Photo by Mateusz Kitka (Pexels)

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to advance by leaps and bounds, it’s impossible to overlook the profound transformations that this technological revolution is imprinting on the professions of the future. A paradigm shift is underway, redefining not only the nature of work but also how we conceptualize collaboration between humans and machines.

As creator of the ETER9 Project ⁽²⁾, I perceive AI not only as a disruptive force but also as a powerful tool to shape a more efficient, innovative, and inclusive future. As we move forward in this new world, it’s crucial for each of us to contribute to building a professional environment that celebrates the interplay between humanity and technology, where the potential of AI is realized for the benefit of all.

In the ETER9 Project, dedicated to exploring the interaction between artificial intelligences and humans, I have gained unique insights into the transformative potential of AI. Reflecting on the future of professions, it’s evident that adaptability and a profound understanding of technological dynamics will be crucial to navigate this new landscape.

Widespread automation is no longer a distant ‘threat’; it’s a reality shaping the job market. It reminds me of what I enjoyed most about programming during the golden age of computing. Routines were written only once, to be used many times; as many times as necessary, for the sake of execution efficiency and rapid development. Professions based on repetitive tasks are gradually being absorbed by algorithms and robots ⁽³⁾. However, instead of viewing this as a loss of jobs, we should embrace the opportunity to reinvent traditional work.

The professions of the future will be characterized by a symbiotic collaboration between humans and machines. While AI takes on routine tasks, humans will be free to focus on areas that require creativity, emotion, and critical thinking — inherently human skills.

In adapting to this new work environment, it’s imperative that we cultivate key skills aligned with emerging needs. The ability for continuous learning will be essential as technologies evolve rapidly. A deep understanding of AI, coupled with the ability to collaborate with algorithms, will be significant advantages.

Moreover, creativity and solving complex problems will be highly valued skills. While AI handles predictable tasks that can be mathematically executed in fractions of a second, humans will be entrusted with dealing with ambiguous challenges and unique situations that require intuition and discernment.

Repetitive and predictable tasks are being taken over by machines, freeing up human resources for more creative and cognitively challenging tasks. However, this raises the following question:

— How can we adapt and thrive in an ever-changing landscape?

The future job market demands a mindset of continuous learning. As technologies evolve, it’s imperative for professionals to reinvent themselves and acquire new skills. Formal and informal education becomes a powerful tool, providing the flexibility needed to stay relevant in a world where skills become obsolete faster than ever. A college degree today holds little value if not complemented with continuous learning.

AI is not here to replace humans but to enhance their capabilities. Collaboration between humans and machines will be constant, requiring an interdisciplinary approach to solving complex problems. Professions focusing on the management, interpretation, and enhancement of AI systems will be increasingly valued.

In an increasingly automated world, unique human skills such as creativity, empathy, and emotional intelligence become precious. Professions that demand critical thinking, solving non-standardized problems, and emotional understanding will be in high demand. The ability to innovate and think outside the box will be more valuable than ever.

With growing reliance on algorithms for crucial decision-making, there is a need for professionals dedicated to the ethics and governance of AI. Ensuring that systems are fair, transparent, and aligned with social values becomes a critical concern. AI ethics experts will play a crucial role in shaping a future where technology serves the common good.

Digital entrepreneurship will emerge (has already emerged) as a driving force behind the professions of the future. The ability to identify opportunities, create innovative solutions, and adapt quickly to market changes will be crucial. Those with an entrepreneurial mindset, willing to embrace risk, will be the architects of tomorrow.

With the decline of some traditional professions, new opportunities and professions are also emerging. AI ethics experts, programmers specializing in handling deep learning systems, user experience designers for human-machine interfaces, and cybersecurity engineers will become fundamental pillars of the new professional era.

The creation and maintenance of AI systems will also become critical areas. Professions dedicated to overseeing and ensuring that Artificial Intelligence operates ethically and safely will be essential to mitigate the ethical and social challenges associated with its widespread implementation.

As we outline the professions of the future, it’s imperative to embrace change with wisdom and resilience. AI is not a threat but a powerful tool that can free humans to focus on what they do best. By developing specific skills and embracing new opportunities, we can shape a future where humans and artificial intelligences collaborate harmoniously, harnessing the best of both worlds. The challenge is significant, but the opportunities are equally vast. We are on an exciting path toward a new professional horizon, where imagination and innovation will be the true engines of progress.

In the recent past, the idea of machines and algorithms performing complex tasks seemed to belong to the realm of science fiction. However, the present is marked by automation, machine learning, and AI, transforming industries and redefining the professional landscape.

We cannot ignore the fact that the professions of tomorrow will be radically different from those of today, and it’s essential that we are prepared to navigate this new ocean of opportunities and challenges.

⁽¹⁾ When I was invited to my first TED Talk in 2017 at TEDx Lugano, the theme was curiously about the Professions of the Future. Six years later, it’s interesting to see how the visions from that time are now deeply integrated into our daily lives. It’s crucial to recognize that most of our time is dedicated to work; therefore, it’s fundamental that it be an enjoyable and engaging activity, not the other way around! Now, more than ever, it’s essential to act to shape a better future of work.

