Why science, technology, and AI will not deliver what we (unconsciously) hope for
We live in an age of amazing technological achievements. The internet has connected the world, IT has developed powerful number-crunching computers, and smartphones in 2023 have about three orders of magnitude computing power of super-computers of the 1980s, ChatGPT seems to suggest that human-like artificial general intelligence (AGI) may not be too far away in the future, humans are returning to the Moon and soon will land on Mars, the James Webb Telescope (JWST) is opening a window onto the universe, and other revolutions like quantum computing, genetic engineering, enormous energy storage devices, clean energy revolutions (the list can go on and on) may be behind the corner.
Everything suggests that we are running fast toward a hyper-technological future that will change everything in our daily life. A scientific and technological revolution that may fix several longstanding problems which have plagued humanity since its origins. Everyone is excited about the scientific and technological marvels that are about to come, and all over the news and social media people are passionately talking about how all that will soon change our lives and open the doors to new ‘Eldorados.’
Will AGI take up our jobs allowing us to lean back and render us free from financial concerns? Will humans colonize space and build a better world on Mars? Will genetic engineering, such as CRISP, heal several genetic diseases, stem cells regenerate our organs, and the progress of medicine fix all of our health issues? Will the integration of electronic devices with our brains and other organs enhance our health, intelligence, and strength? Will transhumanism fulfill its promise to enhance human abilities and transcend the limitations of the human mind and body and, eventually, even make us immortal? Will… ok, I think you get my point.
The natural questions, then, for me, are two.
First, how much of these advancements will lead us to the promised sci-fi Eden so many predict, and how much will turn out to be mere hype?
I guess that my perception and interpretation of the present situation are very much at odds with the vast majority of scientists and so-called ‘futurists’ but, if one looks dispassionately and more factually based on the scientific and technological developments of the last decades, I don’t see what other seem to see, and that is making them believe in a radically new and rosy future.  What I see is that, in most cases, especially the ‘big-science’ projects of the past few decades did not meet expectations. The hype surrounding science, technology, and AI has been growing rapidly in recent years but the overly optimistic expectations we have nowadays in science and technology come mainly from the enormous progress in microelectronics, IT, and telecommunications, but much less from other scientific areas. This thrill has somewhat distracted us from the fact that most of the billion dollars investment in the big-science R&D did produce much fewer results than originally expected. Generally, if one looks back at all the supposedly groundbreaking discoveries or inventions that were announced with great excitement in the last decades, most of these have been forgotten and didn’t receive further mention, or are in a developmental stalemate. Let us face reality and see things in context.
For example, the so-called ‘war on cancer’ that was announced by President Nixon in the 1970s, led only to limited success and results. Cancer remains one of the most fearful and main causes of death even half a century later. Genetic engineering did not lead us to personalized medicine, and stem cell research delivered, so far, only very few of the practical applications predicted in the 1990s. The human genome project was supposed to open the doors to a bioengineering revolution, but life turned out to be much more complicated. Knowing the territory (the genome) doesn’t necessarily tell us what the territory is about (life). Every 30 years we get to know that controlled nuclear fusion needs another 30 years to finally become a reality. A theory of quantum gravity is still lacking, despite generations of physicists that are searching for it since the times of Einstein. Superstring theory was praised for decades as the coming ‘theory of everything’ but turned out to be a failure. Actually, contrary to common belief, theoretical physics is in a deep crisis making, at best, only a little painstaking incremental progress from time to time. It might be a bit too early to say, but despite all the media hype, everything indicates that quantum computing suffers from the same trend since it isn’t even clear if it will become an error-free form of computing ever. The experiment to interface the human brain with electronic devices turned out to be much more complicated than expected as well, with doubtful ethical implications and practices. Science has made huge leaps forward. And yet, I sense that, especially in biology, genetics, and medicine, while we will assist in a paradigm shift that, theoretically, will change completely our worldview, its practical applications will disappoint us as long as we conceive of it inside a strictly materialistic paradigm. Many other examples of this sort could be made.
Anyway, this is not to say that new discoveries and game-changing technologies will not affect our lives. Of course, they will have a profound impact, and there is enormous potential for positive change and progress in improving our material quality of life in numerous ways.
Having said that, this leads me to the second question. Suppose that my only mild optimism outlined above about certain scientific and technological developments will be proven wrong and that all the marvels we imagine today will be fully realized in the more or less distant future. Would that solve real humanity’s problems, create a better world, and make us feel better? I doubt that.
Yes, AI or some form of AGI, will take over several human activities and will change our lives, and the way we work and learn. But that doesn’t imply that our daily life will become less stressful. The external world has changed enormously in the last century already, and the technologies that dominated it rendered several human activities easier or even obsolete. And yet, stress plus burn-out symptoms are only increasing, and something undefinable is still missing.
