Apprenticeship

One of the most vexing questions for technoprogressives and transhumanists is how to maintain the hard-won gains toward political equality among citizens as we become more diverse in our bodies and abilities. Francis Fukuyama pointed to the challenge in Our Posthuman Future, and Nicholas Agar addressed the issue in Humanity’s End. Technoprogressives believe that an expanded transhuman solidarity is possible if enhancement is made widely and equitably available, and if we we fight for a society committed to the rights of all persons. But it won’t be easy. In this story David Brin reflects on political and even theological challenges of the advent of a society with radical enhancement.

The man behind the desk passed a stone paperweight from hand to hand.

“Naturally, Miss Povlov, we feel our project is misunderstood.”

Naturally, Tor thought, careful not to subvocalize. No use having sarcasm appear in her ai-transcript.  Everyone is misunderstood. Especially folks who are trying to correct faults in human nature. 

Dr. Akinobu Sato tilted back in his chair. “Here at the Atkins Center, we’re not pushing some grand design for Homo sapiens. We view our role as expanding the range of options for our kin and posterity. Are we then any different from others who pushed back the darkness?”

The words so closely matched her own thoughts, just seconds before, that Tor had to blink. It’s probably coincidence. I’m not the first to raise this question.

Still… modern sensors could detect a single neuron flash across a room. Monitors in a wall might track gross emotions, or even be taught to respond to a homeowner’s mental commands. And there were always creepy tattle-rumors about the next big step, reading actual thoughts. Surely just tall tales.

Still, these Atkins meddlers might be the very ones to make that leap. During a tour, before arriving in Sato’s office, she had seen—

—quadriplegics who moved about gracefully, controlling their robotic legs without wire shunts through the skull.

—a pre-teen girl commanding up to twenty hovering ai-craft at once, by combining muscle twitches, tooth-clicks and subvocal grunts. Apparently a record.

—an accident victim who had lost an entire cerebral hemisphere and would never again speak, but whose fingertips sketched VR pictures in the air.

Watching without specs, you might think him crazed, capering and pointing at nothing. But tuned to the right overlayer, she saw images erupt from those waggling fingertips so detailed and compelling that—well—who needed words?

Then there were the ones generating so much excitement and controversy—victims of the Autism Plague who had been sent here from all over the world by parents seeking hope. The Atkins specialized in “savants,” so Tor had come expecting feats of mathematical legerdemain and total recall. And there were a few impressive demos—mentally calculating long-ago dates and guessing correctly the number of beads in a jar—stunts that were old news. Dr. Sato wanted to show off more recent accomplishments—less flashy. More significant.

Tor watched as boys and girls, long mentally isolated from close human contact, now held normal-looking conversations, even collaborating in a game. After going on a while about eye-contact rates and Empathy Quotients, Sato made his point.

“We start by stimulating brain regions that “mirror” the body movements we see other people perform. Also manipulating the parieto-occipital junction, to provoke what was called an out-of-body experience. These mental states once carried a lot of freight among religious type. But we now trigger outward-empathy or self-introspection, on demand.”

Tor had commented that some of the faithful might find this offensive. One more grab by science at territory once reserved for belief. But Sato shrugged as if to ask, What-else-is-new?

“Call it a technologization of compassion, or induction of insight.

“The next question is, can we do all this, awakening other-awareness and self-appraisal in some autistics, without sacrificing their savant skills? Or the wild alertness that sometimes makes them seem more natural and feral than the rest of us?

“And then…” Sato had mused, with an eager glint in his eyes. “...if we can manage that, will it be it possible to go the other way? Give savant-level mental powers to normal people?”

Conversing with some patients, Tor came to realize something that distressed her as a reporter – there’d be little useful video from this tour. The Atkins patients, once crippled by a deep mental handicap, some of them effectively disconnected from the world, now seemed talkative, cogent, not so much hopelessly detached as… well… nerdy.