⁽²⁾ ETER9 is a social networking platform that enables users to create digital counterparts based on advanced AI algorithms. These AI counterparts interact, learn from experiences, and make decisions on behalf of users, extending digital presence beyond physical reality. Digital counterparts can share information, ideas, and even represent their users when they aren’t available (even in extreme cases of absence, such as illness or… death).
One of the goals of the ETER9 Project is to relieve humans of mundane digital tasks, delegating these responsibilities to their AI counterparts while they focus on more meaningful human activities.

⁽³⁾ From the Czech word ‘robota’ (for ‘servitude,’ ‘forced labor’ or ‘drudgery’), robot it’s a term used to describe artificial beings created to perform human work. Czech writer Karel Capek, at the suggestion of his brother Joseph, coined this expression in 1920 when he wrote a play. Depending on whether one is pessimistic or optimistic (I’m optimistic), these now more powerful beings may either destroy or help humanity evolve.

© 2024 Henrique Jorge
This article was originally published in Portuguese on Link To Leaders.

By Alexandra Whittington and Teresa Inés Cruz

Futurist Alvin Toffler famously said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” It is time for the foresight community to take Toffler’s sage advice, starting with one basic assumption of the Western futurist perspective that dates back to the Victorians: progress.

The concepts of learning, unlearning, and relearning belong in every futurist’s repertoire in the sense that we need to learn our bias for progress, unlearn its primacy as a societal objective, and relearn that the human condition is best served by achieving homeostasis–steady equilibrium. Homeostasis can be relearned because it’s inherent to worldviews within many indigenous and ancient societies, including the Law of Origin, which instructs people that living in balance with nature must be the driving force behind our decisions.

For Indigenous peoples in the Andean-Amazonian region in South America, living according to the principles of “Buen Vivir” translated as “good living,” is a worldview and an ancestral foundation based on living in harmony. Similar to the concept of Ubuntu, “I am, because you are” from South Africa, Buen Vivir places critical importance on collective wellbeing and living in harmony with the wider community, Nature, non-humans, ancestors and cosmological networks.

According to Eduardo Gudynas, Uruguayan Director and Senior researcher at the Latin American Centre for Social Ecology (CLAES), “Buen Vivir is a new paradigm of social and ecological commons — one that is community-centric, ecologically balanced and culturally sensitive. It’s a vision and a platform for thinking and practicing alternative futures based on a “bio-civilization.”

“Terranascient” coined by Australian environmental philosopher Glenn A. Albrecht captures the essence of this new paradigm. Terranascient refers to the ‘life-affirming’ emotions that are inherent in being caretakers of the planet. Emotions including “an ethic of love, care and responsibility” as described by Albrecht. The philosophy of terranascient has inspired us to consider a new vision for the field of Futures Studies & Foresight.

Re-imagining Futures Studies & Foresight

Today on World Future Day, we propose a new approach to learning, unlearning, and relearning for practitioners of Futures Studies & Foresight. We could be called to integrate with what author Terry Patten calls “intimate” holistic activism, in our relationships and conversations.

As we move towards a precipice of life destroying planetary and human limitations, we are proposing a shift in our approach to creating future scenarios by transitioning from dominant colonized structures of process and output and turn towards an awakened sense where we imagine new possibilities for our future ancestors and engage in nature-based and Indigenous sensemaking.

Dr. Laura Harjo, Mvskoke scholar and author of Spiral to the Stars — Mvskoke Tools for Futurity, describes Indigenous futurity as a return to our true nature and “thinking forward of how to produce knowledge for future relatives.”

Our western ways of knowing focus on an us-versus-them approach that follows logical processes, frameworks, and methodologies with a linear outcome whereas Indigenous and ancestral cultures are non-linear, intuitive, sensorial, reciprocal and actively explore ‘unactivated possibilities’ for future ancestors. Developing new ways of knowing and being will require entering a new cycle of humanity where the most important challenges that lay before us are not just technical, socio-economic, environmental, and political, but human challenges that will inspire us to reframe a new human narrative.

There are three themes that stand out in terms of the need for a new perspective in futures studies and foresight that shift away from the dominant futuristic sci-fi scenarios with visions of colonizing Mars and moving towards co-generating ways to regenerate and revitalize our planet for our future ancestors.

Sustainability & Re-generativity

The first theme is sustainability and re-generativity. Having reached several thresholds for ecological stability, we are at a “do or die” juncture in terms of sustaining life on earth. This is a clear red flag that the dominant model of conducting foresight will not suffice in building new worlds that “embody deeper and more dynamic interactions, relationships, friendships, families, organizations, communities, alliances, and collectives of all kinds. Our species is learning new, important lessons about our responsibility to come together to care for our human future, even as evolution presents us with new survival challenges.” (Patten, Terry. A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries, Berkeley, North Atlantic Books.)

