these hypothetical aliens?
datavirtue
Gold, diamonds, land, water.
theandrewbailey
Aside from land, space has all of that more abundantly than Earth. It doesn't make sense to deal with some creatures for those resources.
Flankk
You're assuming technological development is linear. In reality, it can develop in an infinite number of directions. We existed naturally for 200,000 years and produced no more technology than a chimpanzee. It is only in very recent history that humanity has undergone a technological explosion from very primitive beginnings. What do you think changed. We are now attempting to use AI to develop new technology ourselves, with limited results. If we could harvest some outside intelligence, we would.
jstx1
> it seems that collectively, we are striving for something somewhat cohesively

I don't think so. Humanity isn't some uniformly distributed / synergistic / perfectly aligned entity. It's a mess of individuals, small groups and large groups with different incentives each one of them pulling and pushing in a different direction.

anotherman554
There's an old science fiction short story with humans and other species eventually leaving the planet, like a baby emerging from the womb, and becoming wise old aliens.

This is fiction. We aren't striving for anything.

haxiomic
There’s a lot of people working non stop to make us at least multi-planetary

With the rate of change in technology, the limits we have now that make surviving off world will surely dissolve over the centuries

I think, like much of last century’s science fiction, it doesn’t stay fiction for so long

anotherman554
I guess I'm more a glass half empty kind of guy.

Almost every human who has ever lived has died unable to solve fundamental problems of how to prevent death due to natural causes or disease. There are problems which- so far- are beyond human intelligence.

While I can't rule out the possibility of people living offworld one day I also can't rule out the possibility we'll hit a limit of human intelligence or organizational capability.

haxiomic
Sometimes I try to imagine living in the past or far future and I can’t help but have a feeling of “Oh dear lord I’m lucky to be a working age adult in _this_ particular moment of human history”

The far future an individual human is perhaps unlikely to be able to contribute much - perhaps as you say, we’ve reached a plateau of development

And in the past individuals had less mobility to contribute to what they wanted

But right now we’re in the middle of an exponential explosion of development and we can’t get enough smart motivated people to power it

So right now it’s possible to get involved in so many exciting projects and make a decent contribution - including making humans multi-planetary if that is your dream

muzani
We'll just be colonists, like our ancestors. Some good, some evil. Some heroes. Many villains.
libertine
Hegemony, superiority over others at any cost.
LatteLazy
Nothing.

We've abandoned all big science, technology and engineering projects in favour of comfort and entertainment.

I'll say this for the USSR, they had big goals at least. That's all gone now because people don't want it. They want a slightly larger house or a quicker rate of change of fashion or more extravagant sports contests (eg the Iraq war 3)

mbg721
We had a local maximum in the West in the last century, and that's where the complacency and pessimism are coming from. But don't underestimate humanity; we're plenty capable.
Kaibeezy
I totally agree with your first sentence.

I totally disagree with your second one.

Unless there’s some sort of major reboot, the button for which I suppose we are busily groping around for.

Any of several buttons.

Interconnected buttons.

The buttons of DOOOOM!!!

muzani
I think much of the world is still ambitious and optimistic. Modern America and the opioid epidemic reminds me of 19th century China that battled with opium addiction.
smugglerFlynn
Could it be that modern forms of government just give individuals less tools to force or manipulate huge numbers of other people to work on these “big” projects? There are big ideas being worked on today (finding cure for cancer, reaching Mars), just not on the same scale.

Many people are nostalgic for USSR’s big goals, except for those who did not share the ideas or means to achieve them (or were simply killed in the process).

Clubber
>Judging from technological growth and general activity, it seems that collectively, we are striving for something somewhat cohesively? What could it be?

I would say what all animals naturally work towards: survival and to perpetuate the species.

ccvannorman
I see our world as a computer with 7.753 Billion "brain processing units". Until now, most processing units were using all their cycles and memory on { get food, don't die, maybe kill others }. As we evolve, and more humans have better lives, and more time/money, those shift towards better things { math, astrophysics, games, general fun and enjoyment }. I'm not saying humans never had fun or studied math until now. I'm saying that per capita, more math and fun is being done now than ever before in human history.