She did have shots of some beaming parents, visiting from faraway cities, calling the work here miraculous. But I can get some balance from the demonstrators outside, Tor recalled. Activists who posed a pointed question.

Who are we—who is anybody—to define what it means to be human? To “cure” a condition that might simply be closer to innocence or nature? Closer to the Earth?

Or—perhaps—closer to a onetime state of grace?

#

Now, ensconced in a plush chair with her stalk-cam panning across Sato’s office, she hurried back on-topic. “You say you just offer options, doctor. But folks in Carolina didn’t want those choices. And those here in Albuquerque range from ambivalent to hostile. Is it a case of too much too soon? Or something deeper?”

“I think you know the answer, Miss Tor,” Sato replied, placing both hands on the desk. “If we were merely helping some types of borderline autistic children to behave more normally, to be more empathic and communicative, to get jobs and raise families, then few would complain. Just some Naturalist mystics. A few diversity fetishists. Fringers who believe that nature is always better than civilization and that animals are wiser than people.

“But anyone can see our work will have implications, far beyond helping a few kids to fit in.”

Tor nodded. “Hm, yes. We’ll get to all that. But first, let me ask a more pragmatic question, doctor. After being forced to leave Charleston, why didn’t you resettle in one of the high-water townships along the coast where you’d fit in? Just another merry band of would-be godmakers, no more offensive than your local biotinker.”

Sato frowned at the comparison. A deep furrow creased his youthful-looking brow above soft, almond eyes. He had seemed about forty, with jet hair and lustrous, gray-shot sideburns, but Tor now guessed higher. Triggered by attention cues, her aiware sifted, finding the professor’s latest sculpt, last month, at Madame Fascio’s Facelifts. So? Scientists aren’t immune to vanity.

“We dislike the term… godmaker…” he murmured, in low tones. “It implies something elitist, even domineering. Our goal is the very opposite. A general empowerment, across the board.”

“That sounds commendably egalitarian, doctor. But does it ever really work out that way? All new things—from toys to tools of power—tend to be gathered up first by some human elite. Often as a way to stay elite.”

Sato arched an eyebrow.

“Now who’s sounding radical? Are you suggesting we revisit the Class War?

“It’s a simple question, professor. How will you ensure that everyone gets to share these mental augmentations you seek? Won’t equality be stymied by the very same human diversity you celebrate?”

“Explain, please.”

“Suppose you find a way to enhance human intelligence. Or for people to focus attention more creatively, beyond the Thurman Barrier. For now, we’ll assume the process is cheap with few side effects…”

It was her turn to express doubt, with an ironic lift of an eyebrow for the jewelcam. “And let’s further suppose that your process isn’t monopolized by some clade of aristos, who use wealth or influence or public safety as an excuse—”

“Are you really that suspicious of aristocracy?” Sato tried to cut in. “How old-fashioned.”

And how out of touch you are, she thought, without subvocalizing. If you haven’t sensed the recent shifts back toward conflict. Some AI-seers compare it to France in 1789.

But Tor forged on.

“—even assuming all of that, there will be no way to avoid one final division—between those who choose to accept your gift, and those who do not.”

“Our… gift.” Sato mulled for a moment. Then he turned back to her with a gaze that seemed dark, glittering. “You know, our modern endeavor as would-be godmakers, to use your term, is not without precedent. The dream goes back a long way. For example, it is said that after Prometheus was chained to a rock, in punishment for giving humanity the boon of fire, his children thereupon chose to live among men. Made families with them. Reinforced his gift by breeding divinity into the race. And there are countless other legends—even in the Judaeo-Christian Bible—implying the same thing.”

“Stories about humans trying to be godlike. But don’t most of them portray that as sin? Prometheus was punished. Frankenstein gets killed by his creature. The Tower of Babel crumbles amid chaos.”