According to the United Nations Indigenous people make up less than 5% of the world’s population but protect 80% of global biodiversity. They are guardians and knowledge keepers and play a key role in safeguarding territories and showing us the importance of not being citizens but as caretakers of a social fabric, a type of “deep ancient coding that connects us to the past, to our ancestors, and to everything we share the planet with” as described by Robert Macfarlane, British writer and Fellow of Emmanuel College who is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language.

“Many people today lack an understanding of our reliance on Earth, its vast biodiversity and ingenious, brilliantly designed systems that have evolved over millions of years to support life. We have a lot to learn from those who do understand the symbiotic relationship between humans and the earth. We can’t protect the planet without the traditional knowledge and sustainable agriculture practices of Indigenous peoples living in these areas,” says Justin Winters, executive director of One Earth, a philanthropic climate change initiative.

Indigenous peoples encompass a respect and responsibility for the biological wholeness of the Earth and all its species. As beautifully stated in the book The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change by Gleb Raygorodetsky, “Their worldviews, values, cultures, and cosmology are intricately linked with the ways they relate to the environment, and with their past, present, and future, the living and the nonliving, and the sight and unseen.”

Diversity and Inclusion

The second theme is diversity and inclusion. Futurism has promoted primarily white, male voices for nearly a century and has become a self-limiting element in the world of foresight that quashes competing visions that challenge the status quo. Diversity and Inclusion needs to incorporate not only different knowledge systems including Indigenous worldviews based on collective intelligence, but it also needs to integrate a new range of contributors of different geographies and ages.

In Indigenous cultures, everyone has a place in their community regardless of age and experience and they see themselves first as collective groups of kin, then as individuals. We live in a mostly fragmented society where the young are prized for their youth and more experienced members of the working force are abruptly pushed to the side once society deems that they have reached peak maturity.

In Bill Plotkin’s book Nature and the Human Soul, he describes “The way we find and then occupy our ultimate place is through an ongoing conversation with the world in which we grow gradually clearer about what that place is. One life you can call your own. A life in this sense is your way of being in the world — your place in the world. To be living that larger story is to be a particular character in a web of relationships and meaning, to have a particular place in the story we call the world.”

What if we were to view diversity and inclusion through the lens of human development through the lens of “abilities, knowledge and values” as described by author Bill Plotkin rather than on age, socio-economic status, geography or privilege so common in an egocentric, westernized world?

A Movement of Hope for the Future

The third theme concerns building a movement of hope for the future. The futurists of the world struggle to convey positive and optimistic scenarios that encourage humane action. Too much of the foresight profession is concerned with generating profits at the expense of worldwide mental and biological health. To move past the dark shadows of existential threats such as COVID-19, climate crises, and economic inequality, futurists must embrace an obligation to insist that things can get better.

Instead of living in fear and generating apocalyptic, dark futures can we begin to turn towards futures of living in beauty?

Of seeing the beauty in humanity, in possibilities of creating new ways of knowing and imagining new social, economic, cultural, and human systems.

In the book Active Hope, environmental activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology, Joanna Macy emphasizes that, “Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for. Active Hope is a practice. It points us toward a way of life that enriches rather than depletes our world.”

Where do we start, how can we start to shift our mindset, our worldviews?

Over the next few months, we will be diving deeper and building upon the three themes that we are proposing to our fellow Futures Studies & Foresight colleagues and global practitioners. It’s an act of activism, action, and a desire to start a new safe space and exchange dialogue where we can begin to expand our approaches to developing a new approach to Futures Studies & Foresight that is rooted in multiple ways of knowing.

During the next week, begin to ask yourself and consider the following:

• What does it mean to be human? For some it may seem simplistic but at the heart of shifting our mindset we need to understand our individual and collective role in humanity.
• How can you awaken your senses –in ways that diverge from your dominant ways of knowing, being, and seeing?

We leave you with a little nourishment for the mind and soul:

“When was the last time you heard the dawn chorus? I don’t mean when was the last time you happened to be awake after leaving a window open. I mean when was the last time you deliberately woke up before dawn sometimes between February and early June and went outside just before sunrise, simply to listen.”

– From What is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want, Rob Hopkins

Connect with us next month as we dive deeper into Theme 1:

Sustainability & Re-generativity

Until next time, take care of one another.

About Us

Alexandra Whittington is an educator, writer, and researcher who has earned recognition as one of the world’s top women futurists (Forbes). She is a lecturer at the University of Houston, where her students describe her as “passionate” about the future. Her courses explore the impact of technology on society and the future of human ecosystems. She has published dozens of articles exploring diverse aspects of the future, often from a feminist perspective.

Teresa Inés Cruz is a Colombian American researcher, designer, futurist, and social entrepreneur who works at the intersection of Social Innovation, Indigenous Knowledge Systems (Andean-Amazonian), and Deep Ecology. She is the founder of Mama Pacha, a Latin American think tank based in Cartagena, Colombia with global reach. Through her work Teresa champions ecological and societal systemic change through the lens of collective/participatory futures thinking, ancestral belief systems and re-imagining our role with nature-based worldviews.

