Book Review - The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches

Book Review - The Second Intelligent Species by Marshall Brain.

The last blog post was on Utopia. Fittingly, I just stumbled onto this book about an "ideal" future with super intelligences running things. I use a variety of tools to try to stay abreast of interesting ideas. These gadgets, like Zite, keep track of what I read and what I like. One of my likes is "The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies". http://ieet.org/ I have a bit of a background in ethics, business ethics, and in IT technology - so it's a good fit. The authors in this group are also pretty "progressive". Not "liberal" as such, but certainly not "conservative" in any usual sense.

By the way, you can get a Kindle copy of this book for $0.99. Or read it free online. Worth every penny!*#

It is a good book, and the ideas are important. But it is a tad simplistic - no academic references here to studies that support his ideas - just the ideas. But they are interesting ideas, and that simplicity makes them more available. It makes you think about what will happen when we really do succeed in getting robots or artificial intelligences, to do ALL of our work. What do we do to earn our keep in that world? What will we do with our time - what opportunities will this give us, and what risks? And this brand of "crap" is likely to start hitting the fan in the next few decades.

The book starts off with a "short history of evolution" - from hydrogen to humans. A fascinating way to do it. Hydrogen really was everything that was. He projects what might happen if another intelligent species eventually arrives here, and takes a reading on what we are about. The resulting picture is a pretty sorry state of affairs. We have billions of people that are barely surviving, we spend trillions on armaments that could literally destroy the planet. Outside of Mozart and Beethoven and the like - why would any intelligent species want to have anything to do with us?

In subsequent chapters, he leads up to the book's 2nd title: "How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches". Think about it. We are working our way toward making an intelligent machine. If we make it complex enough, it should become aware, just as we are aware. With a couple of generations of that progress, what will the ultimate 'next intelligent species' think of us? What do we think of chimpanzees, about one generation lower? What about cockroaches, two or three generations lower? We sure don't try to communicate with them. We would never expect them to understand what we are about. I have worked through this myself, and I came out at a totally different spot than where he ended up. See what you think. I think they will just ignore us and be about more interesting things. I hope his version is right!

Chapter 7 is particularly well done. And you can read it here.
http://marshallbrain.com/second-intelligent-species7.htm

He does a little thought experiment on the "ideal" society. WHAT IF, we could make up a society as we would like, considering all of this automation, minimum wage, etc. What would the ideal society be like? He makes some assumptions to keep this society simple, but he works through some of the alternatives. In the end, you come to a better understanding on just how our current society seems to be so poorly managed. We let it develop around us, instead of managing it. He has some better ideas - and he presents them well. He talks about the scenario where the 1% at the top manage to control things. There are alternatives there as well.The beauty of this is that when you simplify things a bit, the stark craziness of what we have stands out.

He has a wonderful thought scenario on what happens when millions of Teamsters are out of work because of self driving trucks. There is no question that this is going to happen - and within the next decade. What do those fine people do to earn a living? This is not a bunch of intellectuals occupying Wall Street. This may be the event that trips our trigger for some form of subsidized income.

He does some thought experiments on what a super intelligent entity would actually do. He indicates that Asimov's three laws for Robots may not be of much use. Along the way he develops a robotic morality. Why would artificial intelligences from other worlds be any different from the ones developed here? And a solution to the Fermi Paradox - again!

He has sparked a flood of new ideas. He is also immensely optimistic - certainly about robots, but also about humans. I hope half of what he says works out.

He does have a few short sighted problems. He does not talk about how an economic system works with a guaranteed basic income. I know it is doable, but he needs to explain that a bit more to the normal reader. What kind of taxes would enable this kind of thing? He also glosses over the real problems in getting highly emotional and non rational humans to agree on anything, even in the face of imminent danger. But  . . . it presents a fine Utopian vision that provokes thought.

Let me know what you think.