New human rights for the Digital Age
- The right to remain natural, i.e. ‘merely’ biological and organic
- The right to be inefficient if, when and where it defines our basic humanness
- The right to disconnect
- The right to be, or remain anonymous
- The right to employ or engage people instead of machines
Five new human rights for the Digital Age
(excerpt from Gerd Leonhard’s book Technology vs Humanity)
https://futuristgerd.com/2017/03/five-new-human-rights-for-the-digital-age-excerpt-from-gerd-leonhards-book-technology-vs-humanity/
(Page 140)
Here are some core human rights that I humbly suggest might form part of what I call the Digital Ethics Manifesto:
1. The right to remain natural, i.e. ‘merely’ biological and organic. We must continue to have the choice to exist in an unaugmented state. We need to retain the right to work or be employed, use public services, buy things, and function in society without the need to deploy technology with, on or – most importantly – inside our bodies. Various expressions of what I like to call #WiredOrFired – fears are already an issue with mobile devices and social media; yet one can easily imagine a future where we may increasingly be forced to wear augmented reality AR or VR glasses, visors, or helmets to qualify for employment, or even worse, be required to use or implant specific ‘wetware apps’ or BCI’s (brain computer interfaces) as a non-negotiable condition of employment. Mere humans may soon no longer be good enough—and somehow I don’t think this would be a very desirable future.
2. The right to be inefficient if, when and where it defines our basic humanness. We must have the choice to be slower and less capable than technology, and we should never make efficiency more important than humanity. While it may very soon be vastly more efficient and much cheaper to use digital health diagnostics via platforms like Scanadu rather than to see a doctor every time I have a medical issue or need a checkup, it should not become the only ‘approved’ way to do so. I believe these technologies are mostly a good thing and may well be one of the keys to lowering the cost of healthcare, globally; however, does this mean we should penalize people who choose to do otherwise, or force compliance upon those that don’t want their health data in the cloud?
3. The right to disconnect. We must retain the right to switch off connectivity, to “go dark” on the network, or to pause communications, tracking, and monitoring. Let’s consider the likelihood that many employers and companies are certain to make hyper-connectivity (AR, VR, and even BCIs) a default requirement in the near future, or that drivers may become liable for ‘unauthorized disconnection’ if they can no longer be tracked on the network. I believe that to be independent, self-contained and disconnected at the times of our own choosing is a fundamentally important right because disconnecting allows us to refocus on our unmediated environment and to ‘be in the moment’ which is essential to human well-being. It also reduces the risk of digital obesity and lessens the reach of surveillance. Offline may indeed be the new luxury, but it should also be a basic digital right.
4. The right to be, or remain anonymous. Even in this coming, exponential and hyperconnected world we should still have the option of not being identified and tracked, such as when using an application, a bot or a platform, or when commenting or criticizing, provided it is harmless to others and does not infringe on anyone else’s rights. Sure, there are some obvious occasions where real anonymity would be impossible and probably unreasonable to expect, such as with online banking and financial transactions. However, we should make sure that protected spaces remain, where complete tracking isn’t required or the norm, such as when voicing political opinions, sharing personal pictures, or getting medical advice. Anonymity, mystery, serendipity, and mistakes are crucial human attributes we should not seek to remove by technological means.
5. The right to employ or engage people instead of machines. We should not allow companies or employers to be disadvantaged if they choose to use people instead of machines, even if it is more expensive and much less efficient. Instead we should consider providing tax credits to those that do, or stipulate automation (robot) taxes for companies that dramatically reduce the number of employees in favor of machines or AI. Those new funds could then be made available to retrain people that became the victims of technological unemployment.
How much freedom are we willing to sacrifice in order to be either more efficient… or more secure?
Technology vs Humanity: The coming clash between man and machine
Ron Immink
https://www.ronimmink.com/technology-vs-humanity-coming-clash-man-machine/
The social impact of technology
As human beings, we do not understand exponential or self-amplifying. Particularly the impact on humanity. Richard Watson has written about it extensively. For example in “Digital versus human”.“Life 3.0” is not that dissimilar. We need to be careful what we wish for.
Gerd Leonhard
I came across Gerd Leonhard as he was a speaker at the London Law Expo in 2017. I am following in his footsteps this year. They are very hard to follow. His book “Technology vs. Humanity: The coming clash between man and machine” is an absolute cracker.
Digital atomic bombs
We have not thought through what AI, IoT, big data, social media, cloud, ICT, genome editing, could possibly do. He compares it to the invention of the atomic bomb. Things were a lot less fast in those days. We are dealing with a digital nuclear bomb, and it might explode before we realise what we have gotten ourselves into. Exponential technology could soon trigger a chain of “A-bomb challenges” or “digital Hiroshimas”
Dark trends
As Peter Diamandis’ 6Ds, he identified a number of effects. Call it the dark side of the 6Ds.
Reminds me of the “The Seventh Sense“. Do you think AI will let us when it has taken over?
More dark trends
Other dark trends he identifies are:
Sitting ducks
We will become sitting ducks for manipulation and undue influence by anyone who knows how to use the system. As biology gives way to technology, our biological systems will become increasingly optional, replaceable, and finally even vestigial.
Internalisation of technology
Technology is going internal—separating us from the world, increasingly disconnecting us from human experiences. We are already starting to confuse the magic of the tools with the drug-like effect of constant connectivity, mediasation, screenification, simulation, and virtualisation. The magic is already becoming manic—addictive, tempting, nudging, demanding—so what will happen when the magic quotient reaches 1,000, when technology becomes infinitely more powerful, cheap, and inseparable from us? At some point in the not-so-distant future we may have to consider the ultimate question: Do we now live inside the machine, or does the machine live inside of us? Data is the new oil: pay or become the content.
