Last week, Elon Musk, the poster boy of forward thinking innovation, made a comment regarding the dangers of technology going wrong and causing unforeseen consequences; some of which might mean an end to human civilization. I think it’s a fair question to ask then why would we even go about researching on these technologies. Or some others might ask, whether these so called unforeseen consequences might be negative outcomes to us but does that matter to the nature or universe?

Every time a discussion comes up on the possible survival of human civilization, we tend to misinterpret what it means to be a human. If the definition of being human is to be someone who looks like us and acts like us, sure that does mean an end to human civilization. But if we look at ourselves as the species that bet its survival on developing the awareness and understanding of itself and its surroundings, then the two legged and two eyed version of us might die off but our civilization will continue to grow and prosper. In an evolutionary game of life, that’s the species that won the game so far. Even though, we, as a species, lacked strength or means to attack a predator built into our body, we used our awareness of what actually constitutes to killing or living to further our lifespans and gain mastery over our lives. If every species we ever came across were to be reduced to represent just one idea, I would argue that, this idea of using learning and understanding as the means of survival, and in effect sole purpose of its existence, would be what humans stand for.

With that perspective in mind, any argument that we shouldn’t research on and learn about intelligence or genetics or any other science essentially means an end to what it means to be a human. If we remove the quintessential part of our soul, what else is there to live for? All these years, the one thing beckoning the most intelligent of the society was this curiosity to know the unknown and to see the unseen. If we restrict ourselves from doing exactly that, what is the point of being alive? What else is there to motivate us? If in the process of developing this understanding, some of us might die or may end up in a troublesome situation, how is that different from any of the experiments that we have done so far? The idea of religious tyranny, slavery, racial discrimination, scientific heresy, sugar filled drinks, tobacco, etc., were all part of our experiments with ideas and life in order to develop deeper understanding of ourselves and this universe. Our sense of morality, ethics and civil responsibility have improved only after we have gone through the evils of what lack of them implies. In our pursuit towards enlightenment, this is the price to pay.

However, this is not an argument for not regulating the process of technology adoption and propagation. Any technology that has a potential to disrupt our ability to learn and understand, as a society, should be subjected to careful review by the best minds of the society. The idea is not to stop the curious minds but to carefully calibrate usage of dangerous technologies till we develop a proper understanding of the consequences. Irrespective of anything, innovation should go on…