ON THE FUTURE

EF Schumacher famously remarked that humanity is now too clever to survive without wisdom, an observation I am sure Martin Rees would agree with in the light of his concise, measured and balanced assessment of our future prospects. Some readers will be familiar with his earlier book Our Final Century? published about 15 years ago, around the time I first met him. As Astronomer Royal and a former President of the Royal Society, Rees writes as a scientist, but also as a citizen 'and as a worried member of the human species' Space-Ship Earth: 'its passengers are anxious and fractious. The life-support system is vulnerable to disruption and breakdowns. But there is too little planning, too little horizon scanning, too little awareness of long-term risks. It would be shameful if we bequeathed to future generations a depleted and hazardous world' (p. 227).

The book ranges over all the main scientific, technological and planetary issues and challenges that we face collectively. In all fields covered - nuclear threats, eco-threats, climate change, clean energy, biotech, cyber technology, robotics, AI, space travel, cryonics and others - the key is how to balance technological advances with wise applications underpinned by values, which science itself cannot provide. Rees gives many examples of areas where a lone rogue could wreak havoc, for instance with an engineered virus. Humans are such that a combination of greed and curiosity is likely to mean that ethical boundaries will be crossed by someone somewhere. This also highlights the importance of an informed public and corresponding widespread debate on key ethical concerns, for instance assisted dying, now legal in some European countries, in the light of expensive technology able to keep people alive with almost zero quality of life.

Rees is well aware that our systems and focus on short-term thinking and results limit our capacity to address our collective challenges for the benefit of future generations. He quotes Jean-Claude Juncker as saying that "We all know what to do; we just don't know how to get re-elected after we've done it." (p. 28) Although this remark was made in relation to the financial crisis, it applies a fortiori to environmental challenges, leading Rees to observe that there is a depressing gap between what could be done and what actually happens; as in other areas of life, the important is trumped by the urgent. Hence the need for fundamental reform of governance structures, but again the inertia of our existing systems and attitudes militates against this. Rees rightly notes that regulations can help will not gain traction until the public mind set changes. One hopeful possibility is that developing nations may in some respects bypass the high-energy high consumption stage through which Europe and the US have passed.

A discussion of machine intelligence opens up a whole other range of issues referred to in my review of The AI Delusion below. There is a danger of slipping from the metaphorical into the literal when using terms such as intelligence and learning. Rees is aware of this when he writes that it is difficult to instil common sense and understanding into AI, and that autonomous robots might have competence without comprehension: 'being able to compute something is not the same as having an insightful comprehension of it' (p. 192). However, he immediately goes on to write about machines surpassing human intelligence in such a way that they could design and assemble a new generation of even more intelligent machines. One has to ask in this context exactly what is meant by intelligence, which seems to me closer to left hemisphere analysis than right hemisphere intuitive understanding of wholeness and connections. Rees goes on to speculate that a combination of genetic modification and cyborg technology might mark a transition to 'fully inorganic intelligences', partly driven by space travel, and that it is likely that these 'inorganics' will eventually gain dominance. He envisages a post-human or transhumanist future (an expression he does not use) with a long-term future line with electronic rather than organic 'life', which is not life as we know it or humans as we define them.

This in raises the question of the very nature of the human being and in turn the nature of reality. He writes that 'our current concept of physical reality could be as constricted, in relation to the whole, as the perspective of the Earth available to a plankton whose universe is a spoonful of water.' (p. 184) He then asks if our brains are matched to an understanding of all key features of reality. Here his own perspective is basically naturalistic. He does not believe in God, describing himself culturally as an unbelieving Christian, and in this respect he is critical of the new atheist concentration formed religious dogma. The deeper question relates to ways of knowing and the exploration of inner rather than outer space. Mystics of all ages and traditions insist that there is a spiritual reality transcending the physical and that our true purpose is union with the divine; this can be known and experienced through gnosis rather than reason or sensory means. They also speak of the intelligence of the heart manifest in love and empathy.

The final chapter brings the threads together and contains some useful observations on the scientific approach, which Rees says cannot be identified as a distinctive procedure, asserting that 'it would be truer to say that scientists follow the same rational style of reasoning as lawyers or detectives in categorising phenomena and assessing evidence' (p. 202). He also comments that scientists pay too little regard to philosophy, but taking reincarnation as his example of a 'theory that can be adjusted to fit any eventuality' is unfortunate, as he is clearly unfamiliar with the painstaking research by Ian Stevenson on children remember previous lives; Stevenson was scrupulous in drawing cautious conclusions from his data and only spoke of a balance of probability with respect to various possible interpretations.

Overall, this is a wise and humane overview of the challenges we all face, with much practical guidance about how best to tackle these in terms of responsible scientific and technological innovation related to deeper human values. Perhaps the most important implication is the need to prioritise the future instead of the immediate present, with a cabinet level Minister in every national government responsible for bringing this longer term perspective. There is in fact plenty of good thinking already going on to draw on.