The gap
We are facing an enormous gap between what technology can do (the answer seems to be pretty much anything), and what it should do to result in overall human happiness. To safeguard humanity’s future, we must invest as much energy in furthering humanity as we do in developing technology. Algorithms can measure or even simulate everything except for what really matters to humans. Misdefining what human flourishing means, will only empower machines.
Humanity is at risk
The risk with that is that we will be losing humanity. Automation is exploding because it’s abundantly clear that humans are expensive, slow, and often inefficient, whereas machines are cheap, fast, ultra-efficient, and becoming exponentially more so.
Debug humanity
We are in danger of debugging humanity. Debugging mystery, mistakes, and serendipity, and debugging slow, tedious human behaviours like discussion, pondering, and emotions. Being human is just too cumbersome. Automation is exploding because it’s abundantly clear that humans are expensive, slow, and often inefficient, whereas machines are cheap, fast, ultra-efficient, and becoming exponentially more. Will we eventually be a species completely devoid of consciousness, mystery, spirituality, and soul, simply because there’s no room for these androrithms in this coming machine age? Zoom forward another ten years, and we may indeed end up 95% automated, hyperconnected, virtualised, uber-efficient, and much less human than we could ever imagine today.
Happiness
Humans seem happiest when they have:
In contrast, technology will be of material help in furthering real relationships, or in establishing sense, purpose, or meaning. In fact, quite the opposite may be true, as technology can often be quite corrosive to relationships, as when we obsess with our mobile devices at a family dinner.
Compassion
Compassion—a unique trait connected to happiness. Can you imagine a computer, an app, a robot, or a software product that has compassion?
Hacking happiness?
Happiness cannot be acquired or purchased, and therefore would be impossible to stuff into an app, a bot, or some other machine. Supporting evidence suggests that experiences have a much longer impact on our overall happiness than possessions. Experiences are personal, contextual, timely, and embodied.
Hacking happiness!
However, the key argument of the techno-progressive thinkers is that being happy is just the result of the right kinds of neurons firing at the right time, in the right order. They reason that it’s all just biology, chemistry, and physics and can thus be understood, learned, and copied completely by computers.
Take a look at http://www.happify.com to see how the idea of organising happiness is already being marketed—a software tool that teaches you happiness! One can only imagine how this could turn out by 2025—an app that connects directly to our brain via a BCI or via tiny implants to make sure we are happy all the time, and—critically—that we consume happiness all the time! Mood bots and tech pleasures Technology is already able to create, program, or manipulate pleasurable moments.
Manipulation
And soon, it will be done via very skilful manipulation of our senses. Computers will try to make us feel happy. They will try to be our friends. And they’ll want us to love them.
We will unravel the genetic determinants of key neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin, and be able to manipulate happiness genes—if not serotonin-related 5-HTTLPR then something like it—with precise nanoscale technologies that marry robotics and traditional pharmacology. These “mood bots,” once ingested, will travel directly to specific areas of the brain, flip on genes, and manually turn up or down our happiness set point, colouring the way we experience circumstances around us.
Mantal arms race
In a review of “The science of selling” am predicting an arms race between mindfulness and (sales) manipulation. Compassion and happiness, like consciousness, simply do not exist in mere biological or chemical terms but in the holistic interplay of everything that is human. Machines or software are unlikely to ever attain these states, even if they quickly become better at simulating them to some extent.
Good enough
Attempts at first defining and then programming a human characteristic such as compassion, or something as mysterious as consciousness, seem like a far-fetched and unrealizable concept in the foreseeable future. But then again, is the real danger that a great simulation (which will include AR and VR) will quite possibly be “good enough” for most of us?
Can your program happiness?
Happiness cannot be programmed into machines, automated, or sold. It cannot be copied, codified, or deep-learned. It needs to emanate from and grow within us, and in between us, and technology is here to help us—as a tool. We are a species that uses technology, not a species that is destined to be(come) technology.
Human rights
He suggests five new human rights for the Digital Age
Rules
And some rules:
Could or should?
What can we do about technology taking over where it should not? How can we protect ourselves from merely becoming the objects of bot-fueled hyper-efficiency, feeding a giant AI that in turn dictates our lives and tells us what we can no longer do? In the very near future, it will no longer be about whether technology can do something (the answer will almost always be yes) but whether it should do. He is concerned that we may soon become completely useless without technology—slow, incomplete, dumb, deskilled, lazy, and obese.
Erosion of humanity
Imagine what would happen if we continued to chip away at and ultimately erode quintessential human qualities such as privacy, mystery, anonymity, emotions, spontaneity, surprise, intuition, imagination, and spirituality—just so that we can keep up with the machines.
Stewardship
We must become much better stewards of humanity. Every single business leader, technology pioneer, and public official needs to accept and act upon his/her responsibility for shaping the future of humanity. Technology has no ethics, yet a society without ethics is doomed. Exponential technologies often morph rapidly from magic to manic to toxic—achieving a balance is essential.
Seven questions
When we evaluate exponential technologies, we should ask seven essential questions:
Dark version of “Filter Bubble”
This book is a very dark version of “Filter Bubble” or “Gutenberg versus Zuckerberg”. This one is a lot more existential.
Arm yourself
Do yourself a favour and learn how to meditate, invest in your mental capital and make sure you control your own brain. Read: