A new world order created by humans for humans- homo sapiens to robo sapiens.

  

The human race has come a long way from establishing itself as the predominant homo sapiens species alive on the planet, to creating powerful, innovative and pathbreaking technologies. Essentially AI that is yet to play a major role in how our species will evolve or may we say struggle and fight to evolve alongside it’s own hand created competitor humanoids? Humans are probably creating a new race called robo sapiens! However only time will tell how true this premise will be. 

How did the world structures designed by homo sapiens look like until now?

Humans have dominated plant earth by evolving over long periods of time with changes in biology, genetic makeup, behaviors, psychology ultimately winning the tag of survival of the fittest amongst the other weaker species. Human race has craved freedom, independence, attention, acknowledgement, validation, accomplishment and sense of achievement. However, above all is their desire for power and control. One way to achieve that, was the creation of social structures, systems, and subsystems in the form of religion, social and cultural structure (being part of a community), family structures, governance structures and politics to create order in chaos. 

Humans have always had this deep-seated desire to control everything be it people, their behaviors, habits, reactions. Human psychology can be immensely complex and therefore it is uncertain to understand what another person thinks, maybe this innate desire and quest to understand humans and control their reactions, humans ended up creating human machines that can be controlled by them and dance to their command to satisfy their need for control and dominance. Nonetheless this inclination to experiment with creating a human machine (humanoids) that can be controlled can backfire where it gains so much power to reverse the power dynamics that has existed for millenniums.

Humanoids where data will be the new life force can become a part of our everyday life not just employed in warehouses and factories. They will work on a combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence suited to meet the personalized needs and requirements of their human owner. Finally, humans can have full control on their personal humanoid and tweak it to meet its needs. 

Let’s have a look at how AI humanoids will have a metamorphic impact on how the world will function over the coming decades. 

AI humanoids will transform social structures, reshaping roles, relationships and cultural norms. 

Humanoids can act as companions, caregivers and therapists to help beat loneliness for the elderly and those who suffer from social anxiety. However, over time humans can grow emotionally attached and dependent to these machines as they will always meet their expectations that another human may sometimes falter to meet, dehumanizing existing human relationships. This may lead to humans living in a delusional reality avoiding interaction with other human beings impacting social relations or social structures created by humans. This delusional reality is in fact taking shape as people have started to get addicted to using AI chatbots and are treating them as their best friends, brother, sister and more!!

AI humanoid partners challenge marriage and dating norms offering conflict free relationships. AI humanoids could transform marriage, succession (AI as estate planners and caregivers) , kids (AI driven childcare), and birth (low birth rates- falling populations) and risk eroding of emotional bonds and cultural traditions (how the society has functioned since centuries). Imagine a time when humans get so attached to AI that they may leave their wills in the name of their beloved humanoids with regards to succession planning. 

AI humanoids can have massive implications on human mental state as they will be living in a delusion. In addition humans may be a bit skeptical of using humanoids when it comes privacy of data as AI will collect massive data on their day to day life. They can act as hobby buddies or perfect pals teaching leisure skills like cooking, gaming, painting, dancing and more, reducing human hangouts. 

In addition overreliance on humanoids will impact organic community engagements like community gatherings or participation in cultural rituals or events leading to cultural erosion. Humanoids will challenge collectivist (Asia) society norms v/s individualist (West) gaining backlash and criticism. Humanoids will be majorly programed with the human and cultural biases created over centuries. They may give more western standardized answers and outlook to questions. Imagine a time when maybe AI will become so powerful that it itself can question the premises of human made biases of culture, religion ( threat to divine order), social structures philosophies and more. The existing generation of this race may resist these answers to these questions, but the new generations may accept these new values and maybe treat AI as the new God.

AI humanoids will transform the work environment by automating tasks, reshaping team dynamics and propel new skills. Let’s see how it will impact the workplace and livelihood in the coming decades?

AI humanoids can achieve physical and cognitive tasks and can act as co-workers be it in a factory setting or your workplace resulting in flexible production lines, human-robot collaborations and global competitiveness. They will impact job roles in manufacturing, retail, hospitality, health care and caregiving leading to a massive impact on the livelihood of millions.  While they may automate numerous tasks they will create a way for new job titles such as robot maintenance, ethics oversight, AI programming. 

