Futurology 2

The future is most palpable looking out at Mumbai or Shanghai from a high floor. Here is not the septic progress of Silicon Valley or the paper profits of Greenwich’s risk arbitrageurs. Here is the stuff that would be instantly recognizable to the industrialists who built America: the hustle of men advancing fast and the delight of knowing for sure that the world is getting better, quicker. As the savings-investment cycles reach their fever pitch in South and East Asia, these societies will undoubtedly spend their trillions of reserves on infrastructure, unlocking once and for all the mass of human capital.

Proponents of the so-called technological singularity—including some of the most prominent futurologists—foresee a non-biological intelligence explosion, a future in which miraculous technology transforms human lives in manifold ways. This fascinating idea, which deserves careful attention from all well-educated citizens, turns on machines becoming smarter than humans. In such a scenario, the artificial intelligences would recursively self-teach, gaining abilities the designers could not imagine. Irving John Good described this possibility in 1965: “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.”

More probable and more spectacular will be what I have termed the human singularity. In our lifetimes, Asia will make untold investments in roads, rail, ports, sanitation, power, water, and schools. In a case of leapfrogging, it will build only the most modern incarnations of infrastructure: adopting nuclear power fast, building advanced sewer systems in the first place, and incorporating technology in its schools from day one. In a not-so-distant generational quantum leap, literally billions of well-fed, well-read, well-entertained, and well-capitalized young men and women will suddenly enter the matrix of humanity with heightened sense of self-worth. Their contributions will be game-changing.

The small population of Americans, with the benefit of health and freedom for all, regularly produces undreamed of cultural and technical advance. Importantly, the infrastructure in America allows excellence to flourish. Brilliant young scientists are quickly identified by competitions and universities, ambitious young entrepreneurs are given capital and contacts by eager venture capitalists, charismatic young politicians are awarded power by voters, and basketball virtuosi are drafted to the NBA before the age of 20. But the less gifted are also well tended to in America. Investment in the mass of men—best achieved through investment in public infrastructure—has always been even more important than nurturing genius. All babies get vaccines, everyone has access to excellent roads and the Internet, and we all get clean water to drink. Young people have the hope that springs from a land that produced Sam Walton and Barack Obama.

Traveling in India and China, I cannot help but feel that some life is cheap there. The agrarian poor do not benefit from investment, and the backward castes are left behind. It is nauseating to think how much genius lies fallow between the Indus and Yellow Rivers. It is even more revolting to consider how many simply charitable and industrious citizens and workers are outside the system.

This is changing fast. The sewers and maglevs and suspension bridges and e-governance systems and mechanized farming and mega power plants are springing up in the greatest story ever told.

Not even three generations hence, the creative and productive powers of the largest populations will be abruptly unlocked. They will produce legions of scientists, authors, entrepreneurs, and doctors. There will be billions of dignified families, living in dignified homes with running water, armed with the self-esteem and desire that accompanies good health and literacy, mobility, and legal security. The human singularity will bring bangs of creative flowering in heretofore unknown volumes and quality, and the Asian air will be signed with newfound confidence and pride. I dare any technological singularity to match this future in scale of ambition.


Kiran R. Pendri ’11 is a chemical and physical biology concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.