What used to be a weak signal is now becoming a very strong one: According to Elon Musk, humans must merge with machines or become irrelevant. This used to be covered by alternative publications like MIT Tech Review, and now are hitting mainstream media headlines, such as CNBC.
The billionaire, and founder of some of the most dynamic companies of the 21st Century, gave a talk today at the World Government Summit in Dubai. “It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output,” Musk claimed. By this he means we’re currently too slow to keep up with the raging speed of AI–and it’s only going to get worse. We’ll need to merge with machines to have a chance at keeping up. Of course, Musks’s fears are not that we’ll be too slow in creating information, but rather that we’ll simply become subjugated–conquered–by super-intelligent beings, ironically of our own creation. He’s always seeing the bigger picture…
This again is nothing new. People like Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and Ray Kurzweil have been talking about this subject for over a decade. But it seems we are at the advent of AI, and that means we have some decisions to make: will we chip up and become requisite with machines, or remain ‘human’–whatever that means anymore–and refuse to enhance? And if we don’t enhance, will we be subjugated?
As well, who will have access to these technologies? Will they be ubiquitous and affordable for all, or merely for the elite? If the latter, what prevents society from becoming split between an intellectual elite few–powered by advanced AI–and the rest? And what kinds of social and political upheaval will such a bifurcation create?
Back to weak signals. Weak signals are like the ‘black swans’ that Nicholas Nassim Taleb wrote about in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: they are events that are typically under the radar until it’s too late; they are low frequency in information, yet high magnitude in impact. Right now, the human/machine divide is becoming mainstream, but what ramifications of this phenomenon are yet to reach the surface of popular consciousness? What will be the next black swan, the next event that may be highly improbable now, but inevitable in hindsight?
For those business leaders, this kind of thinking and researching is critical to remain viable in the 21st Century. If you’re not thinking this way, your business enterprise could be in jeopardy.
Being on the right side of change means taking articles like the report on Musk’s latest statements and pushing them into the future. You have to ask yourself how widespread brain implants will create threats and opportunities for you and your organization.
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