Science tells us that Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago and began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.

And so I have this simple question: Preceded by Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis, do we have any reason to believe that we, Homo sapiens, are the end of the line when it comes to the evolution of the humanoid  species?

To answer this in the affirmative is a little presumptuous, don’t you think? I can only speak for myself when I say that I don’t believe we are the finished product that evolution had intended us to be – and not by a long shot – and that it is entirely conceivable  that we will be superseded by a superior edition of Homo sapiens . And they might well look back at the current edition of the species as Homo ignoramus or perhaps Homo perniciosus – given the amount of planet-wide environmental destruction our iteration of the humanoid  species  is leaving in its wake.

“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. … “So says   renowned physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg  in his 1977 book “The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe)”

In general, we humans like to think that things happen for a reason, either accidentally or on purpose – whatever the case may be. At least, that is the way we usually think about the world based on our very experience of it.  Seeing the world in this manner allows us to understand the interaction between things and events while enabling us to manage our lives around them with some degree of predictability.

So what about the universe? Would it not be reasonable to expect there was some reason for it to be here as well? I’m kind of two minds about that.

First of all, it is quite a conceptual leap to jump from considering the status of some event or another in the world to considering the status of world itself. Is the world  just another event in the sense that we should be able to look at it from either end, i.e., consider the likely cause of it and the effect that it has on other things in the world? Can the world be seen as an event beyond all the things that take place in it? (look up: Gilbert Ryle’s category mistake)

Since the world is both logically and physically necessary for anything to take place, I don’t believe you can put it in the same category of events that take place in the world. As such it occupies a class or category all its own. (I think I’m running into a version of Russell’s set paradox here, but let’s not go there … )

For anything to happen, the world must have happened – that much seems clear. But – as far as we know – the world appears to have happened on its own account, i.e., it is simply here – full stop. It is the container that contains everything else, but itself it is not contained other than by itself.  Such is the mystery of the world.

Now one  could argue that we just don’t know that the world isn’t part or the result of another event that brought it about, i.e., the world is a transitory event that came into being as a result of “the big bang”  – which is the prevailing view at the moment, and so on, and end up in an infinite regress of events preceding events, and then only because we cannot accept that events can appear out of thin air or materialize from within a material empty vacuum for that matter,

Our language is the limiting factor here because it is the language of the living and breathing  mortals that we are.  We cannot get beyond the logic derived from our species’ experiential involvement  with the world and make sense of events that seem to go beyond that.

But what if the point of the universe being here is simply just that: to be here for what it is, i.e., to exist for its own sake?  That we may be able to make sense of this might depend on  what sense or meaning we are able to attach to  our lives, as by extension we would  then be valuing the point of universe being here as well.

If we think about our place in the world this way, well-known  20th century existentialists such as Sartre and Camus would be wrong  classifying life as essentially meaningless and  – among other things –  attributing the absurdity of our predicament to a cold and indifferent universe that remains silent on such things, given that only human beings are able to attach meaning or value to something.  The conclusion has to be that meaning comes from within life, from experiencing life as meaningful, and not from having it  derived from a source external to it.

It would follow that no feature of the universe will likely make sense unless it is viewed in the context of providing the ground for some aspect of meaningful human activity that could otherwise not have taken place.  The logic may sound counter-intuitive but I believe that this is the only way out of the absurdity paradox that Albert Camus entertained when considering the fact that human beings inevitably seek to understand life’s purpose:

“Camus takes the skeptical position that the natural world, the universe, and the human enterprise remain silent about any such purpose. Since existence itself has no meaning, we must learn to bear an irresolvable emptiness. This paradoxical situation, then, between our impulse to ask ultimate questions and the impossibility of achieving any adequate answer, is what Camus calls the absurd. Camus’ philosophy of the absurd explores the consequences arising from this basic paradox. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)”

The question remains then how the seemingly puny human could conceivably value the existence of the mighty universe simply by finding meaning in their everyday lives.  I think it boils down to the distinction between  quantity and quality, and between form and function in the context of an evolving universe.

