This blog post explores various scenarios concerning humanity’s end and how scientific and technological progress could threaten our future.
How long can humans live? We always live with death close at hand. In daily life, we can meet death for various reasons: tripping and falling, driving a car incorrectly, or contracting cancer. However, threats facing all of humanity, beyond individual deaths, are more diverse and leave a deeper resonance. What are some global risks? We can think of many: solar flares, asteroid impacts, natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis, sea level rise due to global warming, world wars caused by oil shortages, nuclear bombs, and more. Scientists also warn that the ‘sixth mass extinction’ may have already begun. This means a large-scale extinction event, similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago, is currently underway due to human influence. Can we truly avoid such a global catastrophe?
Scenarios of human extinction, often featured in movies and novels, frequently involve such natural disasters or wars. However, the author points out that we face not only movie-like disasters but also seeds of destruction originating from within humanity itself—seeds we have sown ourselves. This book presents the possibility that the species Homo sapiens could face extinction for reasons you may not have considered, reasons different from the ones I’ve just introduced.
The author, Yuval Harari, argues that it is not external disasters but rather humanity’s excessive development and the misuse of technology that could hasten our end. In the past, there was no intelligent designer. An intelligent designer, as the term suggests, refers to an intelligent being who planned and constructed the ecosystem, a concept frequently invoked in creationism. However, according to the theory of natural selection, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the changes in living organisms occurred naturally over long periods of time, not through a designer’s plan. For example, the giraffe’s neck grew longer because individuals who could more easily reach food reproduced, not because the giraffe decided, “I should grow a longer neck.” Thus, over billions of years, life evolved not by a designer but by the laws of nature.
But now we live in a different era. Humans are acquiring the ability to directly manipulate organisms and their environment as ‘intelligent designers’. Through modern biotechnology, humans can design mice that glow with fluorescence or plants resistant to disease. These technologies allow us to reconfigure the form and characteristics of living beings in ways impossible through natural evolution. The first possibility for the extinction of Homo sapiens, as Harari points out, is self-design through biotechnology. By artificially enhancing many aspects—human physiology, immune systems, lifespan, intellectual and emotional capacities—and manipulating genes, Homo sapiens seeks to transcend the limitations of the species ‘Homo sapiens’. If such changes persist, future humanity may become so different from present-day sapiens that the very identity of ‘Homo sapiens’ could vanish.
The second path to extinction mentioned by Yuval Noah Harari is robotics and cyborgization. Humans have already entered a stage of merging with machines to enhance their capabilities. This goes beyond simply using prosthetic limbs; it extends to technological development aimed at connecting the brain to computers. As these technologies advance, we may be able to freely download and share emotions, memories, and abilities online. For instance, if one could simply download piano-playing skills or instantly learn a new language, people might ‘insert’ knowledge via data rather than gaining it through experience. This would blur the boundaries between self and others, between humans and data, potentially transforming human identity profoundly. In such a world, how much of ‘me’ would truly be me? Could we maintain our human identity?
The third potential extinction stems from the creation of entirely inanimate entities. This includes computer programs that evolve independently of human-created artificial intelligence, as well as digitally replicating viruses capable of infinite proliferation. Technologies like the AI Go program AlphaGo, which recently made headlines, have opened the possibility for artificial intelligence to learn and evolve autonomously. If such programs were to develop beyond human control through self-improvement, this would pose an unprecedented threat to humanity. Furthermore, if computer viruses or autonomously proliferating digital entities were to expand their reach, a day may come when non-biological digital lifeforms infiltrate and control resources in the physical world.
Throughout history, humanity has conquered nature, altered the environment, and expanded its domain. Yet Yuval Noah Harari warns that this excessive development could paradoxically lead to humanity’s own demise. He argues that humanity’s relentless self-modification through endless competition and desire, causing us to lose sight of the original concept of ‘humanity,’ could spell our end. In other words, the extinction of Sapiens occurs when Sapiens can no longer remain Sapiens.
Future humanity may transform into something unimaginable today. While technological progress has gifted humanity astonishing potential, can we truly be certain that its ultimate outcome will be solely hopeful?
