A New and Better You
This is Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:
Will robots and artificial intelligences [AI] take human jobs? Perhaps but the nature of humanity is not carved in stone. Genetic enhancement (GE) is within a hairsbreadth of reality.
It’s true that the practical applications of AI are moving faster than GE but GE has a head start of over a billion years. Moreover, although GE is still impractical, the costs of GE are falling fast.
In the not so long run it’s not about computers substituting for labor or even complementing labor, it’s about designing labor to complement computers (and vice-versa). Think about how quickly the phone has migrated from the desk, to the hand, to the ear, to the ear canal. The technology to enhance humanity with access to the internet is literally burying itself into our heads.
I like the idea of a new and better me.
I’ll let you try it first, Tom. I’ll wait and see if there are any side effects.
I’m with Vicki. Let’s see if Tom develops a third ear, or a second nose, or – like in Alex’s video – a sixth finger.
I’m sad that I don’t live in a time when this technology isn’t already developed. I can’t imagine a day when Newton’s discoveries look like something children study in the first grade! We spend so little of our lives doing really breakthrough work. Imagine how different life could be if we were more productive, more intelligent, and better suited for life in the modern world! It’s a very exciting future ahead of us.
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Science has already made GM crops that are better than the original. Is it too farfetched to think in the future humans will get periodic gene therapy treatments to correct their perceived imperfections?