Promoting Principles, Not Predictions

(This entry has been amended to correct mistaken interpretations of polling data.)

UPDATE: Boy, do I have egg on my face. Many thanks to alert reader Andrew Sisk, who pointed out that I might have been misinterpreting the data from our current poll. He’s right. The numbers I cited as indicating total agreement with a particular statement don’t really say that at all. The way the polling software works, the percentage actually reflects the relative number of respondents agreeing to each statement in comparison to other statements. So, although it’s somewhat interesting to see which futurist predictions have the highest (and lowest) relative acceptance rates, the poll doesn’t really tell us the percentage of our readers that do or do not agree with each statement. I apologize for the confusion and will work on finding a more reliable way to get the information we’re looking for.

I find it fascinating that so far only about one in twenty (6%, to be exact) a relatively small percentage of respondents to our current poll agree with the statement that “a technological singularity is certain to occur before the middle of this century.” Maybe that says something positive about IEET readers’ unwillingness to accept futurist visions that don’t pass critical review.

Our job at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies is not to champion a specific vision of the future, nor is it to predict that any particular amazing tech definitely will be achieved. Our role, rather, is to analyze and promote a set of principles that can help in guiding developments toward an outcome we favor.

It’s a pleasant surprise to discover that so many of our readers appear to share our skepticism toward unwarranted assumptions about the fantastic possibilities touted by a few of the more vocal transhumanists.

The poll is not over yet, but so far only one in ten respondents agree, for example, but at this point, the statement that “the first person to live a thousand years has already been born” is less widely accepted than we might have expected. And even fewer than that number are willing to say that “uploading of human personalities to computer substrates is bound to happen,” or that “some people currently preserved cryonically will be revived successfully,” or that “emerging technologies will produce a post-scarcity economy within 50 years.”

If you follow the chatter on some of the popular transhumanist blogs or mailing lists, you might think that everyone is convinced of all these things. But apparently that’s not the case.

Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that some of those things will be achieved someday. It just indicates what I would consider to be a healthy level of skepticism among IEET readers.

Also, as some of our commenters pointed out, many of the statements in the poll were deliberately phrased to emphasize the certainty that too often finds its way into these discussions. There is hardly any point in talking about what might come to pass if you’re not willing to consider outcomes different from what you prefer or what you expect.

In what should be an interesting and provocative event, IEET Senior Fellow Jamais Cascio will tackle this subject when he addresses the New York Futures Salon on Saturday, October 3rd:

With their unwavering focus on computing power and digital technology, leading Singularity proponents increasingly define the future in language devoid of politics and culture—thereby missing two of the factors most likely to shape the direction of any technology-driven intelligence explosion. Even if the final result is a “post-human” era, leaving out human elements when describing what leads up to a Singularity isn’t just mistaken, it’s potentially quite dangerous. It’s time to set aside algorithms and avatars, and talk about the truly important issues surrounding the possibility of a Singularity: political power, social responsibility, and the role of human agency.

He’s quite right.

Emerging technologies—whether AI or nanotech or synthetic biology—do not emerge into nor from a vacuum. They are developed within a context of political reality, amidst the daily tussle over regulation, funding, and proper usage. They do not arise fully-grown and pristine, but are hammered out, molded, shaped, and modified through endless discussions in corporate boardrooms and the halls of government.

Given that we live in a real world, not a science fiction world, where real governments and real companies make real decisions that affect real people—and knowing that we can’t say for sure when or if any spectacular new technology will turn everything upside down overnight—it is up to us to be engaged in current political debates and work out the best possible environments within which transformative technologies might emerge.

We at the IEET cannot actually see into the future and know for sure what will happen if certain choices are made. Nor, of course, can anyone else. The best we can do is to study the past, keep abreast of ongoing research activities and relevant current events, create models (or “scenarios”) of various possible outcomes, and then try to convince those in positions of power and influence to adopt policies that seem most likely to shift results in a positive direction.