Humanoids can propel a culture of social isolation since they will handle customer facing and team support roles resulting in reduced workplace banter and team cohesion leading to a diminished human touch. While humanoids will be viewed as productivity boosters and efficiency enhancers in settings like the tech forward Silicion Valley (individualist culture) on the flip side they may be viewed as threatening human centric values like empathy, team work and creativity in collectivist cultures. 

In agriculture sector they will support in precision farming and can address labour shortage issue. Humanoids can work in adverse weather and long hours without fatigue and will also predict crop yield, detect disease early and integrate with buyers and warehouses. Humanoids may foster protests by labour unions in industrial sectors as it will cause massive job displacements and cultural resistance. 

The utilization of humanoids can lead to lack of self esteem and insecurity amongst human workers as they may not feel as valued. There will be a constant requirement of upskilling. Younger workers may lose access to entry level opportunities as tasks will be automated. Only the bigger corporations will enjoy the benefits of owning these humanoids due to their high costs (>$10,000) threatening smaller businesses and businesses in developing economies. AI will lead to inequality and destabilize incomes for vulnerable workers.

AI humanoids will revolutionize education by promoting personalized learning, supporting teachers and teaching future ready skills. 

Humanoids will act as one on one tutors personalizing its teaching style according to the student’s needs, requirements, weaknesses and strengths. They will create interactive experiences and promote gamified learning for students. They can teach subjects like coding, languages, vocational skills whilst providing real time feedback to students. Humanoids will assist teachers in administrative tasks, class room activities and tracking performance so they can focus on activities like fostering creativity, critical thinking and more.

 However access to humanoids will be reserved for the wealthy and essentially the developed world causing education inequality gap and digital divide. Reliance on humanoids for simplest tasks like writing, critical thinking and analysis will have serious ramifications on the cognitive development of a child.  As they will spend most of their time with machines students may lack opportunities to develop interpersonal skills, communication skills, teamwork skills and emotional intelligence to deal in social settings.

Humanoids will reshape societal, religious, political and media power dynamics by augmenting tech-driven influence, challenging traditional authorities, and shifting who controls the narratives.

Governments and tech giants/oligarchs/elites will battle it out to determine who will emerge more powerful, leading to power struggles between the two. Technology giants will be the king makers in the sphere of politics and can act as unelected power brokers shaping public opinion, filtering political content and maybe influencing elections worldwide. They are the ones who will own the end-to-end humanoid ecosystem (hardware, software and data). 

Humanoids will act as virtual influencers that can enforce political narratives based on who programs them (the state, tech companies), leading to fear of biased messaging. They will be used to monitor debate and deliver campaign messages, creating personalized voter engagements i.e., adjusting arguments based on each person’s beliefs and concerns. 

AI humanoids will redefine the role of journalism and media as they take the role of news anchors and influencers who will speaker the language of their programmers (be it the government or tech companies) to influence the public. They can either preserve and propagate religious teaching or completely challenge the basis of religion facing resistance from religious figures and followers. 

Humanoid’s role in warfare could lead to more frequent dethatched and ethically complex conflicts effecting future trajectory of wars. The fundamental dynamics of war will change as they will be mechanized and unmanned. Nations that prosper in the adoption of AI and humanoid robotics in the case of defense strategy will gain military superiority shaking up balance of power and diplomatic relations. Military operations will become more data driven. They will transform military operations by enhancing efficiency, reducing casualties and introducing new ethical and strategic challenges. 

AI humanoids could transform the social sector and philanthropy by boosting efficiency, outreach, and advocacy, but they risk widening inequities, eroding trust, and reducing human connection.

Humanoids will support NGOs in a 360 degree manner, handholding them in every stage  from reaching the beneficiaries to strengthening the monitoring and evaluation processes (saving admin costs for NGOs) , donor engagement (showing real time data and impact) and capacity building for NGOs and beneficiary communities.

AI humanoids could profoundly influence philosophy, higher purpose, beliefs, and consciousness by challenging human identity, freeing time for reflection, and sparking new spiritualities.

The role of humans will be challenged as millions lose jobs and livelihood, leading to a phase of existential crisis as they question their purpose in life. However it can also be argued that if humanoids will take control of mundane day to day tasks, humans can spend more time to reflect and explore self-discovery, spirituality and the arts. AI humanoids could compete with humans economically, socially, and philosophically by outperforming us in work, relationships, and influence, potentially challenging our purpose and population. They may shift human focus from being a worker to an innovator or a creator leading to a golden age of leisure and artistic expression. It will raise questions about mind and body problem in the field of philosophy. If a humanoid can display signs of intelligence, emotions and consciousness can it be said that it has a mind of its own without a biological body? This premise will give lead to debates. The very definition of human may be challenged as we used traits like reason, language, creativity and self-awareness to distinguish ourselves from different species but AI humanoids will soon possess all these qualities. 

