Cosmists and Terrans
De Garis believes that a major war before the end of the 21st century, resulting in billions of deaths, is almost inevitable. Intelligent machines (or 'artilects', a shortened form of 'artificial intellects') will be far more intelligent than humans and will threaten to attain world domination, resulting in a conflict between 'Cosmists', who support the artilects, and 'Terrans', who oppose them (both of these are terms of his invention). He describes this conflict as a 'gigadeath' war, reinforcing the point that billions of people will be killed. This scenario has been criticised by other AI researchers, including Chris Malcolm, who described it as "entertaining science fiction horror stories which happen to have caught the attention of the popular media". Kevin Warwick called it a "hellish nightmare, as portrayed in films such as the Terminator". In 2005 de Garis published a book describing his views on this topic entitled The Artilect War.
Cosmism is a moral philosophy that favours building or growing strong artificial intelligence and ultimately leaving Earth to the Terrans, who oppose this path for humanity. The first half of the book describes technologies which he believes will make it possible for computers to be billions or trillions of times more intelligent than humans. He predicts that as artificial intelligence improves and becomes progressively more human-like, differing views will begin to emerge regarding how far such research should be allowed to proceed. Cosmists will foresee the massive, truly astronomical potential of substrate-independent cognition, and will therefore advocate unlimited growth in the designated fields, in the hopes that "super intelligent" machines might one day colonise the universe. It is this "cosmic" view of history, in which the fate of one single species, on one single planet, is seen as insignificant next to the fate of the known universe, that gives the Cosmists their name.
Terrans on the other hand, will have a more "terrestrial" Earth-centred view, in which the fate of the Earth and its species (like humanity) are seen as being all-important. To Terrans, a future without humans is to be avoided at all costs, as it would represent the worst-case scenario. As such, Terrans will find themselves unable to ignore the possibility that super intelligent machines might one day cause the destruction of the human race—being very immensely intelligent and so cosmically inclined, these artilect machines may have no more moral or ethical difficulty in exterminating humanity than humans do in using medicines to cure diseases. So, Terrans will see themselves as living during the closing of a window of opportunity, to disable future artilects before they are built, after which humans will no longer have a say in the affairs of intelligent machines.
It is these two extreme ideologies which de Garis believes may herald a new world war, wherein one group with a 'grand plan' (the Cosmists) will be rabidly opposed by another which feels itself to be under deadly threat from that plan (the Terrans). The factions, he predicts, may eventually war to the death because of this, as the Terrans will come to view the Cosmists as "arch-monsters" when they begin seriously discussing acceptable risks, and the probabilities of large percentages of Earth-based life going extinct. In response to this, the Cosmists will come to view the Terrans as being reactionary extremists, and will stop treating them and their ideas seriously, further aggravating the situation, possibly beyond reconciliation.
Throughout his book, de Garis states that he is ambivalent about which viewpoint he ultimately supports, and attempts to make convincing cases for both sides. He elaborates towards the end of the book that the more he thinks about it, the more he feels like a Cosmist, because he feels that despite the horrible possibility that humanity might ultimately be destroyed, perhaps inadvertently or at least indifferently, by the artilects, he cannot ignore the fact that the human species is just another link in the evolutionary chain, and must go extinct in their current form anyway, whereas the artilects could very well be the next link in that chain and therefore would be excellent candidates to carry the torch of science and exploration forward into the rest of the universe.
He relates a morally isomorphic scenario in which extraterrestrial intelligences visit the earth three billion years ago and discover two domains of life living there, one domain which is older but simpler and contemporarily dominant, but which upon closer study appears to be incapable of much further evolutionary development; and one younger domain which is struggling to survive, but which upon further study displays the potential to evolve into all the varieties of life existing on the Earth today, including humanity, and then queries the reader as to whether they would feel ethically compelled to destroy the dominant domain of life to ensure the survival of the younger one, or to destroy the younger one in order to ensure the survival of the older and more populous domain which was "there first". He states that he believes that, like himself, most of the public would feel torn or at least ambivalent about the outcome of artilects at first, but that as the technology advanced, the issue would be forced and most would feel compelled to choose a side, and that as such the public consciousness of the coming issue should be raised now so that society can choose, hopefully before the factions becomes irreconcilably polarised, which outcome it prefers.
de Garis relates that "just out of curiosity, I asked Kevin (Warwick) whether he was a Terran or a Cosmist. He said he was against the idea of artilects being built (i.e., he is Terran). I was surprised, and felt a shiver go up my spine. That moment reminded me of a biography of Lenin that I had read in my 20s in which the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks first started debating the future government of Russia. What began as an intellectual difference ended up as a Russian civil war after 1917 between the white and the red Russians."
Kevin Warwick would be better classified a member of a third group de Garis predicts will emerge between the two. He colloquially refers to this third party as "Cyborgians", because they will not be opposed to artilects as such, but they will desire to personally participate in the artilect colonisation of the universe, rather than fall into obsolescence. They will seek to become artilects by gradually merging themselves with machines, which is the main focus of Professor Warwick's cybernetics research.
Read more about this topic: Hugo De Garis