美国国家公共电台 NPR Are Cyborgs In Our Future? 'Homo Deus' Author Thinks So

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The human species is about to change dramatically. That's the argument Yuval Noah Harari makes in his new book "Homo Deus: A Brief History Of Tomorrow." Harari is a history professor at Hebrew University in Israel. He expects we will soon engineer our bodies, brains and minds in the same way that we now design products.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: There are three main ways of doing that. First of all is to take our organic body and start tinkering with it with things like genetic¹ engineering, speeding up natural selection and actually replacing it with intelligent design - not the intelligent design of some God above the clouds but our intelligent design.

The other way is to start combining organic with inorganic² parts and creating cyborgs. For 4 billion years, all of evolution - not just of humans but of all beings - was confined to the organic realm. But very soon, we might be able to break out of the organic realm using things like brain-computer interfaces³ which combine organic parts like an organic brain with inorganic parts like bionic hands or eyes or ears.

And then the third and most extreme path is to create completely inorganic beings not even needing an organic brain but using instead artificial intelligence.

SHAPIRO: One of the ideas that stood out to me from your book is that there is no clear line that separates healing from upgrading. So for example, plastic surgery may have begun as a tool to repair people, and it quickly became a tool to improve people. And you suggest that physical improvements of other kinds will likely follow the same path. Give me an example.

HARARI: I think in general, medicine in the 21st century will switch from healing the sick to upgrading the healthy. This is true not only of plastic surgery and improvements to the body but also improvements to our cognitive⁴ abilities - for example, memory. If you find ways to repair the memory damaged by Alzheimers disease or dementia and so forth⁵, it is very likely that the same methods could be used to upgrade the memory of completely healthy people.

And if you find ways to connect brains and computers, you can rely on memories in immense databases outside your own brain. We are starting to do it in a way with our smartphones and computers, but what we may see in coming decades is humans actually merging⁶ completely with their smartphones and computers.

SHAPIRO: As you imagine this world in the not-too-distant future where people have the option of upgrading their bodies and upgrading their minds, what happens to people who don't exercise that option, who decide to stay natural?

HARARI: The real problem is not those who choose to stay natural but the fact that I think very few people at least in the beginning will have that choice at all. It's likely that all the upgrades, at least at first, will cost a lot and will be available only to a small elite⁷.

So for the first time in human history, we might see economic inequality being translated into biological inequality. And once such a gap opens, it becomes almost impossible to close it because then the rich will really be far more capable than everybody else.

SHAPIRO: This near-future that you describe can quite quickly start to feel very frightening, dystopian, like a future that nobody would want to live in. Was there any moment when you were writing this book and thought, you know what; I really just don't want to immerse myself in this world. I mean you go deep into it. Was the experience of writing it as harrowing as the experience of reading it can be?

HARARI: (Laughter) No because these are not prophecies. We can still do something about it.

SHAPIRO: What can we do?

HARARI: One thing that we need to do is start thinking far more seriously about global governance because the only solution to such problems will be on a global level, not on a national level. I mean actually of course in the last year or two, we are seeing a retrograde movement away from global thinking and into more nationalist and isolationist thinking. And this is very dangerous.

I mean traditionally, people said that nationalism is dangerous because it leads to war, but now nationalism is far more dangerous because not only it leads to war. It also may prevent us from having any effective answer that can help us cope with dangers like the rise of artificial intelligence or the implications of bioengineering.

SHAPIRO: Yuval Noah Harari's new book is called "Homo Deus: A Brief History Of Tomorrow." Thank you for the enlightening and slightly terrifying read.

(LAUGHTER)

HARARI: Thank you.

1 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

2 inorganic   

adj.无生物的；无机的

参考例句：

• The fundamentals of inorganic chemistry are very important.无机化学的基础很重要。
• This chemical plant recently bought a large quantity of inorganic salt.这家化工厂又买进了大量的无机盐。

3 interfaces   

界面( interface的名词复数 )； 接口（连接两装置的电路，可使数据从一种代码转换成另一种代码）； 交界； 联系

参考例句：

• If the class needs to be reprogrammed, new interfaces are created. 如果class需要重新程序设计，新的interfaces创建。
• Interfaces solve this problem of evolving code. Interfaces解决了代码升级的问题。

4 cognitive   

adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的

参考例句：

• As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大，他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
• The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。

5 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

6 merging   

合并（分类）

参考例句：

• Many companies continued to grow by merging with or buying competing firms. 许多公司通过合并或收买竞争对手的公司而不断扩大。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• To sequence by repeated splitting and merging. 用反复分开和合并的方法进行的排序。

7 elite   

n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的

参考例句：

• The power elite inside the government is controlling foreign policy.政府内部的一群握有实权的精英控制着对外政策。
• We have a political elite in this country.我们国家有一群政治精英。