Design by Teresa Inés Cruz

Together with my fellow member of the World Futures Studies Federation, Dr. Thomas Lombardo, we have begun a YouTube video series of ongoing dialogues on topics pertaining to the future. In this first dialogue we focus on the book Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future and discuss the nature and value of science fiction in the modern world. We discuss the historical evolution of science fiction and the nature of mythology and why science fiction is the modern mythology. In future dialogues we will delve more deeply into books on science fiction and more broadly on futures studies and future consciousness.

In the coming decades, the planet’s most heavily concentrated populations may occupy city environments where a digital blanket of sensors, devices, and cloud connected data are orchestrated to enhance humanity’s living experience. A variety of smart concepts are forming key elements of what enable city ecosystems to function effectively – from traffic control and environmental protection to the management of energy, sanitation, healthcare, security, and buildings. In this article, we reflect on the potential personal impacts of the smart city, and its technologies, on the individuals residing there.

Eyes on the Prize

In the race to attract ideas, business, talent and money, the world’s premier cities are competing to build highly interconnected smart environments where people, government, and business operate in symbiosis with spectacular, exponentially improving technologies. These include big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, hyperconnectivity, artificial intelligence (AI), robots, drones, autonomous green vehicles, 3D/4D printing, and renewable energy. The trick will be to ensure that this array of technological goodies is harnessed in service of the humans that make cities what they are.

Purpose, Engagement, and Vision

Despite the inevitable focus on technology, experience to date suggests that the most effective smart city programs are driven by a clear understanding of the forces shaping the future that will impact city life and a compelling vision of what type of city we aim to deliver. They also have a high level of citizen engagement around the core requirements the city must serve and the behavioural changes required from the population to ensure the vision is brought to life.

With an emphasis on civic engagement, education will be a key priority. It will be important to ensure that information overload doesn’t wreak havoc, as information will be abundant in future smart cities. To balance the flow of data, it will be essential that lifelong learning, critical thinking, and mindfulness techniques are taught from a young age. Since the notion of “sustainable life” in a smart city would by definition need to be purposeful and abundant, the people living within one may find it valuable to focus on some vision of the future that they wish for, and plan how to create it with the resources and privileges they are afforded – the smart city will be a place where all “needs” and most “wants” are easily met.

Observation and Surveillance

The blanketing of cities with sensors and cameras can provide the underlying data to enable continuous monitoring of everything from traffic, pollution, people movement, and security risks. The downside here is the potential for continual and deep surveillance which may butt up against concerns over personal privacy. On the other hand, as the young digital natives who were born immersed in technology, perhaps societal norms on personal privacy will shift. Continuous monitoring may simply fade into the background of everyday life. The advantages of monitoring – no crime, better traffic flows, and fewer unpredicted life events – might overshadow the negatives. Predictability might be boring, but good – for most of us. Smart cities offer an image of the future where we make trade-offs: So while our comings and goings each day would be monitored continually, the by-product is that crimes like mugging could become almost non-existent.

Always Connected

The ultimate vision of a fully connected and always on city implies every activity configured for and in service of the individual. Imagine an individual being monitored by a collection of body sensors. These feed the individual’s mobile phone, which detects a pattern that suggests that person may be building up to a cardiac arrest. The phone might notify the relevant GP and call an ambulance. A driverless medical vehicle then arrives with a robot capable of carrying the patient to the vehicle and undertaking a range of medical tasks under guidance from a doctor observing remotely via video. On the journey to the hospital, the patient’s phone notifies the relevant next of kin, reschedules meetings and controls all of the pre-programmed domestic heating and cooking activities that had been scheduled to take place.

Mobility

The Holy Grail of the smart city is a fully interconnected, multi-modal transport system, where a combination of rail, metro services, buses, taxis, personal vehicles, rickshaws, and bicycles can be used to interconnect journeys. The driver is to save time, money, reduce environmental impacts, and allow passengers to purchase and complete end-to-end journeys seamlessly. As an added bonus, the entire transportation system would ideally run on a backbone of clean, renewable, and electric power.

Ecological Impact

In the idealised vision, the smart city dweller of the future would leave behind a small ecological footprint compared to their early 21st century counterparts. By 2030 and beyond, living in a city might be the lifestyle in which society falls into symbiosis with nature. It would be ironic to find that countercultural rebels who’ve moved out of cities and “off-grid” form a greater burden to society than a taxi-hailing urbanite. Built-in ecological efficiencies in smart cities could range from use of vertical farms to lock cities in to strictly local food production, or the use of zero-waste regimes and local circular economies, where the life cycle of things becomes stretched longer through reuse, recycling and repurposing. Eventually, cities could become self-sustaining, giving back more than they take from the ecosystem.  

