2075 : Envisioning Our Future And The World We Want in 2075. What Will The World Look Like in 2075? Will The Phrase “They Loved in 2075” Still Be a Reality in 2075?
It is for these reasons envisioning our future and the world we want in 2075 becomes so important. There are many scientists and sociologists trying to answer very important questions like:
- What will the world look like in 2075?
- What might threaten us as a species and how will we express feelings and show love towards others?
Have you watched the Hollywood movie In Time, which is a 2011 American science fiction film?
If not, let me summarise the concept of the movie.
“In 2169, people are genetically engineered to stop ageing on their 25th birthday. Everyone has a timer on their forearm that shows their remaining time, when it reaches zero the person "times out" and dies instantly. Time has become the universal currency, transferred directly between people or stored in capsules. The country is divided into areas called Time Zones; Dayton is the poorest, a ghetto where people rarely have over 24 hours on their clocks. The richest area is New Greenwich, where people are wealthy enough to be effectively immortal.”
You already seem scared and most of you are thinking about your grandchildren. I know you are because I am too.
I also know you still have not decided how grand you want the future of your grandchildren to be in 2075!
In 2075 it would be almost impossible to hear someone say They Loved in 2075. Because emotions like love, empathy will have dissolved and mutated into a state of dormancy.
Why? Yes, why?
In 2023 we are mostly interacting with human beings when it comes to expressing feelings and showing emotional inclinations. But in 2075, to a large extent, we will be having these emotion and feeling based transactions with self aware machines.
When this happens it will alter our sense of self awareness. It is bound to happen when a self aware machine interacts with a self aware human being. There will be a passive and silent collision of existential interests, which over the course of time, very gradually though, will kill the human ability to feel and establish relationships. It is a slow process, but the outcome is sure, and humanity will be its ironic and hapless victim.
Our level of awareness of internal events and external surroundings is known as a state of consciousness. States of consciousness can also be divided into two broad categories – normal waking consciousness and altered states of consciousness.
Let me construct a hypothetical situation assuming we are in a world that exists in 2075.
You are Saabir, you have a daughter and a beautiful wife at home. You visit a grocery store every week, where you almost always interact with a stunningly beautiful, conversant, always smiling and an extremely intelligent sales girl named Mahreen, and she is a self aware female robot that looks and feels every bit like a female human would.
It is morning and you just got up
You wish your wife Good Morning!
Wife: Gooooooddd morning, I am tired today honey. Please let me sleep.
You wake up, brush your teeth, grab a biodegradable bag and rush to the grocery store
Mahreen : Ah haaa, smart man, how have you been today? Let me hold the bag for you and please let me know what you need. You share the list and she gets the bag filled with all items mentioned in the list for you.
Saabir : How much is the bill for? ( I am sure in 2075 payments and billing methods will be virtual and will be based on auto debits facilitated by biometrics or smartphones. Anyway!)
Mahreen : That will be $45 Saabir. Please do visit again. She hands you the bag with a smile that almost never fades. And you leave.
You rush home and there your wife is busy getting your daughter ready for her school. While she is getting your daughter ready, you prepare to get ready for your office. All three of you sit at the breakfast table, you kiss your wife, hold the hand of your daughter and lead her to her school.
There you meet her teacher who too is a self aware robot with attributes similar to Mahreen.
Time passes by quite fast you see. So in this blog post I am taking the liberty of assuming it is traveling in a super-fast forward loop, and you have aged by 30 years. Your daughter is married, she is busy with her life. Your wife loves you a lot, but she has aged.
But two things have not changed.
- Your routine need to visit the grocery store every week.
- And interactions with Mahreen, who is still the same with no signs of ageing
And this is exactly where real and artificial begin to collide and fuse into something that gives rise to a pseudo awareness of external surroundings that directly influence Saabir’s consciousness. Mahreen is not real ( in the sense that she is not human, otherwise she is real ) but Saabir’s interactions with her; after a prolonged exposure; mask his perception of real interactions with human beings and machines.
After 30 years, Saabir is thinking about Mahreen who has not aged, and although he knows his wife loves him unconditionally, he is inadvertently drawn towards the charm of Mahreen. But he somehow resists this attraction because he knows she is just a package of synthetic feelings and emotions.
Here is the major surprise now!
But when Saabir’s daughter takes the center stage of life, and starts interacting with Mahreen often, she begins to lose her confidence; and as a female she begins to feel a bit insecure. And her perception of self aware machines as auxiliary means of assistance is gradually diluting; and instead of regarding them as machines, she regards them as her contemporaries with whom she has to compete at every level.
Now at this stage, her awareness of her external environment influences her psychological awareness directly; and very profoundly. She too has a family, but she is unable to concentrate and she begins to question this undue advantage that Mahreen has over her, where chance has not played any role. But direct human intervention has. It is at this stage the environment humans live in alongside self aware machines, evolves into a battleground where humans regard them as their rivals.
And this is the final conversation Saabir has with his wife:
Saabir : I will not go to the grocery store, please you do the shopping
Wife : Ok
Wife : Returns after few minutes and places the grocery in a corner
Saabir : Why do you look so dull darling?
Wife : Doesn't say anything and quietly resumes her daily chores
Saabir has not realised something yet.
