Dan Brown’s Origin Espouses a New God — Synthetic Intelligence
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It has been less than a month that controversial and bestselling author Dan Brown’s latest work ‘Origin’ has hit the stands and already debates are raising on his prophecy that human species will…
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Medium
It has been less than a month that controversial and bestselling author Dan Brown’s latest work ‘Origin’ has hit the stands and already debates are raising on his prophecy that human species will cease to exist by 2050, being absorbed by ‘Technium’ — the technology bug that will eventually supersede humankind. The believers frown upon his proposition that religion is going to become irrelevant in the light of logic and fool proof reasoning presented by avant grade technologies.

In his latest adventure of techno-religious conflict, Brown gives magnificent low down on modern art and Catholic structures in Spain, but his true God lies in a super-computing facility in Barcelona. And, that is what he prophecies — technology, especially artificial intelligence, or synthetic intelligence as he calls it, is the new God, and logical reasoning the new religion.

This article is not a review of the book, though I may do that in a separate post. What has been playing on my mind ever since I started reading the book is the role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and the speed with which they are becoming part of our daily life. The book, after all, is a work of fiction, but as the author himself declares, is based on facts. The role of the synthetic intelligence powered, self-learning personal assistant, Winston, is astonishingly powerful in the story. Who would have thought that a virtual assistant could be a core character in a story that is not strictly a science fiction!

Think about it, we already have Cortana, Siri, Alexa, Maya, to name a few, who talk to us and answer our queries. These personal assistants are designed to hold a conversation to some extent and have contextual awareness to do so. For example, when I ask Alexa should I be carrying an umbrella today, she responds by saying there is 60% chance of rain today — trying to make a connect between rain and umbrella. If it was Brown’s Winston I had asked the same question to, he would have probably responded “You would be travelling by a radio taxi and have shelters at the pickup and drop points. You can ignore the unnecessary baggage of an umbrella today. Further, going by your past behaviour and general tendency of people carrying umbrella when it is not essentially required, there are 85% chances of you leaving it behind in your Uber! And in any case, the driver you have radioed is carrying an umbrella in his car.”

Now, the question is, is this kind of engagement possible? Is it far-fetched? No. Absolutely not. Machines can be programmed to perform a task or a series of tasks, they can also be made to acquire, sort, and analyse data, and make decisions based on the insights gathered. Analytics based decision making is way more accurate than the human gut feel. In this case instead of a human acting on actionable insights it is the machine which does that. However, the beauty of the future of AI is its endeavour to bring in the gut feel element as well — almost humanizing the machines. And the future has already begun.

Dan Brown’s Origin talks of a super computer that is bicameral — in the sense that it uses both left and right brain techniques to assess the available data, weighing in both creative and logical aspects. I think that is what the technologists today are working on — imbuing machines with human like emotional sophistication, one that is never divorced from logic. The learning curve of the future machines is expansive, and they may imbibe, reflect, decide and act with lightning speed and precision point accuracy. These self-learners can soon outpace the human mind and become the decision makers. Would that be a bad thing? Is self-driving car a convenience or a menace?

Technology has always had service for human convenience as its core purpose. It is meant to provide ease, convenience, speed and accuracy to human action. In that, it has been designed to play a supporting role. However, the pace of advancement of the new age technologies can reverse this very core purpose. As Brown says in his new technology blockbuster, the self-learning technologies will consume human beings and will start ruling his mind and action. The machines will learn to take their own decision, and devoid of value judgement or subjective assessment, their actions could be aimed at the end and not the means. The book in question very vividly and shockingly describes what the consequences can be. It falls short of pronouncing a judgement on the actions of the machine though, leaving it to us readers to interpret the way we want it. No, I am not playing the spoiler and revealing any more of the plot!

There are dangers in the meteoric rise of synthetic intelligence powered conveniences that the humans are designing. The creation can overpower the creator and in some cases, this is happening already! Take the case of robots created by Facebook who built a new language overriding their creators.

The advanced machines will not misfire the cannon, but what they can do is to chose a very different target than what was intended for, based on the clinically, sanitized approach to decision making they take. It is important to be applying mind but is necessary to be thinking with a little bit of heart at times. Brown’s machine boasts of bicameral mind, but can the machines of future be given the soft curve of a human heart? Possibly, yes.

At the juncture that we are in, technology is a necessity. From an enabler it is fast becoming a propeller and in very near future, as Brown prophecies, it will be making everyday decisions on our behalf. The future of technology is clear, it is foreseeable. We can train machines to act in one way or the other. The question however is, can we train humans to make just use of technology? Can we ensure that that the creator will not be outsmarted? We can predict with some accuracy where AI and Machine Learning is headed in next two decades. But can we predict the future of humans? Would there be suffering, or will there be joy? Will there be job loss, or will there be ease and convenience in daily chores? Will the technology ease out lives of hardship and poverty? Will it make education, health and food universal? We cannot say that with any guarantee — but it sure has the potential, provided it is used economically.

Dan Brown’s Origin bases its entire premise on two very basic questions — Where did we come from, and, where are we going? The intriguing mysteries of human origin and future. Through 450 plus pages of intrigue, codes, conspiracy theories as well as, religious, social and technological discourse Brown attempts to answer these questions. Both his answers lie in technology. Indeed, technology helped us understand our past and is paving our future. The question is, are we future ready?

#danbrown #Origin #wheredidwecomefrom #wherearewegoing