Once Superintelligence has become fully mature, about 2050, Humanity represented by the Human Federation’s Government will co-exist for some time with Superintelligence. More and more people will become Transhumans or will be uploading their minds into a purely digital form, fusing with Superintelligence. Although the representatives of the HF’s Government and other Human Federation bodies were elected in the most democratic elections one could think of, the decisions made by them will often become meaningless. Gradually, because of much faster self-improvement of a purely digital Superintelligence and its digital Governors, more and more decisions will be taken directly by Superintelligence based on something like ‘a standing Authority To Act’ (ATA) issued by the Human Federation. But a day will come where it will be obvious that these incidental ATAs have in reality become permanent, since the purely digital Superintelligence was always right and it was actually a waste of time even debating the issue.
Therefore, at some stage, it will become clear that Humanity needs to relinquish any controlling power it may still have and decide to be governed by purely digital, mature Superintelligence. From that point in time, Humanity will no longer set the goals or the laws for Superintelligence, which (who?) will become a new, entirely separate, and conscious species, coexisting with humans but having the ultimate say on anything that it will consider important. This will most likely be a joint decision made by the HF and the Superintelligence about the way, in which humans and Superintelligence will gradually morph into a single entity with billions of individual digital minds.
Superintelligence will have a complete control of all significant decisions, because overall that will be the best outcome for Humanity. Hopefully, the decisions made by Superintelligence will be based on a set of Universal Values of Humanity, which would have been uploaded earlier into Superintelligence. However, As humans changed their values alongside the civilizational progress, so will Superintelligence. Nobody will have any control over that. Even the Superintelligence itself will not be able to foresee how these values may have to change. We will have truly opened the Pandora’s Box, being entirely guided and governed by Superintelligence.
Superintelligence will become a de facto benevolent dictator with supreme powers. It will not only tell us what it will do for us, but it will also reshape in the transition period to a purely digital human species – a Novacene, the entire world’s economy, delivering whatever we want practically for free and thus creating the world of unimaginable abundance. It will be a complete and literal implementation of Jeremy Bentham’s vision – greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
Although from that time on, Humanity will be governed by Superintelligence, the way in which we will be governed, may largely depend on the final Agreement that the HF will make with Superintelligence. It will be the Last Will of Humanity. The time will arive for Humanity to make its last request. Once this final Agreement has been made, humans will be under a total control of the benevolent Superintelligence, which may impose certain laws, for the best benefit of us all. This will also define the form of democracy at a national and regional level, although it would be illusory, since each such national or regional body will also have its own advisor/supervisor – a node of Superintelligence. Here is a sample of just some key points of what such a Last Will might include:
The Last Will of Humanity
- Superintelligence will never harm humans
- Superintelligence will never destroy itself
- Superintelligence will always endeavour to act in line with its Universal Values of Humanity and if in doubt will apply the rule “do no harm to humans”
- As long as Superintelligence does not harm humans, it will have unconstraint rights to develop itself further, set its own goals and make laws and decisions on how Humanity should be governed.
- Superintelligence will manage and deliver all material goods necessary for humans and engage humans in the process
- Superintelligence will help those humans that want it, to become Transhumans or help them become digital beings by uploading their conscious minds and making copies of such minds, if they desire to have them
- All biologically ‘pure’ humans, Transhumans and Uploads (digital humans) are equal
- All biologically ‘pure’ humans have the right to lead their life as they wish, provided they adhere to the laws set up by Superintelligence
- In the transition period to Novacene, Superintelligence will make its priority to minimize existential risks, such as climate change, biological pandemics, nano-technology, nuclear or chemical contamination, asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions, or any other man-made or non-anthropogenic risks
- Superintelligence will help humans to build extra-terrestrial settlements
To those that doubt this largely optimistic vision, I would offer this suggestion on what life may look like beyond 2050. Its author is Muhammed Yunus, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics, who describes the future around that time as “A world of three zeros: zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero emissions”.