​Evolving from Homo Sapiens to AI

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

With What is Happening in the World, Why not Artificial Intelligence?

Since Lucy fell out of a tree and walked about four million years ago, she has been evolving to humans we call Homo sapiens. We have evolved from clumsy midgets to seven-footers dribbling basketballs, dashing down the basketball court to “dunk” a ball through a basket set at ten feet.

We walked on all fours for three million years as orangutans, chimps, gorillas and great apes. About four million years ago we gained bipedalism, the ability to walk on two legs. That ability started the field of Homos. Scientists think we have gone through 15 to 20 different species of Homos with Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens being the most prominent today. Climate change may dictate whether we continue to evolve.

When Roman Emperor Claudius died suddenly in A.D. 54, his adopted son Nero, the 16-year-old-son of Claudius’s niece Agrippina the Younger, followed him on the Italian throne. Nero started and ended not being a nice guy. He was a heartless tyrant and malignant narcissist– like somebody else we know, who murdered his own relatives and finally his own mother to stay on the throne.

A depraved, oversexed Homo sapiens with an erratic personality– like somebody else we know. Nero committed dozens of murders of Roman senators and tribunes to stay in power according to historians. A few try to say he wasn’t as bad as it looked, but they often lose the argument.

Nero was always the life of the party, but he often caused death of someone by poisons and watching them die while enjoying his dinner. Nero was accused of killing his own half-brother Britannicacus, poisoned in the middle of a celebratory dinner. When his friend Senator Secundus was murdered by one of his 400 slaves, Nero had all 400 executed for the murder. In A.D. 62, when Nero’s beautiful young Pompeian mistress Poppaea got pregnant, Nero decided to divorce his wife Olivia, charging her with committing adultery with a slave and banishing her from Rome. Later, Nero had his assassins murder her by slashing her veins and throwing her into boiling water. Finally, the Roman Senate sentenced Nero to death as an enemy of the state. It declared the punishment would be “beaten to death by rods.” To cheat them of that cleansing scene, Nero committed suicide by having a friendly guard guide his hand in slitting his own throat. Because of his ability to keep them entertained, Nero was quite popular with the average Roman as a sort of nice, sexy, cruel, murderous, mixed-up guy.

The Question Is: Have We Become More “Human” in 2000 Years?

Answer: Maybe a little, certainly not much.New York Times writer- philosopher Nicholas Kristof, who often worries if we are going up or down in centuries of behavior, has written a column titled “Are We Not Humans?” where he concentrates on the various disasters occurring in Sudan: millions dying of fighting a civil war, millions dying of starvation, and millions becoming refugees. Kristof emphasizes that children don’t cry when they are starving because their energy is limited to keeping their organs operating until death occurs. UN experts say the Sudan famine will become the worst in history.

If we look at the wars in the Middle East for the last two decades and examine the Geneva Conventions and the international treaties defining war criminals, we can safely say that leaders of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel, Iraq, Hamas, Hezbollah, Egypt, Lebanon, and every country leader who has assisted them in wars are also war criminals. That adds dozens of leaders to the list-like the Divided States of America, Great Britain, and Germany. The list is almost endless.

Vladimir Putin is following Joe Stalin as the leading war criminal of Eurasia in his attack of Ukraine. What will Russia be like in another decade? Putin has already lost 200,000 killed and wounded in the Ukraine War and 600,000 young men have crossed borders to escape the Russian war draft. Chinese leader Xi is not innocent of war crimes either by threatening Taiwan and trying to commit millions of religious Muslims to communism. The United Nations staff say there are 830 million people going hungry in the world. If that’s true, there’s a whole swarm of war criminals involved. By the way, how many women in history qualify as war criminals? Queen Elizabeth I or II? Golda Meir? Margaret Thatcher? Catherine the Great?

With all of the war crimes committed against civilians, have present Homo sapiens moved up on the steps of the “ladder” since Nero? Maybe the novel “Lord of the Flies" by English writer and teacher William Golding answers whether Homo sapiens can move up to the next level. His novel has been challenged and banned in Republican, Trumplican, and conservative states, and school districts since it was published in 1954 because of claims of racism, violence, sex, obscene language and dialogue that insults gods, women, and minorities.

Here is a short description of the plot that has gained so much interest: When a British passenger plane crashes on an island in the Pacific Ocean, no adults survive the crash. The survivors are about three dozen boys between the ages of nine and 13 from different classes of schools. In the beginning they help each other and form teams to get certain jobs done to serve the entire group. As the boys start to know one another, they form into two groups, leaders are chosen, and the verbal and physical battles begin.

