Morals and Metahumans

(The article was originally published in OPEN Magazine on October 28, 2024 . Views expressed are personal.)

“You are the future of our nation,” our politicians tell our youth. It is patronising. They do that because no politician ever wants to cede space to younger ones, until and unless, of course, his or her own son or daughter is ready to step into the shoes. We want our youth to eternally wait for a future that would never come, because future always remains future only. What we instead must tell our youth is that not the “future”, but the “present” belongs to them.

History does not run at the same pace always. There will be occasions when we feel that it is progressing at an excruciatingly slow pace. British rule was one such period when Indians felt as though the time was at a standstill, with no hope of independence in sight. In 1920s, unsure of real independence, the Congress leadership had even agreed to accept Dominion Status, a quasi-slavery state in which the British royals would remain the masters while limited freedoms were to be extended to the subject nations. Two young leaders, who steadfastly refused to accept that humiliating status, were Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. When the All India Congress Committee (AICC) met on the banks of the Ravi in Lahore in 1929, it was the threat of resignation by these two leaders that had resulted in the Congress leadership deciding to reject the dominion status and pass the historic resolution for Poorna Swaraj—complete independence. Even the Quit India Movement in 1942, which Viceroy Wavell had described as not a “war cry” but “a whimper”, was also a despairing moment for many senior leaders in the Congress.

But history picked up unexpected momentum after the Second World War in 1945 and India became free, and also partitioned just in a couple of years before we could fully comprehend the implications of it. History is replete with many such moments of rapid transformation. We are passing through one such period in human history when the world is experiencing intimidating changes with uncomprehensible rapidity. Some call it as the changing world order. But the reality is that what we call future is indeed becoming our present today. That’s why we should ask our youth to shape not the future but the present.

Political leadership in the world is living under the false notion that they are the masters of this emerging new world. They tend to give political interpretations to it. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we were told that a unipolar world had emerged. As we entered the new century, we are being told that a multipolar world is taking shape. But the reality in 2020s is that the world order that is evolving is a heteropolar one, in which nation-states as political poles no longer enjoy supremacy, but the non-state actors—from global tech giants to multinational corporations to transnational terror groups to omnipresent religious movements—play an equally significant role. In many cases, the state’s role becomes subservient.

This power transition is being facilitated by the explosion of new and frontier technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, blockchains, big data, and human genome projects. The universe is turning into a metaverse, and humans into “Metahumans”. One recent example illustrates the power of this revolutionary transformation.

Before venturing into Ukraine in February 2022, the first thing that the Russian Army did was to knock out Viasat satellite communications link to Ukraine, a crucial lifeline for all communications, military and civil, in that country. The Russians did this not by using any anti-satellite missiles but by simply deploying wiper malware in the ground control system to erase the satellite’s ability to connect with the ground. This could have completely crippled the Ukrainian army. Without the communication link from Viasat, the Ukrainian military couldn’t have contacted its field units, shared information and coordinated the counterattack on the Russian Army. When they landed in dozens of helicopters in Kyiv in the very first week of the war – the last week of that fateful February – the Russian commanders had anticipated a simple surrender by the Ukrainians.

But what the Ukrainian leadership did at that critical juncture had eloquently showcased the changed reality of the new world order. It didn’t rush to the American or European leadership for help. Instead, the deputy prime minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov turned to his twitter account to send an SOS to one person he was confident of saving Ukraine—Elon Musk. Musk’s company SpaceX owns a constellation of satellites called Starlink in low earth orbit that provide communication links to countries and companies. Starlink has the ability to instantly get anybody anywhere in the world online through its satellite communication network.

“@elonmusk”, tweeted Fedorov, “while you try to colonize Mars—Russians try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space—Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand”. Musk didn’t take much time to reply. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route”, he tweeted by the same evening. In the next couple of days, Starlink provided five hundred terminals, and the Ukrainian Army was back in full action to throw the Russians out of Kyiv.

This incident is illustrative of not one, but two important messages—one, that a tech-giant like Elon Musk had more power to support the Ukrainians at a critical juncture in war than probably the Western governments; and two, any rogue group of hackers can use wiper malware to kill most advanced satellites without requiring anti-satellite missile technologies. That is heteropolar order in action.

We hear a lot about AI. For many, it is a new technological frontier. Not really. The story of AI, or building intelligent machines, began as long ago as in 1951 when Christopher Strachey, a computer scientist at the University of Manchester, bored of the intensive research activity, decided to use his spare time to design a computer program to play the game of checkers. When his basic computer system hung up, he borrowed a Ferranti Mark I computer from the institution and developed the game. Initially it was just for fun. But soon a race began to develop self-thinking machines through machine learning and deep learning processes. That resulted in the development of supercomputers. The real thinking power of these supercomputers came to light when Deep Blue, a supercomputer developed by IBM was pitted against world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. With its ability to evaluate 200 million positions per second, Deep Blue stunned the world by defeating the reigning world champion in chess. Era of superintelligent machines began, which proved man to be no longer the master. More than a decade later came the company’s Watson computer program capable of answering questions posed in natural language by humans. In 2011, Watson was made to participate in the famous American quiz program called Jeopardy, hosted by Merv Griffin, against champions like Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Watson ended up defeating both the champions and winning $1 million prize money. Then came AI powered computer programs like Alpha Zero and Stockfish, the most powerful algorithms that can defeat any established player of chess and shogi in the world.

