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A post-human Brave New World?

Review of The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (Viking Press, 2005)

Kim J. Vicente

Originally appeared in the Globe & Mail

In his 1932 classic, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley portrayed a future in which humans became adapted, and subordinate, to science and technology. People behaved as they ought to because biotechnology was used to design individuals according to certain assumptions about what constitutes goodness and badness in human nature. Most of us think this is not a good idea. Ray Kurzweil thinks it is. And he believes it will happen by 2045.

The fundamental idea behind The Singularity is Near is that the pace of biological and technological change is increasing at an exponential pace. Kurzweil refers to this as the "over-riding, impersonal" Law of Accelerating Returns. This law is said to lead to an event called the Singularity, a point at which "information technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern recognition powers, problem solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the brain itself." Once technology overtakes people, "there will be no distinction . . . between human and machine nor between physical and virtual reality." This profound change will be underwritten by radical innovations in nanotechnology, robotics and biotechnology.

According to Kurzweil, the effects of the Singularity will completely alter our way of life. We will be able to "model and simulate the entire [human] brain," making possible all kinds of "design" changes to our make-up, including "eliminating most of our biological organs." As a result, we will have a future in which "there are no limits to our ability to understanding ourselves -- or anything else, for that matter." Also, we will be able to scan an individual's brain and upload it onto a computer, thereby capturing "a person's entire personality, memory, skills and history."

Not only that, but advances in nanotechnology will replace biological genetic processes with a "recommended broadcast architecture" that will be so superior to the biological that it will eliminate disease. Furthermore, tiny robots will be introduced into our bloodstream to replace human blood cells and thereby allow us to "live indefinitely without aging." Kurzweil also predicts that cloning technologies deriving from the Singularity will end up "solving world hunger."

These outlandish ideas do not come from a crackpot. Kurzweil is a self-described futurist and an MIT artificial-intelligence graduate. He has a brilliant intellect, has been inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame, and received the prestigious 1999 National Medal of Technology. His claims demand to be taken seriously. And he lives by his own words, taking 250 pills every day and six intravenous therapies every week to "reprogram" his biochemistry so that he will still be alive when technology makes immortality possible.

But Kurzweil's predictions need not come to pass. Smart people can be wrong.

Kurzweil is a technological fundamentalist, someone who is enthralled with technology, but who frequently underemphasizes the human aspects. As an example, he writes: "Two machines . . . can join together to become one and then separate again. Multiple machines can do both at the same time: become one and separate simultaneously. Humans call this falling in love, but our biological ability to do this is fleeting and unreliable."

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with being a technological fundamentalist. Indeed, we wouldn't have many modern conveniences—cars, microwave ovens, televisions—without them.

The problem is that technological fundamentalists have an uneven track record when it comes to making predictions about the impact of technology on our lives. We were promised a paperless office, but instead we're buried in stacks of computer printouts. We were promised a leisure society with a shorter work week, but instead we're experiencing high levels of stress in the workplace, leading to mental and physical illness. And we were promised that e-mail would be an easy and efficient way to communicate with people we know, but instead we're bombarded with porn and Viagra ads from strangers. Kurzweil's bold predictions must be viewed in light of this track record.

From a humanistic perspective, it is not difficult to see how his vision is flawed. One of Kurzweil's aims is to "overcome age-old human problems," and one of the best examples is memory limitation. All of us forget computer passwords, anniversary dates and telephone numbers. The technologies that Kurzweil describes might be used to overcome these limitations and never let us forget a thing. This sounds like a miracle that nobody would reject, but we should be careful what we wish for.

The Soviet psychologist, Alexander Luria, studied a man, S, whose memory capacity had no distinct limits. S could memorize pages of prose in a language that he didn't know. He could also learn tables of numbers and recall them flawlessly 17 years later, without being warned ahead of time that his recall would be tested. Because he was immune to the typical frailties of normal humans, S epitomized the kind of achievement Kurzweil advocates.

The problem is that having a perfect memory is a curse, not a blessing. S could not hold down jobs, he couldn't forget the pains of his childhood, he experienced chaos in understanding even a simple story, and he was continuously peppered by a junk heap of mental impressions that he couldn't control. He became victim to his memory because he could not learn how to forget.

Experiences such as those of S are not always known or appreciated by technological fundamentalists who focus on "overriding, impersonal" forces and are keen on pushing the boundaries of technology. Enhancing memory for the disabled, such as Alzheimer's patients, may be a worthwhile and achievable goal, but eliminating the limits of normal human memory would be disastrous.

There is also a hubris in Kurzweil's arguments that overlooks basic lessons from the past. For instance, we know from Rachel Carson's classic book, Silent Spring, that complex systems (like an ecology) have many interdependencies that frequently surprise us when we intervene. Rabbits were introduced in Australia, where there were no natural predators, leading to an unexpectedly large population that has cost millions of dollars to contain. The human body is also a complex system with a rich set of interactions, yet Kurzweil still believes, "We will be able to re-engineer all of the organs and systems in our biological bodies and brains to be vastly more capable."

What kinds of unintended consequences can we expect from this reengineering attempt to be "safer than biology," and who will take responsibility for them?

What is at stake here is nothing less than our vision of humanity. Kurzweil believes we have "physical frailties" and "suffering brains" that should be fixed. Others believe in the power of humanity and marvel at Tiger Woods's golf swing, commuters navigating rush-hour traffic in Paris and doctors eradicating smallpox from the planet. This latter view also believes in the power of technology not to fix frail people, but to enhance remarkable human capabilities.

Kurzweil's book is well organized, passionately argued and extensively researched, but it comes nowhere near taking on the ethical, legal, political, sociological and religious implications of its views. Instead, it doggedly focuses on predicting technological progress, but as Yogi Berra once said: "Prediction is difficult. Especially of the future."

I believe that the answers Kurzweil provides are fundamentally misguided and perhaps even dangerous. But his book is still valuable because it forces us to think about how we would like to see technology used in society. What kind of brave new world do we want for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren?

In answering this question, we should bear in mind Huxley's drug-induced mantra: "Progress is lovely."

Kim J. Vicente is professor of engineering at the University of Toronto. His latest book, The Human Factor, received the National Business Book Award and the Science in Society General Audience Book Award, and was short-listed for the Libris Non-fiction Book of the Year.