Yes, I see big news coming even in areas that may not relate directly to the progress of microelectronics, such as renewable energies, and the new technologies for energy generation and storage. These will be the essential ingredients for overcoming the climate change crisis and allowing us to transition toward a net zero-carbon emission society. But this will not, by itself, diminish that human ingrained rapacious greed that has destroyed the natural environment in the first place. I’m pretty sure that, once we will have reached a carbon-neutral industrial society, unless we change our way of thinking, feeling, and seeing the world and Nature, we will cause new environmental disasters that will force us to learn the same lesson all over again.
And yes, we will land on Mars and eventually establish a permanent base, but colonizing a planet will not, by itself, make us a better species or solve our earthly problems if we will not change ourselves as well. Humans will not only bring with them their technological miracles onto the red planet but also all their shadows of an untransformed mind and consciousness. That would make us only repeat the same drama in an extraterrestrial context, perhaps with some nuances and amendments, but Humanity 2.0 would not be much more evolved than Humanity 1.0.
Anyway, we don’t need to look so far into the future. There have been many instances where new technologies or discoveries changed the world and our daily life. The invention of the steam engine, of light bulbs, or the mass production of transportation systems, the invention of the radio and television, and, more recently, the Internet, smartphones, and social media completely changed our lives. These were all grandiose innovations, but did they make us feel better? Materially they did. But my question is if we feel better? I claim that they didn’t enhance much our psychological well-being, and see no reason to believe that the coming disruptions will make an exception.
Note that I’m not at all addressing the concerns about the risks and challenges associated with these new technologies, whether they are used to benefit humanity as a whole, or what the potential negative consequences of AI could be, such as job loss and privacy violations, etc. Enough people are discussing this already and I don’t need to dig deeper into these aspects. My concern is of a very different nature.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a space travel and astronomy nerd, can’t wait to see the first human land on Mars, and am 100% for investing money into projects that will expand our scientific knowledge, even if these may not have immediate visible practical applications.
But I don’t share the present worldwide collective euphoria that dreams of sci-fi societies with humanoids walking on the streets, transhumanist illusions that predict brain-chipped humans becoming super-intelligent and downloading their memory, mind, and consciousness in digital computers. Is this really so fascinating?
My standpoint tries to go beyond the usual analysis and looks from above to things from an evolutionary perspective. This overblown hype has its roots in an extreme form of materialism that has captured even the best intellectuals. To a large degree, we are still stuck in a 19th-century materialistic ideology that saw science, technology, and industrialization, the analytic reason of the Age of Enlightenment, together with some forms of Marxist, capitalist, or whatever economical and political machinery, as the solution to all worldly and human problems. Poverty and war were supposed to fade away if we let this materialistic reason, eventually dressed up with logical positivistic shades, triumph over religion, spirituality, and metaphysical beliefs. This was supposed to transform everything for the better. But WWI and WWII first, and the fall of the Soviet Union later,  shattered these illusions into pieces, while Gödel’s theorem hit the final nail in positivism’s coffin.
Nevertheless, the present revival of dreams of meta-worlds and techno-heavens that determine so much of the narrative in the news and the collective imagination, reflects how subconsciously this 19-20th century belief system remains deeply rooted in our mindset and continues to condition us. We are seeing it happening all over again. I guess that, as so many times in history, we are again nurturing illusions that will be followed by delusions. Even if all these breakthroughs will become a reality and will re-transform the world, again, we will, nevertheless, be left with a sense of emptiness, again.
The robot-dominated hyper-tech world of which we dream so much reflects the desire for a world with less strife, problems, stress, and with more harmony, order, and well-being. The present enthusiasm for the advent of AGI will end with the realization that, once everything out of us has changed, not much did so in us. In reality, it is, more or less unconsciously, deep down, a psychological reflex for the desire for spiritual fulfillment and completeness, rather than for a material necessity. It is all about outwardly material and technological changes, but what about the world inside of us? Did that change and progress as well?
All this wishful thinking and belief system that hails science and technology as the demigods who will fix all our problems is an evolutionary necessity for our intellectual species. Because Nature has lured us into these hyper-tech delusions because we must externalize and rationalize first our minds to the extreme before they will be ready to look inside for what we are still looking outside of us. But we can’t remain stuck in this evolutionary stage forever.
The future of humanity will be determined by our journey in us, not only, and even not so decisively as we think, by our material achievements. Science, technology, AI, and space-travels will have to become the surface appearance of an inner science, inner technology, and especially, inner Wisdom. Otherwise, all these fantastic material accomplishments will continue to fail to meet expectations and, eventually, even turn against us.
So, my exhilaration for the next AI revolution, the landing of humans on Mars, the coming medicine that will edit the human genome, or … well, name it… remains limited. I perceive it as the interest of someone who is reading a captivating and entertaining novel. One finds that all very interesting, eventually participates in it and profits from it, but knows that it is only a novel, a chapter of the book of life and our terrestrial evolution in an infinite cosmos. And, by far not the most interesting chapter. Much more fulfilling and interesting adventures are awaiting us.