Agentic AI: Autonomous agents performing tasks for humans at humans’ command
Humans have an amazing history of developing themselves – and the world around them – but a poor record of rationally charting its future. Ponder the contradiction created by electing governments through voting – a system that assumes rationality – and the exercise of power by force – clearly irrational. The ability to survive and conquer still determines who is top dog. The world is controlled by force rather than by reason.
Given the advances made in understanding the brainwave, this is surprising. Brainwave here means all capacity to think. Viewed from any perspective other than our immediate present this is bizarre. Considered in the light of our soon to be able to fashion future humans any way we want, it is potentially dangerous.
However, the relentless progress of technological development has to be handled even when we don’t know what it is for. The newest development is less intellectual, more functional. The impending ‘super-dooper computer’ will work so fast that it can change our concept of time. Money transfer changes have caused a redefinition of value, upsetting the concept of cash in the process. Similarly, when communications transactions get too fast and mortality becomes potential immortality, time may change to a different mode of measure.
Marry such speed with the search engine of Artificial Intelligence and the present human intellectual ability to stay ahead of the robot looks uncertain. The creativity of the human brain is largely dependent on speed. Indeed, there is very little, if any, real creativity. The definition of creativity that I like is “the ability to perceive relationships”. To be successful that has to be fast. “If only…” is a recognition of failed thinking.
While it seems logical that humans can control their inventions, it begins to look more likely that either the inventions will control the humans or the humans will develop themselves to become as smart as the inventions. From the heart pacemaker to the brain implant it appears that this last is already happening. Think of a brain implant as a mobile phone. It receives what it is sent. The social media – ‘raw people presumptions’ – have had a worrying effect on the minds of the followers. Lifestyles and norms are fundamentally changed by them.
There is, of course, no diktat that says human beings should retain the same concept of life forever. Homo Sapiens has changed enough over the 300,000+ years on the planet to make us flexible about who we are. You may think it would, however, be comforting to anticipate that we could become a higher order of creature, one whose aim in life would be to improve the quality of the species in a way we all broadly acknowledge would be desirable.
Perhaps neither autocracy nor democracy stretch that far?
Whether we subscribe to the concept of human rights or not, it must surely be an aim of life that we should be more peaceful than warring. To maintain such a balance we need to have some sense of equity. That can come from only one of two sources. Either we have a disciplinary / law system so refined and policed that legal trials become redundant or we breed a new personality that is, by our present use of the words, ‘wholly responsible’. The reality is that we will have a mixture of who we are and who we might prefer to be. This is, of course, the normal tussle within every human being and it presents a scene of battle.
That battle will become more aggressive as the ‘good’ compete with the ‘bad’ with ever more crushing tools. In this complex is there something we should hold onto in order that the end scene is one of achievement rather than destruction?
John Vance Cheney, the poet, had as good an expression of it as I can find.
“The soul would have no rainbow, had the eyes no tears”, he said.
May the tears you shed over our dilemma
become the rainbow that lightens your life.
Good morning and may 2025 be the year when we all think about the future, too.
John Bittleston
02 January 2025