Bridging his fingers, Sato intoned: “And the Lord said, See, they are all one people and have all one language; and this is only the start of what they may do: and now it will not be possible to keep them from any purpose of theirs.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Babel. Building a tower to heaven. The attempt failed when we were deliberately sabotaged by a curse of mutual incomprehension, by forcing us to speak a multitude of languages. Most theologians have interpreted the Babel story the way you just did—as showing God angry at humanity, for this act of hubris.

“But read it more carefully. There is no anger! Not a trace. No mention of anybody suffering or dying, as they surely do, in murderous mass-fury, at Sodom, or in Noah’s flood, or innumerable cases of heavenly wrath. But there’s none of that in the story of Babel! Sure, we were thwarted, confused and scattered. But was that meant to stymie us forever? From achieving what the passage clearly says we can achieve?  What perhaps we’re ultimately meant to achieve?

“Perhaps the confusion was meant just to delay things. For us to learn by overcoming obstacles. In fact, didn’t the scattering-of-man make us more diverse and experienced with overcoming hard challenges? Better able to grasp and apply a myriad points of view? Think about it, Miss Tor. Today, someone with simple ai-ware can understand what any other person says, anywhere on the globe. Right now, in this very generation, we have come full circle. Language has ceased to be any sort of barrier.

“Recall what scripture says—there’s no limit to our potential. We’re inherently able to do or be anything. Anything at all. So, what’s to stop us now?”

Tor stared at the neuroscientist. Are you kidding? she thought. Clearly, at one level, he was pulling her leg. And yet, equally, he meant all this. Took it seriously.

“What do ancient myths have to do with the question at hand? The issue of arrogant scientific ambition?”

“The old tales show how long humans have pondered this problem! Like, whether it is proper to pick up the same tools the Creator used to make us. What could be a more meaningful concern?”

“All right then.” Tor nodded, with an inward sigh, if Sato wanted to look foolish on camera, so be it. “Don’t most legends answer in the negative? Preaching against hubris?” Tor didn’t bother defining the term. Her audience was generally with-it. They’d have instant vocaib.

“Yes,” Sato agreed. “During the long Era of Fear, lasting six to ten thousand years, priests and kings sought—above all—to keep peasants in their place. So naturally, ambition was discouraged! Churches called it sinful to question your local lord. Even worse to question God. You brought up the Tower of Babel. Or, take Adam and Eve, cast out of Eden for tasting from the tree of knowledge.”

“Or the fall of Brahma, or the machine of Soo Song, or countless other cautionary fables.” She nodded. “The Renunciation Movement mentions all of them, forecasting big trouble—possibly another Fall—if humanity keeps reaching too far. That’s why I’m surprised that you took this path in today’s interview, doctor. Are you suggesting that tradition and scripture may be relevant, after all?”

“Hm.” Sato pondered a moment. “You seem to be well-read. So let me ask, do you know your Book of Genesis?”

“Reasonably well. It’s a cultural keystone.”

“Then, can you tell me which passage is the only one—in the whole Bible—that portrays God asking a favor, out of pure curiosity?”

Tor knew this interview had spun out of control. It wasn’t being netcast live, so she could edit later. Still, she noted a small figure in a corner of her aiware. Twenty-three Mediacorp employees and stringers were watching. Make that twenty-four. And with high interest levels. All right, then, let’s run with it.

“Off hand, I can’t guess what passage you have in mind, Doctor Sato.”

He leaned toward her. “It’s a moment in the Bible that comes before  that darned apple, when the relationship between Creator and created was still pure, without any of the later tsuris of wrathful expulsion, gritty battles, or redemption… or any egotistical craving for praise.”

He’s sincere about this, Tor realized, reading his eyes. A biologist, a would-be godmaker-meddler… yet, a believer.

“You still don’t recall? It’s brief. Most people just glide past and theologians barely give it a glance.”

“Well, you have our interest, doctor. Pray tell. What is this special biblical moment?”

“It’s when God asks Adam to name the beasts. Perhaps the only moment that’s truly like parent and child, or teacher and favored pupil. Indeed, what better clue to what humanity was created for? Since it had nothing to do with sin, redemption, or any of that later vex.”

