The Legacy of Homo sapiens in the Age of AI #53 #cong24 #legacy
Synopsis:
“The Legacy of Homo sapiens in the Age of AI” reflects on the idea of legacy, both on a personal and a collective level. It begins by exploring the values we might want to pass on to future generations, such as kindness, curiosity, hard work, joy, and love. It then considers the broader legacy of humanity as we reach a defining moment in history: the creation of artificial intelligence that could surpass human intelligence. The article highlights the importance of developing AI ethically and responsibly, ensuring it contributes to human well-being. Ultimately, it suggests that humanity’s legacy will not only be measured by what we create but by how well we preserve and share the values that make us human.
Total Words
Reading Time in Minutes
3
Key Takeaways:
- Legacy and Values: Personal and collective legacies are rooted in kindness, curiosity, hard work, joy, and love.
- AI’s Historical Impact: Humanity is at a crossroads, creating intelligence that may surpass our own.
- Ethics and AI Governance: Our species’ future depends on developing AI responsibly to enhance human flourishing.
- Preserving Humanity: Embedding core human values in AI ensures our legacy reflects the best of us.
About Victor del Rosal:
Victor del Rosal is Chief AI Officer at fiveinnolabs. He has worked as Director of Strategy and Business Development at CloudStrong, Irish cloud services provider, and as Head of Business Analysis for High Tech & Telecom at the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Supply Center of Excellence.
Victor is author of the book Disruption: Emerging Technologies and the Future of Work, ranked #12 on BookAuthority’s Best Technology Trends Books of all time.
He is lecturer of MSc in AI for Business and other Masters programs at National College of Ireland and corporate trainer on generative AI for the UCD Professional Academy (Dublin, Ireland).
Contacting Victor del Rosal:
By Victor del Rosal
What do I want my legacy to be? What do I want to be remembered for? What do I want to leave behind? These are questions we might ask ourselves. When I do, I think mostly of my children. Four answers come to mind: kindness, curiosity, hard work and joy. Ultimately, the fifth one would be the most important: knowing that they are loved.
But what if we took a step back and reframed these questions from a collective point of view: What might be the legacy of Homo sapiens?
What do we want to be remembered for as a species? What do we want to leave behind?
We have been around as a species for over a quarter million years, or closer to 300,000 years to be more precise and, according to Raup and Stanley (1978), the average lifespan of mammalian species is estimated at 1-2 million years, so we might still have a little bit longer to go. Not so fast, though, there might a ‘but’ and an ‘if’ in there…
We stand at a pivotal moment in human history. Our species, which evolved through the Great Leap Forward some 50,000 years ago gaining remarkable cognitive capabilities, is now on the verge of creating artificial minds that could match or exceed our own intelligence.
This isn’t just another technological milestone, it’s potentially the most consequential development in our species’ history. We are literally creating new forms of intelligence, something that has been the exclusive domain of evolution for billions of years.
The legacy question becomes even more profound: Will we be remembered as the species that successfully navigated the transition to an AI-enabled future, ensuring these powerful tools enhance rather than diminish human flourishing? Or will we be known as the ones who created our own successors without sufficient forethought?
Our legacy might well be defined by how we handle this transition. The decisions we make today about AI development, ethics, and governance will echo through generations, potentially affecting not just our children, but the very trajectory of intelligence in our corner of the universe.
How to successfully navigate this transformation? This is my question. We might need the kindness to ensure AI benefits all of humanity, curiosity to explore its possibilities responsibly, hard work to get it right, and a focus on joy to maintain our essential humanity.
Most importantly, just as I want my children to know they are loved, perhaps our greatest legacy as a species will be ensuring that whatever forms of intelligence we create are imbued with the values that make us human at our best.
We might be at a crossroads in the evolution of our species, and our legacy may ultimately be measured not just by what we create, but by how well we preserve and transmit the essence of what makes us uniquely, intensely, and authentically human.