Novacene summary

If you’re ever lucky enough to view the earth from space at night, you’ll see a globe veined with glowing light. There’ll be no doubt in your mind that we live in the age of humanity.

But our reign on Earth has only been short. Our planet is 4.5 billion years old, and life has existed on Earth for 3.8 billion years, but the modern human species has only been around for about 200,000 years. Even then, civilization as we know it has only existed for 6,000 years, and post-industrial society just 300.

The Anthropocene – the geological age of humanity – represents only these last few hundred years of human history. It's an infinitesimally short period. It was only a few hundred years ago that humanity stopped merely adapting to global environmental changes and, through the mass burning of fossil fuels, began impacting the earth’s environmental systems on a global scale.

But after only a few centuries, the Anthropocene is already coming to an end. How can this be?

According to the author, we’re currently transitioning into a new geological age, the Novacene. This age will be characterized by the emergence of a new form of life produced by innovation in artificial intelligence technology. This new life-form will then escape human control and begin intervening in global environmental systems autonomously.

But hold on a second – can we really say that artificial intelligence will constitute a new life-form?

In short, yes. There are two fundamental characteristics that living things possess: autonomy and self-replication. With the current state of AI, both of these are just a stone’s throw away.

We already use computers in the design and production of new computing technology. Whereas the diameter of the smallest wire that a human can see and handle is 1 micrometer, the latest Intel processing chip contains wires with a diameter of just 14 nanometers, which is 70 times smaller. Without computers to aid us, we would be unable to manufacture such devices.

So far, the design process still requires human input, but this is likely to change with the development of autonomous AI.

The Google-owned company DeepMind has already unveiled an autonomous AI called AlphaZero. Whereas conventional AIs learn to play strategy games such as chess and go by analyzing catalogs provided by humans, AlphaZero taught itself to master these games by playing against itself.

Given the current rate of progress, it’s only a matter of time before AI will be able to teach itself to master more complex games like running an economy, or waging a war.