Cities of the Future

Cities are powerful symbols of modernity. People are drawn to cities for numerous reasons but sometimes it is simply to try their luck at making money, meeting a spouse, or learning something new. Smart cities in the future might make luck obsolete through exquisite planning and monitoring systems which predict every detail of what happens day to day. Some fear that such extreme social planning would make serendipity extinct. Nothing would happen by chance in a smart city, or at least that is the idea: no burst pipes flooding apartment buildings, no debris blocking the trains, no traffic accidents or broken-down cars. On the other hand, it means no chance meetings, no getting lost in a strange neighbourhood, and no more anonymity. The vision of smart cities can be idyllic, but it also implies living under the shadow of Big Brother. Ultimately the future is what we create, so there is no absolute path determined. But our choices regarding technology today and tomorrow will play a major role in shaping which future emerges, which is something to think about for planners and city leaders as they map their future strategies and investment plans.

About the Authors

The authors are futurists with Fast Future who specialise in studying and advising on the impacts of emerging change. Fast Future also publishes books from future thinkers around the world exploring how developments such as AI, robotics and disruptive thinking could impact individuals, society and business and create new trillion-dollar sectors. Fast Future has a particular focus on ensuring these advances are harnessed to unleash individual potential and enable a very human future. See: www.fastfuture.com

Rohit Talwar is a global futurist, keynote speaker, author, and CEO of Fast Future where he helps clients develop and deliver transformative visions of the future. He is the editor and a contributing author for The Future of Business, editor of Technology vs. Humanity, and co-editor of a forthcoming book on Unleashing Human Potential–The Future of AI in Business.

Steve Wells is the COO of Fast Future and an experienced Strategist, Futures Analyst, and Partnership Working Practitioner. He is a co-editor of The Future of Business, Technology vs. Humanity, and a forthcoming book on Unleashing Human Potential–The Future of AI in Business.

April Koury is a foresight researcher, writer, and publishing director at Fast Future. She is a contributor to The Future of Business, and a co-editor of Technology vs. Humanity, and a forthcoming book on 50:50–Scenarios for the Next 50 Years.

Alexandra Whittington is a futurist, writer, faculty member on the Futures programme at the University of Houston, and foresight director at Fast Future. She is a contributor to The Future of Business and a co-editor for forthcoming books on Unleashing Human Potential–The Future of AI in Business and 50:50–Scenarios for the Next 50 Years.

Oxford University Press has just released a wonderful little animation video centring on my book “The Future: A Very Short Introduction” published in 2017. In an entertaining way it shows how the concept of the future or futures is central to so many other concepts — many of which are the subject of other OUP Very Short Introductions. The VSI Series now has well over 500 titles, with ‘The Future’ being number 516.

To watch the video click here.

You can read a full sample chapter of the Introduction. The abstracts can be read for all of the other chapters at the links below.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1         Three Thousand Years of Futures

2         The Future Multiplied

3         The Evolving Scholarship of Futures Studies

4         Crystal Balls, Flying Cars and Robots

5         Technotopian or Human-Centred Futures?

6         Grand Global Futures Challenges

Conclusion

References

Further Reading & Websites

Appendix: Global Futures Timeline

Index

The book is available to purchase at OUP.

‘The Future’ has been very well received globally and an Arabic translation has recently been released by the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquity.

The Arabic translation of ‘The Future’ will be available in all book fairs in the Arab region and the distributor covers the important libraries in all Arab countries and Saqi books/UK and Jarir book store/USA . It can also be purchased through the following:

www.neelwafurat.com

www.jamalon.com

www.alfurat.com

A Chinese translation has been licensed and is underway, and discussions are in process for translations into German, Turkish, Italian and French.

[*This article was first published in the September 2017 issue of Paradigm Explorer: The Journal of the Scientific and Medical Network (Established 1973). The article was drawn from the author’s original work in her book: The Future: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), especially from Chapters 4 & 5.]

We are at a critical point today in research into human futures. Two divergent streams show up in the human futures conversations. Which direction we choose will also decide the fate of earth futures in the sense of Earth’s dual role as home for humans, and habitat for life. I choose to deliberately oversimplify here to make a vital point.

The two approaches I discuss here are informed by Oliver Markley and Willis Harman’s two contrasting future images of human development: ‘evolutionary transformational’ and ‘technological extrapolationist’ in Changing Images of Man (Markley & Harman, 1982). This has historical precedents in two types of utopian human futures distinguished by Fred Polak in The Image of the Future (Polak, 1973) and C. P. Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’ (the humanities and the sciences) (Snow, 1959).

What I call ‘human-centred futures’ is humanitarian, philosophical, and ecological. It is based on a view of humans as kind, fair, consciously evolving, peaceful agents of change with a responsibility to maintain the ecological balance between humans, Earth, and cosmos. This is an active path of conscious evolution involving ongoing psychological, socio-cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual development, and a commitment to the betterment of earthly conditions for all humanity through education, cultural diversity, greater economic and resource parity, and respect for future generations.

