IEEE Future Directions
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Enhanced Intelligence and digital hardware enhancement
We are the expression of our genes. However, this expression is influenced by a variety of environmental factors. Take the ability to play piano. Yes there are some people that are more inclined to music (musical ear we say) but it is unlikely that a person can play piano without studying it and practicing a lot.
This applies to intelligence as well. Researchers agree that there are a number of genes that steer a person IQ (not just one but several of them, close to 100 probably, whose interplay has not been understood so far) and they also agree that the manifestation of intelligence is strongly affected by environmental factors, including education.
How much is related to the genes and how much to the environment is subject to debate. From a 5% influence of the genome up to a 50% influence of the genome, depending on whom you are asking, and in most cases to what type of intelligence one is referring to.
Math prowess is probably influenced more by genes than social intelligence where social factor and the environment play a much stronger role.
Hence, when discussing the future possibility of increasing human intelligence only a few point to genomic variations as the way to improve human intelligence. It seems more feasible, and effective, to create a seamless symbioses among people and the environment so that one can benefit from the other (this is the reason I clustered the topic of enhanced intelligence with digital hardware enhancement).
As social animal with sophisticated ability to communicate and learn from each others humans have a collective intelligence that significantly augment the intelligence of the single person, to the point that we are no longer able to live by ourselves, we rely on other people knowledge that is de facto embedded in the society and in the society organisation. You probably don’t know how to build a fork but you know where to go to buy one.
In the future these widespread social knowledge will be permeated by the digital world and by machine. In a way the architecture of intelligence may become similar to the Cloud: you have users, both humans and machines, that whenever have a need for “intelligence” will use their local “intelligence” to leverage on the “intelligence in the Cloud”. The Cloud will consist of digital twins that will be able to inter-relate with one another transferring knowledge as needed and converting that knowledge into usable one for their real twin.
This is already happening (the very first steps) with smart assistants (AI powered).
One of the facets of transhumanism will likely be the reliance on a society where digital and atoms will be fused together from a perceptual point of view. And we are starting to see this happening now. We are leveraging on machine (as we have been used to do from millennia) and for the first time machines are learning to leverage on us, looking on us to learn and sharing intelligence with us.
Among the various aspects of transhumanism this is the one that is likely to happen sooner and that is going to have most impact, this is my bet.
