Recently, Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, made an interesting point relating to the future of human civilization. He has made a call to all the philosophers and thinkers of modern society to step up and ponder upon the roadmap that may be followed once AGI (artificial general intelligence) comes into existence.

Demis said that society in 10-15 years will be vastly different from the one in which we are currently living. Once things change in the future, if we do not have a plan, we will just be reacting to the new reality.

History has shown us that such a reactionary approach is almost always unsuccessful in nature. The latest example is that of the internet. When the World Wide Web proliferated in our society in the 90s and early 2000s, we were hardly prepared for it. No doubt the internet has helped in alleviating the lives of millions, yet the advantages of the internet, as a technology, did not percolate to the lowest strata of society. Many African countries continue to be exploited by powerful entities. Poverty has not been eliminated completely. Food security is still a distant dream. More and more wars are raging. Old wars are still continuing. It is doubtless that the current state of society is in complete disarray.

However, thanks to the efforts of some genius scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, a new window of opportunity has opened for us. AGI is knocking on our doors, and AI is already suffusing seamlessly into our daily lives.

However, a new mini-UN, as proposed by Demis, with the ‘brightest’ minds of our civilization, is just not going to be enough. There is so much nepotism, bureaucracy, and disinformation prevalent today that it is hard to chaff the real wheat from the grain. Governments are outliving their utility. Leaders with bloated egos continue to push agendas with vested interests. There is hardly any consensus or clarity of mind as to who should be responsible for preparing the future roadmap of our society.

So, what is to be done? As Demis said, new philosophers and thinkers must step in and take up the challenge. One problem is that thinkers, though good at thinking, are not good at executing anything. For the work of execution, the scientific community is needed and thank the heavens that the scientific community is acknowledging the seriousness of the situation.

Some kind of forum where the geniuses (science and tech ones) come together and hear the views of the general public is needed. There are a lot of brilliant ideas that are buried under the sun. If some kind of access is provided to this genius lot (science and tech ones) to the common man, then wonderful ideas could come to fruition.

There are cyber platforms like X and Reddit where a lot of brilliant ideas are thrown, but unfortunately, the algorithms running these platforms are not able to trace these ideas. In this regard, Elon has recently said that X is working tirelessly to make sure that great posts and ideas get the attention they deserve and the algos identify them. It is certainly a move in the right direction.

There is a cautionary note here that the role of governments should be as less as possible in this process. Wherever government comes in, it overshadows and dominates everything. In the name of representing the will of the ‘people,’ governments in general have done more harm than good. It is great that Demis has initiated this discussion, and hopefully, the thinkers of our generation would step up the game and come forward.

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AIPhilosophy