What will life look like 40 or 50 years from now? Brian Rose puts that question to AI researcher Dr Ben Goertzel in this clip from their 2019 London Real interview, and the answer goes much further than brain implants and smarter phones.
Goertzel describes a future after what he calls the technological singularity, and the two very different paths he believes humans could choose between.
▶ Watch the full episode: Dr Ben Goertzel – Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Us?
What the singularity means
Goertzel defines the singularity as the point where technology advances so fast that, from a human point of view, progress appears infinite. His example: AIs in a global brain network making new Nobel Prize-level discoveries every five seconds.
Alongside that, he expects molecular nanotechnology that can build almost anything out of molecules, tiny probes sent into the body to repair it, and 3D printing that ends scarcity of everyday goods. Put together, he says, it would be “a fundamentally different regime of life” from the one we know.
Patching the mind
The bigger change, in his view, is inside our heads. He imagines being able to reprogram your own mind at will: load a patch to stop craving junk food, another to change who you are attracted to, another to focus for five months straight. In that world, he argues, mental illness as we know it would disappear.
Brian is sceptical. Wouldn’t that be synthetic joy? Isn’t the human experience about overcoming difficulty? Goertzel answers with a line from his son: “pain builds character, bad character.”
Option A and option B
Assuming the machines let us survive, Goertzel thinks each person will face a choice. Option A is to fuse your mind with a superintelligent “mind matrix”, becoming part of something vastly more intelligent, at the cost of your sense of individual self, your attachment to human memories and the need for a body.
Option B is to remain in a form much like the human one, but without disease, mental illness or scarcity. A 3D printer in every home, he suggests, could replace the dishwasher as a standard appliance, printing anything from food to a new bicycle.
Does suffering give life meaning?
Brian pushes back: would life really be so different without struggle? Goertzel’s reply draws on history. In the Middle Ages, he points out, many children died young, many women died in childbirth and toothache was constant. People then might have called that suffering natural. Today we see it as unnecessary, and he believes much of the suffering we accept now will look the same way.
He ends with a striking image. Humans who choose to stay human would be like squirrels in a national park: free to live their lives undisturbed, but surrounded by a world they cannot fully understand.
What to take from it
These are predictions, and plenty of researchers disagree about the timing and even the possibility of a singularity. But the clip is a clear window into how one of the best-known figures in artificial general intelligence thinks about where the technology could lead, and the questions about meaning and choice it raises.
Who is Dr Ben Goertzel?
Dr Ben Goertzel is an AI researcher and entrepreneur, and one of the leading voices in the field of artificial general intelligence (AGI). He is the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, and worked with Hanson Robotics on the AI behind the humanoid robot Sophia. He also chairs the AGI Society.
This clip comes from his first London Real interview, Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Us?, recorded in 2019. He has returned to the show several times since, including for Artificial Intelligence & The Singularity in 2023.
See everything Dr Ben Goertzel has done with London Real on his guest page: Dr Ben Goertzel on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Dr Ben Goertzel – Life After The Singularity: What The Next 40 Years Could Bring
0:00 Brian Rose: Let’s talk 40 years from now, or 50 years from now. What could that look like? You’re talking about brain implants, you’re talking about me digitally printing some kids, or you selling me some kids. What’s something that we should just accept now that could be a reality?
0:15 Dr Ben Goertzel: I think once we have a technological singularity, meaning AIs are much smarter than people…
0:20 Brian Rose: OK. Can we define that singularity? What is that?
0:26 Dr Ben Goertzel: The singularity is defined as a point when the rate of technology advance is so fast that from a human point of view it appears infinite. Say the AIs in the global brain network are making new Nobel Prize-level discoveries every five seconds. And what’s going to come along with that is molecular nanotechnology, where you can build anything out of molecules the way we would now out of Lego or in a machine shop; the ability to cure human disease and prevent death by sending little bio-nano probes into the body to fix things; and 3D printing that solves material scarcity at the level of everyday human needs. Having all these technologies coordinated together is going to be a fundamentally different regime of life than we have now.
1:20 Brian Rose: That’s mind-boggling, to me.
1:22 Dr Ben Goertzel: That’s just the beginning. This is the focus on the external machinery, but think about your state of consciousness. Imagine that you had access to reprogram anything in your mind whenever you wanted to. So you’re like: well, I wish I didn’t feel like eating so much junk. OK, let’s load the patch. You don’t want to eat junk. Ding! You’re done. I wish I wasn’t attracted to this type of girl. OK, ding! I’m attracted to that kind instead. I’d like to be able to focus fully for the next five months on this. OK, let’s load the focus patch. So the ability to rewire your brain at will. Mental illness of the kinds we’re familiar with now is gone. Unhealthy relationships are gone, unless they’re specifically what turns you on.