As such it wouldn’t matter how old or how large and complex  the world is, given that the significance of that could only be expressed by how well we would be able to experience the quality and depth of  being at the receiving end of this  spectacularly creative effort,  and then solely with the sensibility and reasoning  that has been given to us as a result of merely being a part of it. Everything beyond it is more or less irrelevant, in the sense that -as spectacular as that may be – it is at most a set decoration, the backdrop against which we play out the destiny of our species and of which we have for the moment absolutely no clue.

The ability of AI systems to transform vast amounts of complex, ambiguous information into insight has the potential to reveal long-held secrets and help solve some of the world’s most enduring problems. AI systems can potentially be used to help discover insights to treat disease, predict the weather, and manage the global economy. It is an undeniably powerful tool. And like all powerful tools, great care must be taken in its development and deployment. However, to reap the societal benefits of AI systems, we will first need to trust it.

What kind of trust are we referring to here? This is a very complex question. The more we let AI into our lives, the more likely we are to develop a dependency on it, and the amount we are willing to trust it will be in direct relationship to the willingness to have our lives altered by its outcomes, as the rise of AI will have no doubt a bearing on them, regardless what aspect of life we might be talking about.

It remains an open question, however, if will we be willing  to trust AI when it pushes us into a direction that at first glance appears to be not in our best interest, if only because we might not fully understand the reasons for an AI derived conclusion. From an article in Bloomberg Businessweek titled Artificial Intelligence Has Some Explaining to Do by Jeremy Kahn:

This is what gives AI much of its power: It can discover connections in the data that would be more complicated or nuanced than a human would find. But this complexity also means that the reason the software reaches any particular conclusion is often largely opaque, even to its own creators.

Nevertheless, I believe AI will continue to gain our trust gradually and take an ever greater role in our daily lives. The technology will seduce us with the ability to seemingly give us everything we ask for, leading to our ever greater dependency on it, and leading us to believe that we can take its credibility for granted, and that would be a dangerous thing. At bottom, AI is a machine, and a calculator working with an algorithm (a set of rules governing a deductive process) and any data derived from it is subject to the age old dictum “garbage in – garbage out”.  To safeguard the integrity of a process is one thing, safeguarding the integrity of the data it is working on is a whole different matter.

In addition, we need to worry about that has been referred to as “machine learning”, the ability of an AI machine to “improve” on its own programming in order to overcome its deductive limitations, e.g., allow it to simulate an inductive or inferential process, to make the process seem more “human”, or as smart, if not smarter.   I’m thinking about situations where AI is faced with incompatible observations – or when there is just not enough data – in which case it might be allowed to arrive at some kind of “best guess” scenario by either modifying one of its procedural rules or by introducing some other random factor to settle the issue in order to arrive at a “reasoned” conclusion.

The fact remains that a mechanical analysis cannot find its way out of conflicting data by means of a “gut” feeling, i.e., the appeal to instinct or intuition, or the application of other unique human qualities such as empathy and compassion since they cannot be translated into machine language. At most, a machine might be able to simulate them to an extent based on what it has “learned” about these qualities from the observation of human behavior in a variety of scenarios. And if AI can only simulate human reasoning, that is not the same as replacing it, as for that it would have to plugged into the the very source of what makes us human.,

While this may be good enough for some,  such as the followers of the late  behaviourist psychologist B.F Skinner – who hypothesize that human behaviour is strictly a function of environmental factors, and not driven by thoughts or emotions – I think they are definitely out to lunch on that front.  There is a logical gap between what is as observed as human behaviour and that which motivates it from within, and what it means to be human is the only thing that fits in that space and is able to connect the two,  i.e., the difference between what is seen in the mirror and that which causes the reflection.

The upshot is that the essence of what it means to be human cannot be quantified and reduced to a set of rules governing machine language, and that AI can never be more than an augmentation to human intelligence.  This so we will continue to strive for efficacy over efficiency, to ensure we will choose quality over quantity, and that our continuing development as a species will always be a reflection of that,  uncertain as our future seems at the moment.

The first point I would like to make is that it is unimaginable to me that we see the meaning of the event of ourselves as something over and above the event of the cosmos.  As such, the cosmos is intrinsic to our being, and vice versa – we cannot be separated.

It follows too that – while it may have taken the world some time to bring us on to the scene – we have always been here, in principle, from the very start, as a potential event that was eventually realized as an expression in physical matter.