AI humanoids could transform science, physics, metaphysics, and quantum physics by accelerating research, refining experiments, and challenging our understanding of reality and consciousness. 

Humanoids will play a pivotal role in developments in the field of physics by assisting scientists in solving extremely complex math problems leading to new discoveries, they can build and run experiments in dangerous environments like underground, in space or in areas where there is extreme radiation. In the domain of metaphysics, humanoids will question the very essence of life, time, reality, consciousness. Furthermore science may merge with philosophy and spiritual thinking creating a completely different perspective of things. Imagine a humanoid debating with a monk or scientist about whether time is real or an illusion. Humanoids will propel scientific discovery at lightening speeds and provide answers to questions humans have not been able to find answers to. 

AI humanoids could transform human longevity, healthcare, and quality of life by advancing medical research, improving care delivery, and enhancing daily well-being.

AI humanoids will shift the focus of healthcare from curative to preventive healthcare. This will lead to early detection of health problems and slow aging. Humanoids will aid the diagnosis process and tailor make treatments based on each individual’s genetic makeup fostering faster recovery. Humanoids can speed up research assisting scientists and invent cures to uncurable diseases. 

Humanoids will foster human ambition of space colonization, interplanetary travel and living possible in the future.

Assistance from humanoids will bolster the dreams of interplanetary settlement as they take the responsibility of establishing off-world infrastructure, maintenance and ensure the environment is livable. Humanoid will cater to booming demand for space travel in the coming future. They can design spacecrafts, fix engineering flaws, work on endless simulations, navigation, repair and scientific experiments. Interplanetary living will fundamentally reshape societal structures, governance and community identity. Humanoids will contribute to creating and supporting fledgling colonies. Humanoids may be the first citizens of space as they will be majorly responsible for creating a civilization there. 

Let’s recap how humans have evolved over eons and how AI humanoids and humans may coexist or become competitors?

The human brain has developed over millions of years in the evolution cycle and in the process the human mind (unconscious, subconscious and conscious) went through humongous amounts of conditioning, first through primal survival instincts to tribal social mind to problem solving and intelligence to cultural programming to tech overlay to self-reflective consciousness. 

This pace of slow development of the human brain led to slow and incremental developments in big movements like the agricultural revolution or industrial revolution and so on over periods of decades. Technological dominance also came into picture over the last 40-50 years. However with AI, the tables have turned as the speed of innovation and developments will be meteoric. 

The new human world (humanoids world) created by humans is not constrained by biology and is revolutionizing technology at breakneck speed as we can see with the developments in the AI world, which took less than 15 years to reach to this stage.  Human evolution was always constrained by biology resulting in very long periods of learning, adaptability, replication and speed. However the same constraint is not applicable in the case of AI as it is programmed with vast amounts of past data (about every possible thing on earth) and possesses the ability of self-evolving over time supported by massive computational power and resources. The huge AI growth will be accelerated through network effect, ready infrastructure, exponential learning and automation leverage.

AI backed humanoids will be used as an external brain leading to reduced neural efficiency and hence a more creative and less analytical brain. The expected brain computer interface (like nuralink – embedding chip in human brain or cloud linked cognition) will blur identity boundaries resulting in cognitive atrophy (slowing of the brain and its functions making humans more dependent on AI). This may have detrimental effect on the cognitive development of the new generations. 

Robosapiens will be able to outpace human capacity in logic, memory and reasoning. They will be the most dominating intelligent species and will exert dominance in most areas be it work, economy, creativity and innovation, relationships and social competition, governance and leadership, education and science except deeply biological issues. 

If humanoids can repair, replicate and run without a human energy source then humans may lose control over them. However AI can only create functional subconsciousness and not experiment and feel as only humans have that biological advantage of consciousness. 

In a nutshell human race must structure and device responsible and ethical AI with strict engineering protocols, to use it as a collaborative support system and not as a human replacement technology.

 

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article are views of the author in general and the author does not hold any legal responsibility or liability for the same.)