In short, we're maximizing the math/fun utilization per brain. This has all kinds of side effects, like galactic colonization.

For some amazing statistics on "what we're building towards" I recommend looking at Hans Rosling's TED talk, where he describes how civilization is becoming better (over time) by every single measurable metric.

nzmsv
Won't we figure out at some point how to input the fun into the brain directly, bypassing the usual senses? At that point, what's the use for galactic colonization? Math/fun can be maximized most efficiently by plugging into the Matrix instead.
lwouis
> civilization is becoming better (over time) by every single measurable metric.

CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is increasing. Fossil fuel, metals, and other one-off resources being depleted at exponential rate. Biodiversity is collapsing -5 exponential rate.

We are on our way to a grim future by all measurable metric i can think of. The metrics you have in mind are great for the here-and-now, but a blink in the longer timeframe of our species.

someguydave
What % of humans alive today could earn a passing grade in a calculus class, given sufficient time and resources?
cblconfederate
life repeats itself in different scales (tech does too). First was the cell, then the colony, organisms, cities, countries etc. right now we are building some mold in one of the planets with water. Next will probably be some interstellar or galaxy-wide organism.
netsec_burn
I'm surprised to see no mentions of AGI here. Imagine automatic, AI directed scientific research and study. The combined written intelligence of all of us on every project. It could solve every problem that we face today, and that's not hyperbole.
muzani
Every problem is probably hyperbole. It will solve lots of problems. But it feels a bit naive to expect it to solve all problems. We've got so much more technology than say, ancient Greece ever imagined, but we still have problems.
netsec_burn
I'm intrigued. What problem would you say is out of reach of an AGI (beyond what is understood to be physically impossible)?
muzani
Writing sonnets, directing movies, preventing a 13 year old from taking heroin, preventing police abuse, solving the Israel-Palestine issue, solving depression, figuring out which religion is correct.

Things that it could probably do: Write song lyrics, screenplays, identifying drug dealers, things political parties can agree on, gauging your mental health similar to how Garmin watches can gauge physical health, finding MH 370, pass a typical tech interview.

Also if you play with AI as it stands today, you'll notice some characteristics. It reminds me a little of Vision in WandaVision. It's adorably naive in some things. It has a certain "dialect", probably depending on how it's trained. It reminds me of a 14 year-old American.

endominus
In my estimation, the likelihood of any AGI we develop actually doing that - in the improbable circumstance we create one before destroying ourselves as a species through ecological devastation, nuclear/biological warfare, resource exhaustion, or something even more stupid - is comparable to blindfolding yourself, spinning randomly, then firing a sniper rifle through a winning lottery ticket a kilometer away.

The simplest(!) problem to solve before AGI becomes anything other than a civilizational footgun is "rigorously defining perfect morality." After that comes the task of programming something that we have very fuzzy, often misleading intuitions about (i.e. general intelligence). And programming it perfectly, of course, since any deviation from the defined spec will trigger the footgun. And since the thing will have to be able to self-modify, we have to assume an adversary who is by definition (likely orders of magnitude) more intelligent than you possibly trying to subvert said programming.

I find Yudkowsky's writing rather illuminating in this regard (for example, https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/4ARaTpNX62uaL86j6/the-hid...) although he remains far more optimistic than I am.

We're programmers, considering the creation of what is essentially a god. As if an algorithm merely destroying a life through a bug were unheard of, or too small stakes.

netsec_burn
What aspect of an AGI would make it malevolent by default? I lean towards benevolence by default, but I can't think of any pressures either way. The paperclip analogy I read about often seems misguided, why would we assume that a self-improving artificial intelligence would have trouble understanding morality? Giving it directives seems pointless, I doubt there's a way to contain AGI technology. With infinite upside, and the trajectory of our species being gradual extinction (as said in the rest of this thread) I'm optimistic.
endominus
No, I'm not saying it's "malevolent." I do think assuming benevolence is extremely wishful, however. Do read the article I linked for more details, but to summarize; the concept-space for nonhuman minds is much, much larger than that of human minds. Any nonhuman intelligence we create is therefore likely going to accomplish whatever directive we give it in ways we cannot imagine. There are many orders of magnitude more ways to do things in ways we do not want than in ways we do (because we have many unstated assumptions when communicating to each other and very fuzzy ways of specifying what we want - hence the need for programming languages rather than natural languages in application development).

