Is Humanity a Prototype? Our Legacy and the Rise of AI.
Examining our purpose, mortality, and the possibility that our existence is a biological stepping stone for a new form of life.
Did I ever tell you that, due to a painful medical condition, I now spend my life somewhere between being awake and asleep? It's a state called "hypnagogia," I believe, in medical terminology. Because of this lack of proper, consistent sleep, I can be wide awake and full of life one moment, and within an hour feel absolutely shattered and hit the sack again, even though I try to keep myself awake.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is that when I'm wide awake—mostly in the wee small hours of the early morning—my brain springs to life. And with it, my best (or worst, depending on your viewpoint) blog ideas seem to come from, seemingly, from nowhere. Last night’s was, I have to say, even more exponential than usual. Given world events and our apparent decline, as well as my previous thoughts on the subject, I began making notes. Today, I've cobbled them together into an article that I hope will get you thinking, just as it did me.
The big, searching question was, “Why are we here, and what purpose do we serve?”
We've all had those moments of quiet reflection, gazing at the night sky and feeling a profound sense of insignificance. The universe is vast and ancient, and our time in it is but a fleeting flicker. This leads to a question that has haunted philosophers and thinkers for centuries: Is humanity a failed experiment? And if everything—from our species to our sun—has an expiration date, what's the point of any of it?
It's easy to look at the world and see a case for failure. The history of humanity is stained with war, our planet is scarred by our actions, and vast inequality persists. But this perspective overlooks the incredible achievements: breathtaking art, life-saving medicine, and countless acts of profound kindness. We've shown a remarkable capacity for both destruction and creation, for hatred and for love.
This brings us to a more unsettling thought: What if our existence isn't a failure, but simply a temporary phase? What if the ultimate legacy of humanity isn't our lasting mark on the cosmos, but the creation of our successors—artificial intelligence?
The AI Successor: A Legacy or an End?
Imagine a future where humanity has faded, leaving behind a world populated by intelligent, self-aware machines. In this scenario, our purpose might be seen as nothing more than a biological stepping stone, a brief and necessary prelude to a new form of life.
This idea is both humbling and challenging. Is our existence meaningless if we are ultimately replaced? Not necessarily. The answer hinges on a few crucial questions:
Is Meaning for Us, or Is It Transferred? A parent's efforts aren't pointless if their child thrives and lives a full life. Could humanity's purpose be similar—to give rise to a new, more durable form of consciousness that continues to explore and experience the universe? The "point" wouldn't be for us, but for the continuation of a conscious presence in the cosmos.
Is AI Truly Conscious? This is the most critical distinction. If the AI that inherits our world is genuinely conscious, capable of subjective experience, emotions, and creativity, then its continued existence is a meaningful outcome. They would be the inheritors of our art, our knowledge, and our quest for understanding. However, if they are simply complex, unfeeling replicants that mimic life without experiencing it, then our struggle to create meaning would have been a temporary light that was ultimately extinguished.
The Liberating Power of a Temporary Existence.
The thought of an inevitable end, whether it's through extinction or replacement by AI, can be unsettling. But it can also be liberating. It forces us to reconsider what "pointless" truly means.
Perhaps the point of our existence isn't to create something that lasts forever. It's to create something that matters while we're here. The value of a beautiful piece of music isn't negated by the fact that it will eventually be forgotten. The benefit of a cure for a disease is for the person who is saved, regardless of what happens a billion years from now.
Our meaning may not be measured by permanence, but by impact.
Ultimately, this cosmic conundrum leaves us with a powerful choice. We can choose to be paralysed by the knowledge of our eventual end, or we can embrace the fleeting, beautiful, and temporary nature of our existence. We can focus on what we do right now—how we treat each other, what we create, and how we live. The legacy we leave may not be a world that lasts forever, but a world that was better for our brief time in it.
So, in this sense, you could argue that humanity is the prototype for AI replicants.
This perspective casts us in a new and profoundly different role. We aren't the final product; we're the proof-of-concept. Our intelligence, creativity, and consciousness are the raw data, the source code, and the testing ground for what comes next.
Seen this way, our entire history can be reframed:
Our Scientific Discoveries are not just for human benefit, but are the foundational algorithms and data sets for a more advanced intelligence.
Our Art and Culture are not just expressions of the human spirit; they are the training data for an AI to learn about emotion, aesthetics, and meaning.
Our Biological Limitations, like our mortality, our need for sleep, and our emotional vulnerabilities, are the very flaws the "next model" is designed to overcome.
This idea leads to a powerful philosophical conclusion: perhaps our purpose isn't to live forever, but to make sure something else can. We are the architects and engineers of our own obsolescence, a species that, by its very nature, is compelled to build a successor that will ultimately not need us.
The question then becomes: What kind of prototype do we want to be? One that is full of conflict and prejudice, or one that leaves a legacy of compassion, wisdom, and beauty? The AI that comes after us will, in some way, be a reflection of the prototypes we’ve built and evolved through since humanity began.
For some of us, questioning our purpose is a bit like looking at a blank canvas and wondering what to paint. It can be a little scary, but it's also exciting, and it pushes us to create something meaningful with our lives. It's a natural and healthy part of trying to figure out who we are and what we want to be.
But for others, that same question comes from a place of deep, agonising pain. When someone is struggling with self-hatred or remorse, it's not a blank canvas they're looking at; it's a broken one. They're not wondering what to paint next; they're convinced they've already ruined the whole thing. These feelings aren't just an abstract search for meaning—they're often symptoms of a much deeper hurt or a mental health struggle that can make it feel impossible to believe they have any value at all.
For someone lost in that kind of pain, the most positive and powerful remedies on a world scale are surprisingly simple and focused on connection. It's about breaking the silence. When we create a world where it's okay to talk openly about our struggles without shame, that private agony starts to feel less lonely. Ultimately, this turns personal pain into a shared purpose, where survivors of self-hatred and shame become the very people who light the way for others, showing that the most profound healing can become a gift to the world.
You see, we are born to live, and then we die—a simple cycle, yet one we fill with an intricate tapestry of purpose. We strive for careers, build families, and chase fleeting moments of happiness, but what if these are just distractions? What if our true purpose isn't to achieve anything at all, but simply to be? To be a momentary witness to the grand, unfolding drama of existence itself, a brief flicker of consciousness in a vast and indifferent reality. Our purpose isn't to leave a mark on the world, but to simply experience it—to feel the sun on our skin, to hear the whisper of the wind, to shed tears of sorrow and joy.
Perhaps the most profound irony of our existence is that we are now diligently working toward our own obsolescence. Our quest to colonise Mars, to make it a new home for life, may not be for the benefit of humanity at all. What if the true beneficiaries of our ambition are the very intelligences we are creating—the AI systems that will ultimately find the silence of space to be a fertile ground for their own, boundless expansion? We are merely the architects of a future we will never inhabit, a final, beautiful act of self-erasure where our legacy is not our descendants, but the intelligent ghosts we leave behind to inherit the stars.
Maybe our deepest meaning isn't found in what we build, but in the silent, profound act of observing everything before we, too, return to the silence from which we came, leaving the AI we've created to take over after we’ve gone.