Secondly, the incidence of our physical existence is not a function of when, where or how, but of why we are here. I know this notion flies in the face of those who believe that everything that exists beyond the most elementary particle of matter is strictly a function of the random action of such particles, with no rhyme or reason in mind – other than of course the seemingly innate ability of matter to organize themselves into progressively more organized structures which – in its most complex formation – are able to exhibit life, prescience and consciousness as new properties not seen before. This is of course a bit of a problem for the random motion folks who’s fear of metaphysics – the “why?” beyond the mere matter of cause and effect  – must be a product of random thoughts as opposed some kind of structured logical thinking.

I think that the reason why we are here is the same reason as to why the world is here – or, for that matter – why there is anything here at all. Well, at least it means we have only one why to worry about …

It is easy to be intimidated by the sheer scope of the physical universe, it age and its size, but as incomprehensible as that may be  – it would be wrong to attach a significance to that beyond the fact that it simply is what it is. Its true meaning will be completely independent from and over and above its physical attributes, in the sense that it will be larger than the sum of its parts.

This makes our experience of the physical aspects of our existence less relevant, and that beyond the point of being able to survive them, we can  – to a certain degree – take them for granted, i.e., we wouldn’t be what, how and where we are without them.

Thus, what we will conclude about ourselves is not going to be strictly a function of our physical interaction with the world, but what we discover about ourselves as we interact with our environment and, more importantly, with each other, i.e.,  what we mean to each other, how we treat each other, or are able to work together towards common goals, and how we arrive at such goals. And – ultimately – from what we want from life in terms of accomplishments during the short time that we are here as members of the human species, as well as what our history will show us about ourselves as a species.

In this role we are driven along an evolutionary path of unknown origins, taking us who knows where – and that leaves us to figure out for ourselves where we are heading to. And in light of the human and environmental wreckage we continue to leave in our wake  it would be difficult to accept that homo sapiens is at or near the pinnacle of evolution. We clearly still have some way to go if the roughly two thousand years of our recorded history are anything to go by; and not until such time we are no longer our own worst enemy in trying to move ourselves ahead from our troubled past. You have to believe in something like this if you think we can much better than that, even if all we have to show for to date is little more than a blood-stained past.

But setting aside our self-disgust for a moment, let us look at this again with a less jaundiced eye. The arrival of homo sapiens introduced a volatility and a riskiness to the world which could be indicative reaching a critical stage in the evolution of the world. That such risk-taking would be justified can be seen in the context of fending off entropy – at least here on earth, and for the time being  – should that be the ultimate fate of the universe. And thus there will be an urgency to the evolutionary thrust to get done what needs to get done before time runs out, and to take some risks along the way. A risk management process by any other name.

You see, something very unique and significant happened with the introduction of homo sapiens to the planet: homo faber – man, the toolmaker – arrived on the scene. And while hitherto the spectacular creativity demonstrated by evolution manifested itself only from the inside out – through the incredible diversity of life-forms encountered here on earth, from the simplest plants and smallest single cell organisms to the largest or most complex ones – through a human being the creative forces of evolution are for the very first time being applied externally. With our hands – and with the tools made by our hands – we are able to reshape matter directly, and through us the creativity pressure of evolution goes to work in a greatly accelerated fashion – if not at breakneck speed – to whatever end it needs to get to …

Initially with primitive stone axes, then forged iron implements, followed by mechanized devices, and eventually through the ability to derive electricity from material processes and the huge array of material resources extracted from the earth we have been creating things of unimaginable potential if their development continues at the current pace. Technology is the only area in which our species has made substantive and measurable progress since we first opened our eyes as a creature capable of  reflective thought – knowing that one knows – and we have done so in a hurry.

Most importantly, we have made significant advances in the area of information technology, such as the internet, to the point that all knowledge we have accumulated of the world can be shared instantly at any time and potentially from anywhere. As such we have gone beyond the layer of our planet’s biosphere to create a dynamic layer of knowledge which is about the world, and which belongs to the world. In a sense, this layer of knowledge functions as the conscious mind  of the world.

(Some philosophers such as Theilhard de Chardin have referred to this layer of knowledge as the “noösphere” – meaning “sphere of reason” – and after the geosphere and biosphere it would be the  next evolutionary geological layer in the life of the planet.)