Why the next huge technological leap will stifle our freedom

May we live in interesting times. On this day of the Presidential inauguration, it is fitting to reflect back on  2020. A global epidemic. A summer of riots. A booming stock market. Bitcoin blowing past $40,000. And, a twice impeached president who was removed from big-name social media platforms.

This normally won’t be newsworthy. Regular Joes are booted off these platforms all the time, but Trump was the president at the time, with 80M+ Twitter followers. Whether one agrees with President Trump’s rhetoric or not, the fact remains that he exploited a technological marvel (social media platforms) to bypass traditional media, and delivered his message directly to the people. No filter, no spin, just raw rhetoric with expansive reach. Imagine President Lincoln at a whistle-stop, preaching from a soapbox,  with a megaphone that could project his voice clear across the South, skirting the editorial privilege of The Richmond Examiner. Could he have stopped the war with his rhetoric or at least turned Missouri and Kentucky?

Media outlets like Forbes, New York Times, NBC, Fox and more have extensively written about the constitutionality of Trump’s ouster from these platforms. Even Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey has weighed in, curiously, casting doubt on his own decision. So, I won’t cover this ground, but explore another aspect of this decision that may have dire implications for our future.

What happens when a novel technology, that can dramatically augment a person’s intellectual capabilities, springs forth upon the masses? Will it liberate us or bind us in ways we can’t imagine? Until now.

Imagine it’s the year 2084. A new technological marvel brings great promise to the world. Unlike social media, it will not magnify disinformation or ideas that you don’t share, but it will definitely create inequities, and increase the gap between haves and have nots. And this technology will be called neural links. Simply stated, neural links is all about integrating the human brain with a portable computer to augment one’s physical or mental capabilities. Elon Musk is one pioneer in this field and makes no bones about the fact that neural links represents our next evolutionary leap, and, that its introduction to the world is just around the corner. And the world seems ready and willing to receive it. A recent study suggests two thirds of Europeans would ‘upgrade’ their bodies with technology. So what happens when they do?

Sometime in 2084, you arrive early for a job interview dressed in a nicely tailored suit, perfect hair and whitened teeth, and you climb the stairs to the firm’s office lobby two at a time since you’re eager. But you’re astonished by what you see as you enter the room. Half a dozen applicants  sit there anxiously, waiting for their turn, dressed in the same tailored suit, but worse, something else covers each of their temples – the C5000 – the top tiered version of the neural link. A shiver goes through your spine. Your scalp prickles under all that perfect hair, your whitened teeth clench, and the eagerness ebbs from you like someone pulled the plug. For you cannot hope to compete. You have last year’s model – the B200.

And a day later, your rejection message floats directly into your consciousness through the zinc plated interface covering your temple. You didn’t get the job. You frown and say, if only I had the C5000, instead of the B200. Why, my interview answers would been crisper, and substantiated with a far richer depth of experiences and literature. The B200 can only store 20% of all the things you’ve experienced on the job, only 25% of all the books and periodicals you have read, and can only synthesize 33% more lessons than you could without out. The C5000 triples these capacities. In other words, the B200 is like bringing a sword in a gunfight.

Humans have always varied in intelligence, temperamental disposition, tactile and motor skills, and the always will. Lebron James possesses great height, reaction time and eye hand coordination, the combination of which puts him atop the earnings hierarchy in the NBA. Albert Einstein’s great intellect ensured he never had to worry about starvation either. These men were outliers to be sure. However, their variations, along with the rest of humanity’s, conform to the normal distribution curve. And so, the proportion of people with average to high intelligence in society (approximately 80%) far outweighs those who are below the average (approximately 20%). And given that IQ is a predictor of wealth attained in one’s life time (though not the only one), and IQ is not something that is greatly improvable over our lifetimes, there is inequality baked right into the system, before anything else is layered on. But what happens if the curve could shift?

The noble thing to do, would be to bring those of below average intelligence upward.

But it will likely not happen. The companies that invest huge sums to develop and perfect these neural links, and who also must contend with ever advancing competition, would require a return on their investment. They are businesses after all, and it’s the price we pay to incent companies to risk capital in such a competitive arena in order to seek profit, and provide us goods we want. One looks to the drug companies to see this present day. A drug that can wipe out cancer would be godsend, but it won’t be developed without millions of person hours of effort and billions of dollars of investment. And as such, if one were to be discovered, it would never be freely given. Why would we expect ‘extraordinary’ intelligence to be any different?

In all likelihood, the humans of 2084 will operate as we do today. When neural links are commercially available, we will recognize quickly that they will give us advantage in a competitive jobs marketplace. So we will line up to buy them in the hopes of earning more, and bestowing more security and freedom to ourselves and our families. Just as we obtain tutors for our children, purchase computers to make them tech-savvy, and (in the case of celebrities and elites), use our money to buy their way into Ivy League schools, we will look to neural links for that edge. Why would we not? If you could buy an MBA in a box, just plug and play, why wouldn’t you?

And so, we will beg, borrow and steal as we will compete for the latest upgrade, sacrificing our futures for our children’s sake, just as generations have done for decades, and the normal distribution curve will skew to the right, since there is finally a way to boost intelligence. However, not all will join the party, for there is a cover charge to pay to enter the club, and unfortunately, the poor will not be able to afford it.

And there’s another question that bears considering. If you are lucky enough to buy the most cutting-edge model, and through it, gain great powers of analysis, memory retention and learning capacity, then you’ve hit the jackpot right? Maybe. But I believe you will lose something, for you have something very big to lose.

Everything.

For what happens when you fail to pay your neural links support subscription? Or like Trump, and many nameless Joes, you find yourself crossing into that which many find objectionable? Will they pull your plug? And if so, does that make you more likely to speak your mind or bite your tongue? I’d wager the latter. And so, the society of 2084 will be less free as our public discourse will be anything but. Consensus over the clash of ideas. Orwell would call it group-think.

I call it the future.

 

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