The late visionary and sci-fi author, Arthur C. Clarke, once observed that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Technology appears to have those characteristics of magic: to transform and to defy easy comprehension.
If you look at how we’ve come in the last few decades, or indeed just the last few years, I don’t think any of us would argue that we have achieved something magical.
Who would have thought even a decade ago that we could share photos by bumping our phones together, ask our iPad a question and expect an answer, track our steps and find out how well we slept by wearing a wrist band? According to Arthur C Clarke, technological advances such as these are ‘indistinguishable from magic’, what’s more they are only the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s an experiment that fits all ages: approach your mother and father (if they’re asleep, use caution). Ask them gently about that time before you were born, and whether they dared think at that time that one day everybody will post and share their images on a social network called “Facebook”. Or that they will receive answers to every question from a mysterious entity called “Google”. The truth is that very few thought, in those olden days of yore, that technologies like supercomputers, wireless network or artificial intelligence will make their way to the general public in the future. Even those who figured that these technologies will become cheaper and more widespread, failed in imagining the uses they will be put to, and how they will change society.
History is full of cases in which a new and groundbreaking technology, or a collection of such technologies, completely changes people’s lives. The change is often so dramatic that people who’ve lived before the technological leap have a very hard time understanding how the subsequent generations think. To the people before the change, the new generation may as well be aliens in their way of thinking and seeing the world. These kinds of dramatic shifts in thinking are called Singularity – a phrase that is originally derived from mathematics and describes a point which we are incapable of deciphering its exact properties. It’s that place where the equations basically go nuts and make no sense any longer.
A few of the most widely regarded scientists, thinkers and inventors, like Steven Hawking and Elon Musk, have already expressed their concerns that super-intelligent AI could escape our control and move against us. Others focus on the great opportunities that such a singularity holds for us. They believe that a super-intelligent AI, if kept on a tight leash, could analyze and expose many of the wonders of the world for us. Einstein, after all, was a remarkable genius who has revolutionized our understanding of physics. Well, how would the world change if we enjoyed tens, hundreds and millions ‘Einsteins’ that could’ve analyzed every problem and find a solution for it?
Similarly, how would things look like if each of us could enjoy his very own “Doctor House”, that constantly analyzed his medical state and provided ongoing recommendations? And which new ideas and revelations would those super-intelligences come up with, when they go over humanity’s history and holy books?
Already we see how AI is starting to change the ways in which we think about ourselves. The computer “Deep Blue” managed to beat Gary Kasparov in chess in 1997. Today, after nearly twenty years of further development, human chess masters can no longer beat on their own even an AI running on a laptop computer. But after his defeat, Kasparov has created a new kind of chess contests: ones in which humanoid and computerized players collaborate, and together reach greater successes and accomplishments than each would’ve gotten on their own. In this sort of a collaboration, the computer provides rapid computations of possible moves, and suggests several to the human player. Its human compatriot needs to pick the best option, to understand their opponents and to throw them off balance.
Most people know the story of Prometheus, who defied Zeus and gave mankind the gift of fire. Everybody knows the story of Pandora as well: she opened a forbidden urn (not a box) and released evil into the world. But although these look like two opposite understandings of human innovation, one optimistic and the other tragic, in fact they are the same story. In Hesiod’s version, Zeus fashions Pandora from the clay as revenge upon Prometheus. ‘As fire’s price I’ll give an evil thing,’ he says, ‘which all shall cherish in their hearts, embracing their own scourge.’
Prometheus and Pandora are far from isolated examples. Stories like these that understand magic as a double-edged blade have been fundamental to nearly all world cultures. Magic has explained our unique capabilities, underwritten our ethics and provided the basis of social contracts that foster and maintain cultural harmony. But at the same time magic has been considered with caution. Throughout history, magic has been carefully ring-fenced and regulated in these ways on the understanding that its promises are matched by its threats.
Perhaps stories of gods and magical urns seem remote from our contemporary concerns: artificial intelligence, surveillance, the spread of fake news. But ‘embracing our own scourge’ seems a very apt way of describing our relationship with social media and the internet giants, and in fact the way that humanity has thought about magic does provide a useful precedent for thinking about tech. Ludditism is not the answer: the potential for digital technology to enhance the human experience is too great not to be seized. But we have much to learn from these traditions that celebrate mankind’s unique capacities yet also warn of the dangers that accompany them.
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