By Rita J. King
Vanessa Fisher interviewed me about The Rise of the Imagination Age. Listen here. Her questions were excellent, particularly regarding the future of artificial intelligence. I don’t believe in “artificial intelligence.” I see intelligence as an emergent characteristic of the vast, mysterious cosmos. As humans we are able to achieve skills that enable us to participate in consciously shaping our own evolution, which requires us to really struggle with the question:
What makes us human?
This question is the centerpiece of my work. Is there something that makes us uniquely human? Is it our ability to choose who and how to love? Is it the process of creativity? Is it nothing more complicated than contextualizing what we know against our own passions and instincts?
If there is something uniquely human and worth preserving, our last real chance to get to the heart of it, literally and figuratively, is in the Imagination Age, where we are currently positioned in our collective history between the Industrial Era and the coming Intelligence Era. Technology is still separate from us. We can tell, at least physically, where machines end and where we begin. But that won’t always be the case. In the Imagination Age, the guiding principle is to collaborate on shaping the future we can imagine instead of just letting humanity slip away in the technological current of the hybrid future, which isn’t here yet…but it’s coming.