Four leading thinkers* in the fields of philosophy, artificial intelligence and innovation, consider the advantages and the risks posed by our almost total reliance on technology during a panel discussion on Tuesday, 29 October at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2013.
Speaking about the potential pitfalls we face in light of growing technological dependence, Huw Price, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, says technology allows us to escape many adversities that confronted our ancestors, and to do things that they could not have imagined.
"Long may it do so and full steam ahead!" he says. "And yet… who are we, exactly; and can we be sure that all this progress will leave us intact in the senses that matter?" He continues:
“Here's a way to put some flesh on the question. One of the most crucial contributions that evolution has made to who we are is the complex kilo of wetware we all have in our skulls. That piece of biological machinery plays a huge role in making us us. And it has been more or less constant, for thousands of generations – and more or less unrivalled, in the sense that nothing else on the planet does the same kinds of things anything near so well.
“But what happens when these remarkable brains figure out how to change this – when technology catches up in the thinking business? The same pressures that drive other kinds of technology seem to be pushing us as fast as possible in that direction, but we have very little sense of what to expect when we get there. Could we survive, as us, if the machinery that plays such a big role in making us who we are goes the way of the steam engine?”
“The brain is a complex network comprising billions of dynamic elements (neurons) connected together," says Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London. "The Internet is also a complex network comprising billions of dynamic elements (computers and other devices) connected together.
"Components of the internet are increasingly carrying out sophisticated cognitive operations that we associate with the brain, such as finding patterns in large amounts of data. And they are increasingly making decisions autonomously, without human intervention. So it's tempting to ask just what it would take for the internet to acquire a ‘mind of its own’.
“However, the brain is connected to (indeed is part of) a body, which has a well-defined location in space. The brain's input comes from the body's sensory organs, and its output goes to the body's system of muscles. A human being's sense of purpose, of individuality and selfhood, are intimately related to the body: ‘This is me. Here I am’.
"The Internet, by contrast, is a disembodied entity. It doesn't have a precise spatial location, and its input and output — insofar as these notions even make sense — are ‘all over the place’. Does this bar the Internet from ever possessing purpose, individuality, or selfhood, from acquiring a ‘mind of its own’? Does this mean we have nothing to fear from losing control of it?”
Dr Jonathan Cave, Senior Research Fellow at RAND Europe and senior lecturer in Economics at the University of Warwick, believes the new world of the internet is one of speed and complexity that may hide the consequences of our choices, and even change the way we think.
“We are used to associating objective and tangible ‘knowledge’ with subjective and intangible understanding and belief," says Dr Cave. "If we delegate memory to the cloud, that layer of ‘understanding’ may not survive the journey into and out of the database, and critical thought may be replaced by the mechanical and collective logic of search.
“We can delegate actions – but not responsibility – to internet connections. When we transfer our powers to algorithms (or complex assemblages including a few bewildered humans) the results may not be predictable, auditable or manageable.
"How can we trust ‘our’ machines and how can we learn from them? And how can we stop ourselves, when immersed in the constant flow of urgent and highly temporary decisions that the machines have generated, from turning into machines ourselves?”
*The speakers include Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge; Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London and author of Embodiment and the Inner Life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds; Dr Jonathan Cave, Senior Research Fellow at RAND Europe and senior lecturer in Economics at the University of Warwick; and Dr Hermann Hauser, venture capitalist at Amadeus Capital Partners, member of the UK's Council for Science and Technology, Fellow of the Royal Society, and patron of The Centre for Computing History.
‘The Internet of Things and the boundaries of humanity’ is on Tuesday 29 October, 7:00pm - 8:30pm at Robinson College, Grange Road, Cambridge, CB3 9AN. Bookings can be made here.