The era of intelligent machines is already here. They are replacing humans in many jobs and functions. We have already entered the era of the metaverse, a universe controlled by machines. But, more importantly, where we are heading to is the era of “metahumans”.

According to zoologists, modern-day humans, called homosapiens, began their journey nearly 315,000 years ago in Africa. Homosapiens evolved from now-extinct primates like the apes when they learnt to walk upright and developed a cultural life. Not just the primates, but several fellow humans like Neanderthals and Australopithecus also lived for a time contemporaneously with homosapiens before becoming extinct some 40,000 years ago. It now looks certain that the era of homosapiens too is nearing its end, and they will be replaced by a new species, the metahumans.

Metahumans, until now, were a part of the American DC and Marvel comics’ universe. They are humans with superpowers, scientific, technological, skill or mystical. They are humans only but with a genetic variant called “metagene”. In the sci-fi fiction and comic episodes of last century, those metahumans came from another planet. But today, metahumans are those individuals with powers far exceeding the known human potential of Spiderman or Batman. What was just a part of fiction and comics until today might become a reality in the near future with advances in fields like AI and human genetics.

That is the canvas of the fast-transforming world in front of us today. Our youth need to understand that no amount of catching up is going to help the nation in its endeavour to become Viksit—developed India. The need of the hour is to master the technologies of the future, like the intersection of AI and gene editing technologies, quantum computing, blockchain, and carbon capture. For example, while we take pride in our ability to place satellites in orbits, countries like the US and China are working on quantum computing technologies to replace satellite-based navigation for defence technologies keeping in view the vulnerability of those satellites.

Our education needs to be upgraded to those levels where our youth graduate with newer ideas and out-of-the-box thinking ability. In this era of frontier technologies, innovation is the key. India produces 1.5 million engineers every year. But what we need is not just engineers, but “imagineers”, engineers with the power of imagination and innovation. On our IIT campuses, we hear: “I haven’t come this far only to come this far”. IITs are a brand. They are the pride of India. But that pride is because those who graduate do not end their journey there but begin it there. Many leaders of successful world-class startup ventures are all the products of IITs, like Sachin and Binny Bansal of Flipkart, Abhay Singhal of InMobi, Ankit and Bhavish of Ola, Deepinder of Zomato, and Rohit Bansal of Snapdeal, to name some.

We need to promote a high-quality innovation ecosystem in the country. We Indians are an intelligent race. The average Indian IQ is very high. Fortunately, we also have a government that sponsors and supports innovation and creativity. Thanks to the efforts of our government in the last decade, India’s rank in the Global Innovation Index rose from 81^st to 39^th. While that is certainly a matter of satisfaction, it must also be kept in mind that the 39^th rank in the Innovation Index is not fully commensurate with our ability and stature. We should aspire to be in the top ten.

Similarly, in the area of patents also, thanks to the encouragement of the Union government, India registered a 31.6 per cent increase in patent filing compared to previous years. That propelled it to the sixth rank in patent filings in the world. However, in real numbers, what we file are just 2 per cent of global patents. While India, a country of 1.4 billion intelligent people, filed just 90,000 patents last year, China, of similar size, filed 1.58 million, the US filed 0.5 million, and Japan filed more than 400,000 patents.

We should not confuse innovation with imitation, or creativity with copying. We need to encourage our youth to work hard to become original innovators. Today, we rank amongst the top three most digitally connected nations—1.4 billion of the total of 8.3 billion mobile connections in the world are in India and we have one of the highest rates of adoption of new technologies. But India remains a net consumer in digital technologies. We should encourage our tech-savvy youngsters to plan for a shift in their approach and aspire to be net digital producers instead of remaining at a lower rung as great consumers.

We are still miles away from exploiting our true technological potential. The onus to bridge this gap lies on the youth. They need to productise our research, recalibrate our vision and mission towards a product driven economy, and have the appetite for greater risks while playing on our strengths. Technology will accelerate the pace of socio-economic change in this country. Our youth should become leaders of that innovation and knowledge revolution.

All that is not in the distant future, but today. That is the manifestation of true patriotism for our youth.

While talking about new technologies for a new world, one important endnote is needed. History is replete with innovations and inventions that constantly upgraded human life to the next higher level. We have seen the era of industrial revolutions that substantially improved living standards—from steam engine and printing press to electric powered machines to automation. But at every such epochal transformation, ethical interventions played an important role in ensuring the well-being of the human race.
Sadly, as humanity is entering its most critical era of evolution, ambitiously seeking to make metahumans, and potentially trying to replace the human race itself, not many philosophical interventions are in sight. The only such intervention so far has come from, surprisingly, the Vatican.

In a great initiative, the Pontifical Academy for Life, a pontifical body under the pope dedicated to promoting Roman Catholic ethical and moral theology, invited senior executives from the AI industry and representatives of the Italian government on February 28, 2020, to promote “an ethical approach to artificial intelligence”. The core concern of the Vatican with respect to the future being created by the emerging technologies was beautifully articulated in a paper titled the ‘Rome call for AI ethics’. “Grant mankind its centrality,” the document exhorted. That one phrase summed up the essence of all the concerns raised by all different stakeholders–“humans should be the masters, not the machines”. Towards that end, the Rome Call talked about a new “algor-ethics” that commits to “the development of an artificial intelligence that serves every person and humanity as a whole; that respects the dignity of the human person, so that every individual can benefit from the advances of technology; and that does not have as its sole goal greater profit or the gradual replacement of people in the workplace”.

Into that era of the present, where technology flourishes at the intersection of ethics and morality, let our youth walk in.