Is it possible that someday a supercomputer can predict all of your choices that you will make from the time you are born until the time you die based on your genetic code and DNA? And if so how close can they actually get, and how much random chance will shake up that prediction. Is it impossible to know - or is it possible that someone's entire life could be foretold? And with that said if you can predict the life of one individual, could you indeed predict the life of 7 billion humans on the planet?
That is to say predict how they will interact, and all the events that could possibly occur? Theoretically, and here is where we get into a bit of philosophy, the answer is probably yes. Now that's certainly going to bother a good number of people who believe in free will, and it bothers me even bringing up the topic. You see I believe in freedom and liberty, and I intend to live my life as if I am free. But am I? Are you?
It might sound a bit cliche'ish to invoke the example of the Hollywood Movie "Minority Report" as it seems someone always is, but indeed, it was a very decent movie with an on-going moral dilemma of free-will versus a Calvanistic view of the world. Nevertheless, last week I was having an interesting dialogue with an overseas acquaintance about the ability of modern day psychologists predicting future behavior.
We do it all the time in our society, we call it profiling. We do it at our airports, and our State Department, Military, CIA, etc, does it in sizing up those individuals we must deal with. It seems quite possible that our ability to predict the weather is getting much better with supercomputers, so indeed at sometime in the future we should be able to predict human behavior, and human choices based on the individual in certain circumstances. And we should be up to do this somewhere within the 99.99 percentile.
Does that mean we should?
After all, there could be some serious benefits if we can predict such things, and we would be able to prevent terrorism, and violent acts. We could use this to protect the American people, and prevent or reduce crime. However if we do this, what will we give up? Will we give up our freedom and liberty in the process? Will we dismiss free will as an underlining principle which guides our system of laws and society?
Yes, this is all just philosophy, but in the end we will have choices to make as our artificially intelligent supercomputer systems become more robust and our understanding of algorithmic prediction and mathematical proximity reaches that ultimate plateau. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it. If you'd like discussing such matters then please shoot me an e-mail, my line is always open.
Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you've enjoyed today's discussion and topic. http://www.worldthinktank.net/ - Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.
No comments:
Post a Comment