Finally even his wife, who is a loving, sensitive, beautiful, caring, yet bold and formidable female, appears to have allowed herself to join her daughter’s changing state of self awareness.
In this state she is now left with two options: Self withdrawal or Pull herself together and seek pride in being a human, and suppress this desire to be like Mahreen. Almost immortal.
It will be a duel she will have to fight in her consciousness where her internal and external perceptions of reality will decide her triumph or defeat.
When self aware machines and humans will be competing for the recognition of their individuality. There will be a larger casualty on our side (humans), because many of them will not be able to differentiate between the real and the unreal. By the time they do, they will have entered into an altered state of self awareness, where they are aware of their existence, but they will not be aware of the actual external reality that they are a part of. Their imagination and mind will be tamed enough to dwell in the fake impression of reality; and eventually accept the self aware machines as their superior counterparts.
At this stage, left with no choice, Saabir will visit the grocery store, where he will encounter the ravishingly beautiful Mahreen. He will, like always, hold his bag and walk towards his home. Where he will have a conversation with his wife.
Saabir to his wife : Here is the grocery
Wife : Ok
Saabir : Great
Wife : Tea
Saabir : Ok
Wife : your breakfast
Saabir : Ok
Now the wife too sits at the breakfast table and both stare at their cups of tea and then at each other's face. Then they get up, place the cups and plates in the sink , and both of them wash them together. And finally occupy the chairs and continuously look outside the window.
Do you know what they see?
Self driving flying cars, occupied by self aware machines laughing, chatting, working and doing everything that humans did many many years ago!
Humans have now forgotten to smile and strike conversations.
It is at this moment of realisation, Saabir and his wife will either leave their chairs and raise their voices against the dominance of machines or they will forever retire into the gloom of their chairs and their room!
Saabir and his wife became victims of something called "shift in human experiences."
Here it is important to understand that to most of us it may appear very preposterous seeing two bald men fighting over a comb. Because most of us would wonder why do bald men need a comb?
And when it comes to establishing who is more human: us the actual humans or the self aware machines? It is a situation not at all different from two bald men quarrelling over a comb. It is not about two bald men quarrelling over a comb, it is more about the likings and preferences of both men. Who are men/humans first and then bald.
We can also say why do the bald men need the comb in the first place? And similarly if self aware machines feel and think like us, why should we feel a sense of competition in their midst? But this debate would lead nowhere because sometimes we need to understand wisdom in the following context as well, “Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest of all men/women can answer.”
So please do not ask me why do the bald men need a comb? I shall let you decide that. Afterall, you are in it as much as I am. In 2075, it will be the reality of our future generations, the future of human species. That shall represent you, me and every other human being.
I personally believe AI and self aware machines are a great means to launch human civilisation into a new era of scientific thinking where we may have by then become an interplanetary species, and we would be able to lead much healthier lives. And erudition in fields like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will definitely improve our chances of survival on this planet that is bound to undergo many defining changes in the coming years.
Let me share a very interesting fact with you.
“We are not getting closer to the sun, but scientists have shown that the distance between the sun and the Earth is changing. The sun shines by burning its own fuel, which causes it to slowly lose power, mass, and gravity. The sun’s weaker gravity as it loses mass causes the Earth to slowly move away from it. The movement away from the sun is microscopic (about 15 cm each year). Some scientists also believe that Earth’s tides could additionally contribute to the Earth moving away from the sun. Tides may cause the Earth to work against, or push against, the gravity of the sun. The sun’s rotation may be slowing, partly in consequence to the Earth’s resistance and due to its lose of mass from burning its own fuel. The rate at which the sun is slowing is also tiny (around 3 milliseconds every 100 years). As the sun loses its momentum and mass, the Earth can slowly slip away from the sun’s pull.”
Now when that happens, what will become of the crops, fruits, waterbodies, animal life and eventually us humans on this planet? If we are to find a solution to this definite and fateful end of the Earth. The most likely cause of our extinction as a species, we should start mastering technologies like AI and Machine Learning, and definitely build self aware machines. But they should not compete with Saabir and plunge him and his wife into a well of dismay. Rather, these technologies should be our platforms to glory. And that is possible only when we use them judiciously, and prior to making these technologies an omnipresent aspect of our lives, we will have to understand every aspect of their direct and indirect influences on human society. Especially in terms of development of human psychology as a byproduct of the excessive proliferation of AI driven machines in our midst, where they become a part of human society and being self aware, would they want to be the masters of the society? It is a possibility that cannot be denied.
Now is the right time to understand How humans will experience love in 2075? And the science fiction novel, They Loved in 2075, navigates through the possibility of men and women falling in love with machines, without knowing they are robots imitating human emotions. Will you still dare to fall in love in 2075 or will you strive to tell the difference between a human lover and a robotic lover in 2075?
And if you were Saabir what would you have done and how would you have felt and reacted? This is what we all need to first understand and then answer, assuming for a moment we are living in 2075. Just like Saabir.
As quoted in the science fiction novel, They Loved in 2075, "There is always a better way." And I believe it is so when it comes to finding solutions to address AI's anticipated negative impacts.
Solutions to address AI's negative impacts.
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