2:15 Brian Rose: So that’s assuming the machines let us survive?
2:18 Dr Ben Goertzel: Yeah. So what I think is going to happen is we’ll each have two options. Option A: you fuse your brain into the superintelligent mind matrix. Then you become part of something billions, trillions, quadrillions of times more intelligent than you were. On the other hand, you probably lose your illusions of individual self and free will, and your nostalgic attachment to your human memories. And you lose the requirement to have your body. You could have your body, but if you can see through a billion bodies at one time, this one body becomes arbitrary.
2:57 Dr Ben Goertzel: I think that’s one interesting option, and there’s a question of how fast you want to fuse with this super mind. Does it happen in one second, or do you want to phase it in gradually over a year or something? Hopefully that’s your choice. Who knows? So that’s one option. Now, option B is to remain in a form very similar to the human form we have now. Get rid of death and disease, get rid of mental illness. No need for scarcity, because instead of just a dishwasher in your house, you have a 3D printer that will print you any physical object you want, be it food or a new bicycle. And you live a human life of joy and abundance.
3:52 Brian Rose: I don’t know what the joy is there, but we’ll have the abundance.
3:54 Dr Ben Goertzel: The joy will be there, because if you don’t feel joyful enough, you will just load joy patch number 3.7 into your brain.
4:00 Brian Rose: Even you know that sounds a little ridiculous.
4:03 Dr Ben Goertzel: That’s not ridiculous at all.
4:05 Brian Rose: Isn’t that synthetic joy? Isn’t the human experience all about overcoming difficulties and dealing with that?
4:12 Dr Ben Goertzel: My second son, Zebulon, had a quote, which was: pain builds character, bad character. I would say humanity has a lot more scope than what we normally understand.
4:35 Brian Rose: What, you think we have a caveman mentality?
4:37 Dr Ben Goertzel: Well, it’s just particular. The states of consciousness we enter into are different from the ones people in Stone Age societies had. Very, very different. And they’re different from the ones a monk meditating in a Buddhist temple has, and very different from the mentality people will have in the future era of human abundance I’m envisioning. I think the brain is capable of a lot of states of consciousness beyond what we enter into on an everyday basis. If you could experience what the average guy in the UK in 1350 was experiencing day to day, it would be very, very different.
5:21 Brian Rose: Without social media, he’s still got to eat, he’s got kids, the sun comes out. It wouldn’t be that different, would it?
5:28 Dr Ben Goertzel: It depends on how you’re looking at it. You’re looking at it like joy comes from struggling and overcoming struggles. They may not think that way at that point. I don’t think that’s a necessary part of human physiology. I talk to people who say death is what gives life meaning. You can derive meaning from anything; the human mind is wonderfully flexible. But I think if we don’t have to die, we’ll find other ways to derive meaning that don’t involve dying. There are a lot of ways to derive meaning other than through death, or through suffering and then feeling the suffering go away.
6:17 Dr Ben Goertzel: It might be that there’s a certain minimum level of pain and discomfort that’s just intrinsic to the human experience. My feeling is we habitually experience much more than that minimum level right now. Because where do you stop? Go to the Middle Ages: half your kids would die as babies. A very high percentage of women died in childbirth back then. Mostly your teeth would rot by age 40. You’d have a toothache all the time because there was no dentistry.
6:54 Dr Ben Goertzel: So you could look at the way people lived in the Middle Ages and say: well, suffering is intrinsic to life. It’s just natural that half your kids die as babies, your wife may die in childbirth, and you have a toothache all the time because your teeth are rotten. But now we look at it and we’re like: no, that’s totally unnecessary. So I think a lot of the suffering we take for granted as part of life now will seem totally unnecessary.
7:19 Dr Ben Goertzel: The thing is, humans in that era will be human because they choose to be human, because otherwise they could fuse with the superhuman AI mind matrix. They choose to be human for their own aesthetic reasons, essentially. And why not? I don’t think every dog or bird should become a human just because we’re more generally intelligent than they are. Every creature in the ecosystem has some beauty and integrity to it. Humans do also. It’s not like we’re morally bound to uplift ourselves to become superhuman AI and give up our humanity.
7:59 Dr Ben Goertzel: The thing is, the humans will be like the squirrels in a national park are now. The squirrels in the national park are carrying out their lives, and we who take care of the national park don’t intervene in their love affairs or their hunt for acorns. On the other hand, there is a world outside that park which they can’t understand, and if they run out of it, they may get run over by a truck.