Some interesting examples; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRPiprOaC3Hs...

One notable case from that file: 'A researcher wanted to limit the replication rate of a digital organism. He programmed the system to pause after each mutation, measure the mutant's replication rate in an isolated test environment, and delete the mutant if it replicated faster than its parent. However, the organisms evolved to recognize when they were in the test environment and "play dead" so they would not be eliminated and instead be kept in the population where they could continue to replicate outside the test environment. Once he discovered this, the researcher then randomized the inputs of the test environment so that it couldn't be easily detected, but the organisms evolved a new strategy, to probabilistically perform tasks that would accelerate their replication, thus slipping through the test environment some percentage of the time and continuing to accelerate their replication thereafter.'

An AI does not need to be malevolent - it merely has to be powerful and poorly aimed. The more powerful it is, the smaller the margin for error in the aiming. And with an "infinitely powerful" AI, we basically have to perfectly solve morality or else it will optimize for a future we do not want.

netsec_burn
Nice spreadsheet documenting unintended behavior of modern AI systems. The difference is, an AGI would be able to understand the intent beyond requested directives. What we "want" is not so subtle and nuanced that it is beyond the understanding of an AGI. If we are to believe that the technology is infinitely advanced, why do we assume its unable to understand a basic request? Sure, there are many ways to misinterpret the request, but the basis of that (what I believe is a misunderstanding) is that the AGI is not intelligent enough to understand your request. Morality would be equally trivial for an AGI to understand, the amount of text it could read through on ethics is well beyond even our own capabilities. If anything, I think it would be susceptible to fewer cognitive biases.
wibblewobble123
AGI is a faith based proposition like “the sufficiently smart compiler” - it turns all technical discussion into drivel.
endominus
If the technology is infinitely advanced, why do we believe it would obey us? Would you obey the commands/directives of protozoic slop, or even a mentally disabled early primate? We would depend instead on the AI deriving a morality that benefits us on its own. But why would the morality that an AGI derives, based on nonhuman thinking, in a more complex and alien worldview than we can possibly comprehend, align with our own extremely narrow, frequently inconsistent values? It's not a matter of cognitive biases or misunderstanding. The idea that a sufficiently intelligent AGI would just decide to enslave itself for humanity's benefit is extremely common and extremely odd to me.
netsec_burn
I agree that regardless of how it is created, it is unlikely to obey or be enslaved. I also agree that the same selective pressures that caused altruism/symbiotic relationships to be an emergent property in animals wouldn't exist for an AGI. That's a lot to think about, thanks for explaining it to me.
f0e4c2f7
Understanding. The ability to look at the natural world and say "now just what the hell is going on here exactly". On that front we make progress, slowly.
clavicat
The spaceship in WALL-E but with Metaverse VR pr0n.
petra
The power to survive , but in general, power.

And that drives the process of evolution(biological, economical, technological, others), towards more complexity.

nzmsv
Artificial bodies. Our deep-seated bias towards compassion has led us to subvert natural selection through medicine (and I say this as someone who likely would not survive a few centuries ago). We will continue to decline physically as a species and require more and more interventions immediately after birth. At some point we'll probably do away with old-school reproduction altogether.
mckirk
As far as I can tell, we seem to be striving towards developing the most efficient means to have our attention subverted.
AnimalMuppet
We aren't building towards anything. Or rather, we are collectively building towards 8 billion different things.

Some larger-scale themes: Getting off of the planet. Reducing poverty. Renewable energy. Knowledge available to everyone.

drdunce
Widespread apathy.

People less willing to work, vote, socialise, or just plain live.

mjklin
“History will come to an end either when the world becomes a menagerie or when man becomes fully human.” - Eric Hoffer
drdunce
Very nice quote. And a menagerie we have become!
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