FEATURE INTERVIEWWHAT IS THE NOVACENE?
It’s the name I’ve given to the new age
of intelligent beings. Hollywood has
filled our minds with robots and
mechanical devices that follow on from
humans and take over the planet. This
seems to me absolute nonsense. These
new beings will arise, like us, from
Darwinian evolution, and they will
need us to regulate the climate. This
could be one of the most crucial periods
in the history of the planet and perhaps
even of the cosmos.
TELL ME MORE ABOUT THESE BEINGS.
They will be biological entities – I use
the term ‘cyborg’. But they will no longer
use neurons [the nerve cells that carry
signals in the brain], because these are
incredibly slow and inefficient – signals
along neurons travel about 10,000 times
slower than they do along copper wire.
We’ll be able to use our cleverness to
assist the whole process – that’s how
there will be a switch from using
neurons. There is no natural source on
Earth of the special components [that
will be needed for the cyborgs], like
ultrafine wires made of pure unbroken
metal. So there are things that will be
changed deliberately, but it’s still
evolution. Like it or not, the emergence
of cyborgs cannot be envisaged without
us humans playing a god-like – or
parent-like – role.
So we will start to produce a more
efficient communication system for our
brains. The Novacene will be inhabited
by cyborgs who think and act roughly
10,000 times faster than we or other
animals do. That’s about the same speed
difference as we are from plants.
ON THE EVE OF HIS 100TH
BIRTHDAY, CREATOR
OF GAIA THEORY
JAMES LOVELOCKHAS
COME UP WITH HIS MOST
VISIONARY IDEA YET. HE
TELLSJAMES LLOYDABOUT
THE COMING AGE OF HYPER-
INTELLIGENT BEINGS
EYEVINE“ T H E N O VA C E N E W I L L B E I N H A B I T E D
BY C Y B O R G S W H O T H I N K A N D A C T
R O U G H LY 1 0 , 0 0 0 T I M E S FA S T E R
THAN WE OR OTHER ANIMALS DO”
WELCOME TO THE
NOV CENE
WHEN WILL THE NOVACENE BEGIN?
It already has begun. What’s been
happening recently with AlphaGo is an
evolutionary step in this direction [in
2015, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo
became the first computer program to
beat a professional human player at Go- a Chinese board game that’s more
complex and difficult to master than
chess]. AlphaGo combined human
input with the machine’s ability to
teach itself. This was an enormous step
forward, but an even bigger one
followed. In 2017, DeepMind
announced two successors: AlphaGo
Zero and AlphaZero, neither of which
used human input.
The new life of the Novacene will go
far beyond AlphaZero’s autonomy. It
will be able to improve and replicate
itself. The simplest way of looking at
Darwinian evolution is that the
organism that leaves the most progeny
is the one that succeeds, and that rule
applies to all realms. I think it will
apply in this case, too. 2
SO THEY’LL LOOK AT US LIKE PLANTS?
Yes, and this is an important concept,
because plants are desirable things. We
like them. We have all kinds of
relationships with plants, and I see no
reason why the Novacene organisms
should not have a similar range of
relationships with the organisms that
are around today. It’s a new kingdom of
nature, if you like.
Somebody said to me, ‘How could you
possibly be interested in a life form
that’s a 10,000th of the speed you are?’ I
mean, it’s so snail-like.’ And I thought,
‘Why do you go to Kew Gardens, then?’