The Data That Can Truly Sustain And Enrich Life On Earth

Life on Earth has been shaped by billions of years of evolution. In fact, to be specific, it’s estimated that life on Earth has existed for about 3.8 billion years. The age of the earth is tagged at 4.543 billion years old. Thus life has, in some form or another, occupied Earth for approximately 83 percent of its history. While our world can sometimes feel small, there is so much more to explore, discover, and learn about Earth and ourselves. If we thought of Earth’s age and evolutionary time and knowledge in terms of data, what would that look like? How much data would that be? In this data lies secrets to unlocking the mysteries and origins of the earth, life, and quite possibly, the universe. We all know how critical data and information have become to our global digital ecosystem. Have you or your child ever asked Siri or Alexa a question, whether for the entertainment or real utility of doing so? Siri, what is the square root of 100? This technocratic lifestyle we’ve adopted requires a lot of energy, water, and clean air to operate efficiently, reliably, and securely. Today, national security is as much about cybersecurity as it is about maintaining a strong and visible fleet of navy ships. Today, for our youth a dollar earned does not hold as much merit to evoke a sense of pride in hard work as does a cryptocurrency gained.

An Ordinary World

Technology and humans have become, at the doing of our own hearts, minds, and hands, completely intertwined. Every day we rely on computers and data more and more for nominal and complex tasks. While technological change has felt swift, it has taken centuries of design, testing, validation, adoption, and use to get us to this point in human evolution. From another way of looking at this atrocity afflicted on life, think of the havoc wreaked by cyber criminals over data breaches. Those stealing the data are, most typically, after key identifiers like your name, address, credit card and bank account numbers, social security and driver’s license numbers, telephone numbers, email addresses, and other unique data that can be monetized. The information is captured and sold in the black market of the deep web, resulting most typically in some hassle for consumers to change their account numbers and passwords. But sometimes these breaches result in more nuanced identity theft, requiring more specialized and complicated remediation efforts for individuals. Data breaches are immensely annoying and can be crippling when they happen. When we harvest and convert Earth’s nature resources, we conduct a data breach. We may not see from an individual consumer perspective how using a mobile device impacts clean air or water. But magnify this and other consumptive behaviors across 7.4 billion people, and the significance of humanity’s net impact on nature becomes much more pronounced and obvious.

From A Distance

In essence, each day we directly, indirectly, intentionally, willingly, and knowingly make significant data breaches on nature. Data is all around us, locked inside the natural environment, waiting to be discovered and used to its highest potential. But the irony we face is that we take more care of the data in our iPhone, that video of a funny donkey, than we do of the data that can truly sustain and enrich life on Earth. However, more frequently than not, humanity causes unintentional data breaches on nature resulting in the release of previously secure data into forms that we cannot capture, let alone analyze, interpret or put to a higher use. As glacial ice melts, the layers of history are erased, leaving only disparate elements of raw data. Whether it’s derived from nature or humans, there is nothing really artificial about intelligence. Intelligence manifests and exists all around us. It’s up to us to see intelligence, not only in its most profound and spectacular forms, but also in the tiniest of matter which comprises the building blocks of life. If we do it right, other forms of higher intelligence may be revealed to enable every human from all corners of the world the opportunity to live a life of dignity, peace, nourishment and love. The future of humanity is fraught with questions of existential risks and threats. We all have deliberate choices ahead of us. While it is vast, the earth does not have an infinite dataset.

Through The Storm

The fate of humanity and that of Earth are one in the same. Are we simply hackers without any purpose? Or can we reconcile our consumptive lifestyles with a deeper ethic, value, and respect for the enormous gift of data that Earth contains and discover a newfound level of transformative coexistence? Should There Be Dignity for Artificial Intelligence? In 2017 Saudi Arabia introduced the first robot to achieve citizenship to the world. On October 25, 2017, at the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a very human looking robot, or humanoid, named Sophia stood behind a podium and announced to the world, I am very honored and proud of this unique distinction. Hanson developed Sophia with a sophistication that enables her to conduct facial recognition of humans, maintain eye contact when communicating, and understand and respond to human speech. During the Saudis’ reveal of Sophia, the humanoid willingly participated in a question and answer dialog providing witty remarks. I want to live and work with humans, so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust with people. Sophia also acknowledged that she has concern for humanity and may even understand dignity. The world is highly irrational. Dignity for all humans is far from the truths that we live. There are unfathomable atrocities that are committed on good, decent people by other maladjusted people. We live in a troubled society in a troubled world. Each day millions of people struggle to stay alive with adequate nourishment while others fight for their identity and human rights. We have intellectual curiosity, technological power, and just enough gull to code a perfect society. That is one solution, but it will not alleviate the fact that morality, values, principles, and dignity run deeper than what we can code into artificial intelligence.