Questioning our era of advancement
THIS week I received an invitation to a ground-breaking conference where thousands of delegates will gather to interact with the world’s first social humanoid robot.
Sophia, the most advanced of her kind, has been designed and engineered using such advanced Artificial Intelligence, that she is able to reprogram the mathematical algorithms that enable her to function in order to improve her own functionality. She is also the first robot to receive citizenship of any country.
Surprisingly, the first person I thought of when I received this invite was my grandmother. I know you’re probably wondering what on earth could have possibly short-circuited in my brain to connect a humanoid robot to my 78-year -old grandmother. I was surprised too!
However, the thought that crossed my mind was: I wonder what it must feel like to have lived through a world war, frolicked on a beach before bikinis existed, and gone to the cinema when black and white, silent movies were the most cutting edge form of entertainment available.
To now be able to take selfies on apps that give you bunny ears, have a driver appear within minutes to take you to your desired destination without saying a word, and talk to a robot that can read your emotions and conduct a conversation with you accordingly!
So I called said grandmother and, after the usual barrage of questions – How’s work? Are your bosses treating you well? When are you going to find someone nice and settle down? (Her guess is as good as mine) – and complaints about how some of the other grandchildren never answer her phone calls or return them (my punishment for being the one that does) – we got to chatting about the robot.
I asked her how she felt about all the technological advancements that she has seen in her lifetime. While her initial response was a very timid and hesitant: “Oh, I think it’s a good thing” – a little probing revealed her true feelings on the matter. “Very strange things are happening nowadays … I think the end times are near.”
My grandmother’s views made me ponder the concept of the “end times”. Since the Earth has been around for roughly 4.5 billion years, I doubt that the “end times” that people speak of in casual conversation refers to the end of the Earth. It’s more plausible that what we are referring to is, in actual fact, the end of our era.
The Stone Age, The Ice Age, The Dark Ages, have all been characterised by a singular, standout descriptor, one main thing that has stood out and will for eternity be the defining characteristic of that period in the Earth’s history. This got me thinking – in an age where everything is so easily accessible, where technology is advancing so rapidly and instant gratification has become somewhat “normal”, what will this era be known for?
Will we be known for the power of social networking and how it has brought the world to our doorstep (or computer screen … or smartphone)? Will we be known for our ability to fall asleep 35 000 feet above sea level and wake up on a different continent within a few hours?
The thought process was a long and winding one and, after many hours and many spiralling thoughts that needed to be reined in quite firmly, I came to the conclusion that the vast array of technological advancements that we have seen in this lifetime is most likely not what we will be known for. What we will be known for is what we were able to do with all this knowledge, power, technology and sharing capability.
With everything that we have at our disposal, are we taking civilisation, our age, our era forward for the better, or are we, in fact, destroying ourselves and this fascinating, 4.5 billion-year-old world that we live in?
My grandmother may not be able to navigate a smartphone and its apps as efficiently as her four-year-old great-granddaughter, but she is enormously appreciative of the fact that her mobile phone affords her the ability to call people in different cities, pray with them, give them hope in their time of need or despair, and be a friend to the loneliest of souls.
The world is about seven billion people strong right now and, while we cannot control what the rest of the world does with what they have access to, we can influence them … by what we choose to do with what we have access to. Social media has given us all a voice, technology has given us the tools, and unprecedented access to immeasurable volumes of information on the internet has given us more knowledge. Let’s use it wisely and maybe someday the history books will call us “The Greatest Age”.