Golding Uses Three Quotes from Socrates to Turn Boys into Homo Sapiens

Socrates says: “In all of us, even in good men, there is a wild beast nature, which peers out in sleep.” This quote refers to the idea expressed in the book that deep down inside everyone lies a beast when unleashed, goes against our morals and judgment. This can be seen in the book when the boys become more savage as time goes by. The longer they have been stranded, the more the beast inside of them comes out.

In extreme circumstances people may be forced to act in ways that they would not normally act or may be looked down upon as immoral or unjust. Golding’s point is: Are Homo sapiens, after supremacy over Neanderthals for about 40,000 years, reaching their peak of evolution and moving to the next Homo—such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Have Hamas members become savages by beating, raping, killing, and taking hostages of more than 1,230 Israelis? Has Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu reached his immoral peak by leveling Gaza and killing more than 41,000 civilian men, women, and children in retribution? Has he become a savage war criminal by bombing and killing members of Hezbollah and civilians in Lebanon?

The answer is “Yes!” Did George W. Bush act immorally by approving the use of “enhanced interrogation!” torture on Muslim prisoners in CIA black sites around the world and the Muslim “terrorist” prison at Gitmo Bay? What about Joe Biden sending Bibi Netanyahu 2,000-pound bombs to turn Gaza into a cement graveyard? Isn’t he also a war criminal?

Golding uses another Socratic quote as a guide for Homo sapiens: “What screws us up the most in life is the picture in our head of what it is supposed to be.” Literary critics say Golding writes about people and groups trying to ban books who have a particular idea in their own mind of what a book is supposed to be and what is allowed in it. Moms for Liberty, as an example, is a Trumpian organization which is trying to ban books like “Lord of the Flies” all over the country. My God! The book has sex and violence in it! We don’t have any of that stuff in our society! That’s why I have always transposed the name of the group to Moms for Stupidity, because Golding uses a Socrates quote to make another point: “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” It might take centuries to discover a “truth” may not be true---but we have to keep trying.

Should We Attempt to Move to a Higher Level or Remain Homo Saps?

Chances are slim to none that Homo sapiens will dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels and dramatically increase the use of non-polluting renewables to keep the increase of world temperature to 1.5C or lower—but Slim is out-of-town on a rocket to Mars. It is not in our makeup to stay on task, stay out of wars, and love our enemies. Here is a short list of why Homo sapiens will fail to maintain Planet Earth as home:

The World Inequality Report has estimated that the top ten percent of the richest people in the world account for almost half of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, and the top one percent are responsible for 17% of global emissions. A billionaire’s superyacht traveling halfway around the world can use more fossil fuels than some small countries. Some of the top percent thought global warming was a hoax so they insisted it be called “climate change.” Do you think the Koch brothers and the shareholders of ExxonMobil are really interested in developing renewables that can’t be pumped out the earth through pipelines stretching across the earth? Will AI replace fossil fuels and autocratic Homo sapiens?

The Global Commission on the Economics of Water issued a report last week that half the world’s population faces water scarcity now, and that number is set to rise as the climate crisis worsens. By 2030 the demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40% because the world’s water systems are being put under “unprecedented stress.”

The Commission report says: “While 50 to 100 liters a day are required for each person’s health and hygiene, in fact people require about 4.000 liters a day in order to have adequate nutrition and a dignified life. For most regions, that volume cannot be achieved locally, so people are dependent on trade—in food, clothing, and consumer goods to meet needs.” It’s pleasing to remember that our family has lived on a barrier island in the Atlantic for three years and on rivers and lakes for the balance of our lives. We have also fished in hundreds of lakes and streams in Canada and the United States.

A country that worships 435 million firearms while death by firearms is the leading cause of death of its children is really not capable of moving to a higher level. People that love their 20 million AR-15s that can fire 700 rounds a minute from 50-round magazines or 100-round drums and turn handguns into automatic weapons with cheap devices so little disagreements can be settled forever will never change.

I see Fargo had another shooting last night. When will the 417th school shooting take place and how many children will be killed in honor of the Second Amendment? According to averages, more than 400 Americans will be killed or wounded today by firearms. Mexico has one federally licensed firearm store but has 30,000 firearm deaths annually. We have 1,800 licensed firearm dealers on the border. Maybe AI can tell us how we can change to a higher level.