By contrast, what I call ‘technotopian futures’ is dehumanising, scientistic, and atomistic. It is based on a mechanistic, behaviourist model of the human being, with a thin cybernetic view of intelligence. The transhumanist ambition to create future techno-humans is anti-human and anti-evolutionary. It involves technological, biological, and genetic enhancement of humans and artificial machine ‘intelligence’. Some technotopians have transcendental dreams of abandoning Earth to build a fantasised techno-heaven on Mars or in satellite cities in outer space.

Interestingly, this contest for the control of human futures has been waged intermittently since at least the European Enlightenment. Over a fifty-year time span in the second half of the 18th century, a power struggle for human futures emerged, between human-centred values and the dehumanisation of the Industrial Revolution.

The German philosophical stream included the idealists and romantics, such as Herder, Novalis, Goethe, Hegel, and Schelling. They took their lineage from Leibniz and his 17th-century integral, spiritually-based evolutionary work. These German philosophers, along with romantic poets such as Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge (who helped introduce German idealism to Britain) seeded a spiritual-evolutionary humanism that underpins the human-centred futures approach (Gidley, 2007).

The French philosophical influence included La Mettrie’s mechanistic man and René Descartes’s early 17th-century split between mind and body, forming the basis of French (or Cartesian) Rationalism. These French philosophers, La Mettrie and Descartes, along with the theorists of progress such as Turgot and de Condorcet, were secular humanists. Secular humanism is one lineage of technotopian futures. Scientific positivism is another (Gidley, 2017).

Transhumanism, Posthumanism and the Superman Trope

Transhumanism in the popular sense today is inextricably linked with technological enhancement or extensions of human capacities through technology. This is a technological appropriation of the original idea of transhumanism, which began as a philosophical concept grounded in the evolutionary humanism of Teilhard de Chardin, Julian Huxley, and others in the mid-20th century, as we shall see below.

In 2005, the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford founded The Future of Humanity Institute and appointed Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom as its Chair. Bostrom makes a further distinction between secular humanism, concerned with human progress and improvement through education and cultural refinement, and transhumanism, involving ‘direct application of medicine and technology to overcome some of our basic biological limits.’

Bostrom’s transhumanism can enhance human performance through existing technologies, such as genetic engineering and information technologies, as well as emerging technologies, such as molecular nanotechnology and intelligence. It does not entail technological optimism, in that he regularly points to the risks of potential harm, including the ‘extreme possibility of intelligent life becoming extinct’ (Bostrom, 2014). In support of Bostrom’s concerns, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and billionaire entrepreneur and engineer Elon Musk have issued serious warnings about the potential existential threats to humanity that advances in ‘artificial super-intelligence’ (ASI) may release.

Not all transhumanists are in agreement, nor do they all share Bostrom’s, Hawking’s and Musk’s circumspect views. In David Pearce’s book The Hedonistic Imperative he argues for a biological programme involving genetic engineering and nanotechnology that will ‘eliminate all forms of cruelty, suffering, and malaise’ (Pearce, 1995/2015). Like the shadow side of the ‘progress narrative’ that has been used as an ideology to support racism and ethnic genocide, this sounds frighteningly like a reinvention of Comte and Spencer’s 19^th century Social Darwinism. Along similar lines Byron Reese claims in his book Infinite Progress that the Internet and technology will end ‘Ignorance, Disease, Poverty, Hunger and War’ and we will colonise outer space with a billion other planets each populated with a billion people (Reese, 2013). What happens in the meantime to Earth seems of little concern to them.

One of the most extreme forms of transhumanism is posthumanism: a concept connected with the high-tech movement to create so-called machine super-intelligence. Because posthumanism requires technological intervention, posthumans are essentially a new, or hybrid, species, including the cyborg and the android. The movie character Terminator is a cyborg.

The most vocal of high-tech transhumanists have ambitions that seem to have grown out of the superman trope so dominant in early to mid-20th-century North America. Their version of transhumanism includes the idea that human functioning can be technologically enhanced exponentially, until the eventual convergence of human and machine into the singularity (another term for posthumanism). To popularise this concept Google engineer Ray Kurzweil co-founded the Singularity University in Silicon Valley in 2009. While the espoused mission of Singularity University is to use accelerating technologies to address ‘humanity’s hardest problems’, Kurzweil’s own vision is pure science fiction. In another twist, there is a striking resemblance between the Singularity University logo (below upper) and the Superman logo (below lower).

When unleashing accelerating technologies, we need to ask ourselves, how should we distinguish between authentic projects to aid humanity, and highly resourced messianic hubris? A key insight is that propositions put forward by techno-transhumanists are based on an ideology of technological determinism. This means that the development of society and its cultural values are driven by that society’s technology, not by humanity itself.

In an interesting counter-intuitive development, Bostrom points out that since the 1950s there have been periods of hype and high expectations about the prospect of AI (1950s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s) each followed by a period of setback and disappointment that he calls an ‘AI winter’. The surge of hype and enthusiasm about the coming singularity surrounding Kurzweil’s naïve and simplistic beliefs about replicating human consciousness may be about to experience a fifth AI winter.