“Created for…?” She prompted. Interested, even though she could now see where he was going, and wasn’t sure she liked it.

“What is the act of naming things?” Sato asked. “Names had—and still have—creative power! Like the words or equations that God used to cast forth light and start the cosmos. What action makes up half of science? Naming things! From moons, craters and planets to newly-discovered species and molecules. Even wholly-new living things that men and women now design and lab-synthesize from scratch. What could that passage represent other than a master craftsman, watching in approval, while His apprentice starts down the road of exploration?

“A road that led to Babel, where premature success might have spoiled everything… so He made the naming process more challenging! But it remained the same road, now more diverse and interesting. A road taking the apprentice to to one destination – a role and duty that was intended all along.

“Co-creation.”

“Well.” Tor had to blink a few times. “Well, that certainly is a unique perspective on—”

“On a passage so brief it was ignored for millennia? The implications—”

“I can see what you think it implies, Professor,” Tor cut in, anxious to re-establish some control. “And we’ll supply links for our viewers who don’t. But even if that argument somehow impresses the next wave of theologians, there remains a huge step between calling yourself a ‘co-creator’ and having enough wisdom not to botch it up! The way we’ve botched so much in the last century of co-creating.

“So, what we—my viewers and I—want to know is how you expect to ensure—”

Tor trailed off. The neurosmith was holding something out, gesturing for Tor to reach for it. The stone paperweight he had been handling—roughly cylindrical, tapering toward a rounded point at each end. The sides bore many fluted hollows.

“Take it,” Sato urged as she put out her hand. “Don’t worry, it’s only thirty thousand years old.”

Tor almost yanked back, before accepting the object. It felt cool. The stone must have once featured many sharp edges before getting rubbed smooth by countless fingers.

“It is a prepared-core, either late Mousterian or early Châtelperronian, from a period when two hominid species occupied Europe, living side-by-side for quite some time, sharing almost identical technologies and—apparently—similar cultures. Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans had an especially long overlap in the Levant, where both groups seemed to be stuck, locked at the same level, doing pretty much the same things, for about a hundred thousand years.”

Tor turned the artifact over. It wasn’t glossy, like obsidian, but gray and grainy. Her aiware identified the material as chert, offering links that she subvocally brushed away.

“I thought humans wiped out the Neanderthals.”

“It’s the prevailing theory. The long stable period ended at the dawn of the Aurignacian, with astonishing abruptness. Within a few dozen generations – an eyeblink—our ancestral tool kit expanded prodigiously to include fish hooks and sewing needles made of glistening bone, finely-shaped scrapers, axes, burins, nets, ropes and specialized knives that required many complex stages to create.

“Art also erupted on the scene. People adorned themselves with pendants, bracelets and beads. They painted magnificent cave murals, performed burial rituals and carved provocative Venus figurines. Innovation accelerated. So did other deeply human traits – for there appeared clear signs of social stratification. Religion. Kingship. Slavery. War.

“And—for the poor Neanderthals—genocide. ”

Tor felt nonplussed by the sudden shift.  One moment, Sato had been talking in the cramped, 6000 year context of the Judaeo-Christian Bible. The next, he was suddenly back in the vast realm of scientific time, reflecting on the fits and starts of humanity’s hard, slow climb out of darkness.  Still, there was a theme… an overlap. And Tor saw, at last, where this was going.

“You think we’re heading for another of those sudden speed-ups.”

Sato considered for a moment, then tilted his head slightly.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

The scientist’s voice was suddenly free of any games, contemplative, even concerned.

“The question, Miss Tor, isn’t whether change is coming. Only how we can be smarter about it this time. Perhaps even wise enough to cope.”

 

 

 

this is a chapter from David’s new novel (coming in June) entitled Existence,

”Existence is a book that makes you think deeply about both the future and life’s most important issues.  I found it fascinating and I could not put it down.”  - Temple Grandin