What if they think we’re just a bunch of drooling idiots and keep us occupied
with perfect virtual reality porn and amazing pizza until we all die off by our
own mortality?
Who are we to know? And who are we to say?Nietzsche wrote his books just a couple of decades after Darwin’s On the
Origin of Species was published in 1859. By the time Nietzsche came onto
the scene, the world was reeling from Darwin’s magnificent discoveries,
trying to process and make sense of their implications.
And while the world was freaking out about whether humans really
evolved from apes or not, Nietzsche, as usual, looked in the opposite direction
of everyone else. He took it as obvious that we evolved from apes. After all,
he said, why else would we be so horrible to one another?
Instead of asking what we evolved from, Nietzsche instead asked what we
were evolving toward.
Nietzsche said that man was a transition, suspended precariously on a
rope between two ledges, with beasts behind us and something greater in front
of us. His life’s work was dedicated to figuring out what that something
greater might be and then pointing us toward it.
Nietzsche envisioned a humanity that transcended religious hopes, that
extended itself “beyond good and evil,” and rose above the petty quarrels of
contradictory value systems. It is these value systems that fail us and hurt us
and keep us down in the emotional holes of our own creation. The emotional
algorithms that exalt life and make it soar in blistering joy are the same forces
that unravel us and destroy us, from the inside out.
So far, our technology has exploited the flawed algorithms of our Feeling
Brain. Technology has worked to make us less resilient and more addicted to
frivolous diversions and pleasures, because these diversions are incredibly
profitable. And while technology has liberated much of the planet from
poverty and tyranny, it has produced a new kind of tyranny: a tyranny of
empty, meaningless variety, a never-ending stream of unnecessary options.
It has also armed us with weapons so devastating that we could torpedo
this whole “intelligent life” experiment ourselves if we’re not careful.
I believe artificial intelligence is Nietzsche’s “something greater.” It is the
Final Religion, the religion that lies beyond good and evil, the religion that
will finally unite and bind us all, for better or worse.
It is, then, simply our job not to blow ourselves up before we get there.
And the only way to do that is to adapt our technology for our flawed