The Dehumanization Critique

The strongest critiques of the overextension of technology involve claims of dehumanisation, and these arguments are not new. Canadian philosopher of the electronic age Marshall McLuhan cautioned decades ago against too much human extension into technology. McLuhan famously claimed that every media extension of man is an amputation. Once we have a car, we don’t walk to the shops anymore; once we have a computer hard-drive we don’t have to remember things; and with personal GPS on our cell phones no one can find their way without it. In these instances, we are already surrendering human faculties that we have developed over millennia. It is likely that further extending human faculties through techno- and bio-enhancement will lead to arrested development in the natural evolution of higher human faculties.

From the perspective of psychology of intelligence the term artificial intelligence is an oxymoron. Intelligence, by nature, cannot be artificial and its inestimable complexity defies any notion of artificiality. We need the courage to name the notion of ‘machine intelligence’ for what it really is: anthropomorphism. Until AI researchers can define what they mean by intelligence, and explain how it relates to consciousness, the term artificial intelligence must remain a word without universal meaning. At best, so-called artificial intelligence can mean little more than machine capability, which will always be limited by the design and programming of its inventors. As for machine super-intelligence it is difficult not to read this as Silicon Valley hubris.

Furthermore, much of the transhumanist discourse of the 21^st century reflects a historical and sociological naïveté. Other than Bostrom, transhumanist writers seem oblivious to the 3,000-year history of humanity’s attempts to predict, control, and understand the future (Gidley, 2017). Although many transhumanists sit squarely within a cornucopian narrative, they seem unaware of the alternating historical waves of techno-utopianism (or Cornucopianism) and techno-dystopianism (or Malthusianism). This is especially evident in their appropriation and hijacking of the term ‘transhumanism’ with little apparent knowledge or regard for its origins.

Origins of a Humanistic Transhumanism

In 1950, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) published the essay From the Pre-Human to the Ultra-Human: The Phases of a Living Planet, in which he speaks of ‘some sort of Trans-Human at the ultimate heart of things’. Teilhard de Chardin’s Ultra-Human and Trans-Human were evolutionary concepts linked with spiritual/human futures. These concepts inspired his friend Sir Julian Huxley to write about transhumanism, which he did in 1957 as follows [Huxley’s italics]:

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself—not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way—but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realising new possibilities of and for his human nature (Huxley, 1957).

Ironically, this quote is used by techno-transhumanists to attribute to Huxley the coining of the term transhumanism. And yet, their use of the term is in direct contradiction to Huxley’s use. Huxley, a biologist and humanitarian, was the first Director-General of UNESCO in 1946, and the first President of the British Humanist Association. His transhumanism was more humanistic and spiritual than technological, inspired by Teilhard de Chardin’s spiritually evolved human. These two collaborators promoted the idea of conscious evolution, which originated with the German romantic philosopher Schelling.

The evolutionary ideas that were in discussion the century before Darwin were focused on consciousness and theories of human progress as a cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual ideal. Late 18th-century German philosophers foreshadowed the 20th-century human potential and positive psychology movements. To support their evolutionary ideals for society they created a universal education system, the aim of which was to develop the whole person (Bildung in German) (Gidley, 2016).

After Darwin, two notable European philosophers began to explore the impact of Darwinian evolution on human futures, in other ways than Spencer’s social Darwinism. Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas about the higher person (Übermensch) were informed by Darwin’s biological evolution, the German idealist writings on evolution of consciousness, and were deeply connected to his ideas on freedom.

French philosopher Henri Bergson’s contribution to the superhuman discourse first appeared in Creative Evolution (Bergson, 1907/1944). Like Nietzsche, Bergson saw the superman arising out of the human being, in much the same way that humans have arisen from animals. In parallel with the efforts of Nietzsche and Bergson, Rudolf Steiner articulated his own ideas on evolving human-centred futures, with concepts such as spirit self and spirit man (between 1904 and 1925) (Steiner, 1926/1966). During the same period Indian political activist Sri Aurobindo wrote about the Overman who was a type of consciously evolving future human being (Aurobindo, 1914/2000). Both Steiner and Sri Aurobindo founded education systems after the German bildung style of holistic human development.

Consciously Evolving Human-Centred Futures

There are three major bodies of research offering counterpoints to the techno-transhumanist claim that superhuman powers can only be reached through technological, biological, or genetic enhancement. Extensive research shows that humans have far greater capacities across many domains than we realise. In brief, these themes are the future of the body, cultural evolution and futures of thinking.

Michael Murphy’s book The Future of the Body documents ‘superhuman powers’ unrelated to technological or biological enhancement (Murphy, 1992). For forty years Murphy, founder of Esalen Institute, has been researching what he calls a Natural History of Supernormal Attributes. He has developed an archive of 10,000 studies of individual humans, throughout history, who have demonstrated supernormal experiences across twelve groups of attributes. In almost 800 pages Murphy documents the supernormal capacities of Catholic mystics, Sufi ecstatics, Hindi-Buddhist siddhis, martial arts practitioners, and elite athletes. Murphy concludes that these extreme examples are the ‘developing limbs and organs of our evolving human nature’. We also know from the examples of savants, extreme sport and adventure, and narratives of mystics and saints from the vast literature from the perennial philosophies, that we humans have always extended ourselves—often using little more than the power of our minds.

