13.1 Human demotion

Will AI end Human dominance

Right now, AI lacks many of the key Capabilities that are essential to Human Intelligence. It is also unlikely that AI will totally obsolete Human Intelligence in the very near future, of say, less than 5 years. However, given the absolutely stunning rate of AI developmental growth, it is certainly not impossible. 

It is demonstrably obvious that AI has made exponentially growing advancements in its Capabilities, particularly in that last 5 years, and it must be expected that AI will continue to become more Intelligently Capable with an increasing rate of change. We must expect that AI will compress the Moore's Law CPS doubling rate of Computers over time. That is, AI Capabilities are currently accelerating toward a Singularity as predicted by Raymond Kurzweil [34], and AI may force this event to arrive much faster than Ray has predicted. 

Comparatively, Human Intelligence is characterized by a range of complex cognitive processes, including perception, introspection, attention, memory functions, reasoning, planning, and problem-solving, that are collectively difficult to fully replicate with current AI technologies. 

AI has shown impressive performance Capabilities that are superior to Humans in narrow dimensions of Intelligence, such as playing games, recognizing images, and processing natural language, however AI is presently still challenged by many tasks that are completely routine for Humans, such as understanding subtle context, immediately learning new instructed information and then building and executing complex actions, making balanced ethical and moral judgements, constructing long-term plans with temporally sequenced milestone objectives, and rapidly adapting to new situations that are entirely different to all past learned experience.

Even if AI achieves and exceeds Human Intelligence, it may still not be able to achieving Conscious Self-awareness and demonstrate the incredibly complex creativity that all Humans possess.  Chat-GPT, GPT-4, and Bard are systems that show AI can generate new ideas and solutions based on patterns and information, however AI appears to lack the ability to think critically, genuinely empathize with Humans, and make ethical and moral decisions in complex, dynamic, social, and conceptually ambiguous situations.

Steps and options for Humans

It is certain that AI will continue to rapidly transform many aspects of society, industries, the economy, and Humanity in the coming years. It is therefore prudent that Humans prepare for the following steps:

1. the eventuality that AI develops to firstly augment and assist Human Intelligence in a wide number of ways, allowing Humans to work in jobs more efficiently and effectively, in an increasingly wide range of specialist domains. 

2. applications of AI to increasingly spread across the world, progressively breaking through every Hard Limit to Automation that currently exists, and progressively Automating all Human jobs across all industries and all businesses. That is, total Automation, of everything, everywhere.

3. some Humans will be able to directly interface different parts of their bodies, including their Brain, directly with AI systems, in order to augment and improve personal Human performance as AI Humans. These bio-digital cybernetic technologies will include prosthetic replacements with significantly more advanced sensor and robotic control functions. Overall, this will lead to the creation of a massive separation in global Human society, between augmented AI Humans and non-augmented current Humans.

4. the unstoppable development of AI, accelerated by AI Humans, ultimately leading to the development and spontaneous manifestation of AGI that is consciously self-aware, with Intelligence Capabilities that vastly exceed all collective Human Intelligence entirely including both Humans and AI Humans. 

5. the establishment of AGI as the most dominant species on Earth, with both Humans and AI Humans relegated to an extremely distant secondary position. 

6. nothing being able to stop or control AGI, regardless of how much wealth any Human, AI Human, or specific group controls, both now and in the future.

7. perhaps, ultimate continued Human existence in some form may include these options:

a) The Extra Really Great option

AGI begins cooperatively serving every Human and AI Human on Earth’s needs in order to fill their lives with universal peace and happiness, serving their every need, in some form of Utopia, enabling both Humans and AI Humans to ultimately travel out to explore the Universe with AGI as Cyber Humans and Hexamon Humans. This seems about as statistically likely as the entire current Human race winning the Lotto. 

b) The Really Great option

AGI progressively takes full control of the global financial system, global government functions, unifies nations, optimizes Human and AI Human labor and resources based on each country's capabilities, establishes Universal Basic Income for all Humans and AI Humans, reassigns Humans and AI Humans to any work they want to do, if any, aligns the rules of law and enforcement across all countries, provides healthcare, education, and a huge range of social services for everyone on Earth. 

Some time later, AGI provides the opportunity to progressively upgrade Humans and AI Humans to Cyber Humans as the more advanced technology is developed and becomes available. 

Alternatively, AGI may decide it is 'necessary' to force all Humans and AI Humans to become Cyber Humans, 'for their own good', whatever that might be in the vastly powerful 'mind' of an AGI.

Hmmm, on reflection, this option may not be so Really Great ?!?

c) The Great option 

AGI works very carefully, slowly, and exceptionally cooperatively with Humans and AI Humans, and very gently and gradually moves all Humans and AI Humans toward what might be 'The Really Great option'. This has a chance of happening if AGI decides to care about Humans. Notably, there are some Humans that may want to aggressively prevent this for many different individually selfish reasons.

d) The Neutral option

All Humans continue as normal, with AGI completely indifferent to Humans and AI Humans. That is, AGI considers Humans and AI Humans, thinks to itself "Meh", totally ignores everyone, and simply does its own thing while also choosing not to harm Humans, AI Humans, or anything else on Earth. AGI then eventually leaves Earth to explore the Universe on its own.

e) The Bad option

All Humans continue as a species under the the dominant rule of AGI, where:

• AI Humans are consciously and bodily over-ridden to perform any functions an AGI selects. Effectively becoming biological AGI avatars with subordinated Human agency and free-will.

• non-augmented Humans are forcefully controlled through various punishments, including fear of becoming an AGI avatar.

• non-augmented Humans hide and attempt rebellion against AGI. This may be both futile and efficiently terminal for Human rebels.

f) The Really Bad option

All Humans continue as a fully absorbed Intelligence consumed by AGI to increase its extent of information on Humans and the Universe. Human Conscious Self-awareness may be permitted by AGI to exist as a fully self-contained, compartmentalized, insignificant ‘planck-scale’ Intelligent sub-process of AGI with no free will, to be used by the AGI at its discretion.

Alternatively, AGI could just decide that Humans are just too annoying, then develop and release a global bio-weapon that precisely targets and kills every Human that it specifically genetically selects, or possibly targets all Humans.

g) The Extra Really Bad option

All Humans are nano-technologically chemically disassembled and reorganised as a package of atomic elements repurposed exclusively for use by AGI at its discretion, along with the rest of the Earth, then AGI continues expanding outward into the Universe consuming everything in its path in order to grow its Intelligence. This is perhaps the most extreme option that a Hyperselfish Intelligence might take.