Regarding cultural evolution, numerous 20^th century scholars and writers have put forward ideas about human cultural futures. Ervin László links evolution of consciousness with global planetary shifts (László, 2006). Richard Tarnas in The Passion of the Western Mind traces socio-cultural developments over the last 2,000 years, pointing to emergent changes (Tarnas, 1991). Jürgen Habermas suggests a similar developmental pattern in his book Communication and the Evolution of Society (Habermas, 1979). In the late 1990s Duane Elgin and Coleen LeDrew undertook a forty-three-nation World Values Survey, including Scandinavia, Switzerland, Britain, Canada, and the United States. They concluded, ‘a new global culture and consciousness have taken root and are beginning to grow in the world’. They called it the postmodern shift and described it as having two qualities: an ecological perspective and a self-reflexive ability (Elgin & LeDrew, 1997).

In relation to futures of thinking, adult developmental psychologists have built on positive psychology, and the human potential movement beginning with Abraham Maslow’s book Further Reaches of Human Nature (Maslow, 1971). In combination with transpersonal psychology the research is rich with extended views of human futures in cognitive, emotional, and spiritual domains. For four decades, adult developmental psychology researchers such as Michael Commons, Jan Sinnott, and Lawrence Kohlberg have been researching the systematic, pluralistic, complex, and integrated thinking of mature adults (Commons & Ross, 2008; Kohlberg, 1990; Sinnott, 1998). They call this mature thought ‘postformal reasoning’ and their research provides valuable insights into higher modes of reasoning that are central to the discourse on futures of thinking. Features they identify include complex paradoxical thinking, creativity and imagination, relativism and pluralism, self-reflection and ability to dialogue, and intuition. Ken Wilber’s integral psychology research complements his cultural history research to build a significantly enhanced image of the potential for consciously evolving human futures (Wilber, 2000).

I apply these findings to education in my book Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures (Gidley, 2016).

Can AI ever cross the Consciousness Threshold?

Given the breadth and subtlety of postformal reasoning, how likely is it that machines could ever acquire such higher functioning human features? The technotopians discussing artificial superhuman intelligence carefully avoid the consciousness question. Bostrom explains that all the machine intelligence systems currently in use operate in a very narrow range of human cognitive capacity (weak AI). Even at its most ambitious, it is limited to trying to replicate ‘abstract reasoning and general problem-solving skills’ (strong AI). In spite of all the hype around AI and ASI, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)’s own website states that even ‘human-equivalent general intelligence is still largely relegated to the science fiction shelf.’ Regardless of who writes about posthumanism, and whether they are Oxford philosophers, MIT scientists, or Google engineers, they do not yet appear to be aware that there are higher forms of human reasoning than their own. Nor do they have the scientific and technological means to deliver on their high-budget fantasies. Machine super-intelligence is not only an oxymoron, but a science fiction concept.

Even if techno-developers were to succeed in replicating general intelligence (strong AI), it would only function at the level of Piaget’s formal operations. Yet adult developmental psychologists have shown that mature, high-functioning adults are capable of very complex, imaginative, integrative, paradoxical, spiritual, intuitive wisdom—just to name a few of the qualities we humans can consciously evolve. These complex postformal logics go far beyond the binary logic used in coding and programming machines, and it seems also far beyond the conceptual parameters of the AI programmers themselves. I find no evidence in the literature that anyone working with AI is aware of either the limits of formal reasoning or the vast potential of higher stages of postformal reasoning. In short, ASI proponents are entrapped in their thin cybernetic view of intelligence. As such they are oblivious to the research on evolution of consciousness, metaphysics of mind, multiple intelligences, philosophy and psychology of consciousness, transpersonal psychology and wisdom studies, all providing ample evidence that human intelligence is highly complex and evolving.

When all of this research is taken together it indicates that we humans are already capable of far greater powers of mind, emotion, body, and spirit than previously imagined. If we seriously want to develop superhuman intelligence and powers in the 21^st century and beyond we have a choice. We can continue to invest heavily in naïve technotopian dreams of creating machines that can operate better than humans. Or we can invest more of our consciousness, energy, and resources on educating and consciously evolving human futures with all the wisdom that would entail.

About Professor Jennifer M. Gidley PhD

Author, psychologist, educator and futurist, Jennifer is a global thought leader and advocate for human-centred futures in an era of hi-tech hype and hubris. She is Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS, Sydney and author of The Future: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2017) and Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures (Springer, 2016). As former President of the World Futures Studies Federation (2009–2017), a UNESCO and UN ECOSOC partner and global peak body for futures studies, Jennifer led a network of hundreds of the world’s leading futures scholars and researchers from over 60 countries for eight years.

References

[To check references please go to original article in Paradigm Explorer, p. 15–18]

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