A terrific article today by David Amerland that touches on a recent interest of mine – artificial intelligence. It’s a complex subject, and we truly don’t know yet where this research and development will lead, because we’ve never been there. The potential for disruption is huge, as are the dangers, but the potential for huge advancements is equally huge.
Originally shared by David Amerland
Mecha – Us
Right now, as we speak, there is huge angst with our technology. If we are not agonizing over the possibility that machines may replace us completely to the extent that they become the end of us, as Stephen Hawking argues: http://goo.gl/DofdbC, we are worrying about the ethics our ever closer relationship with machines will bring: http://goo.gl/qVgNQ.
Now, historically, we have been there before. The past is full of milestones where a technological breakthrough disrupted society and threatened our human sense of order: http://goo.gl/Fddofa and a fresh paper on the subject argues that, really, the ‘news’ here is “same old, same old”: http://goo.gl/yVAEWS.
I know that the “tech” we worry about today is ‘different’. If our entire evolutionary history has been marked by the invention of technology that is designed to enhance our muscle power, we are now at a different stage where the tech we invent is aimed at making our brains bigger and ourselves smarter. But even that is not really news: https://goo.gl/VPguEN. And, from a certain perspective, it may be even older news than even we suppose as the Antikythera Project suggests: https://goo.gl/b9TfV. Viewed from our perspective: http://goo.gl/peheZq it marks an even more momentous instance when intelligence looked upon the world and sought to impose itself on it: https://goo.gl/B2Nbjt.
Our worries today about VR: http://goo.gl/wsLpqn is marked in tandem with other developments of a presently more practical nature: http://goo.gl/WMoGBT. Traditionally we have been very good at looking upon us as a machine, of sorts. (https://goo.gl/kYp25s) In that particular view, one could argue, that evolution, rather having stopped with our biology is continuing in other ways, both psychological (http://goo.gl/4KN27L) and physical, through a transference of capabilities that are intrinsic to us to non-human aids that are extrinsic: https://goo.gl/Mntpqo.
The news that a woman paralyzed for 20 years could suddenly walk again thanks to an exoskeleton: https://goo.gl/kmOebL exemplifies the issue. Berkeley philosopher and cognitive scientist, Alva Noe, an isolated voice of reason in a crowd of Cassandras worrying that the Technological Singularity (https://goo.gl/wSqtj) would mark the beginning of the end of us, as humans, argues that we know so little of what constitutes real intelligence: http://goo.gl/zMoA7K that even our ‘intelligent’ creations are little more than tools, doing our bidding.
Noe’s contention (and it is a good one) is that we are more than our brains (http://goo.gl/3DXQAh) which also opens the door to the argument that we are more than our bodies.
What we are, what we have always been is fusion of mind and body. Nick Bostrom (who has frequently sounded the alarm bell where AI is concerned) also asks whether in our headlong drive to change and ‘improve’, to get things done and gain an edge, we might, somehow be altering the fundamental nature of us: https://goo.gl/RttM4z. In a less alarmist perspective Futurist Juan Enriquez says that “the future is bright” but it is going to be different: https://goo.gl/uNHTFA.
Examining the two we are bound to inevitably ask, who is right? If we are heading towards such rapid, fundamental change that it will disrupt everything we know, are we about to make ourselves extinct? Or are we running a serious risk of altering our very essence so that we no longer become recognizable?
Sitting at my laptop, right now, oversized mug of morning Joe in hand, Bluetooth headset in one ear, my phone’s white light blinking to let me know that an email has arrived and my eyes (and brain) embedded in a screen that allows me to ‘talk’ with people sitting thousands of miles away from me, I am as altered from my early Sapien predecessors as any mechanized, virtually immortal, hyper-connected, super-intelligence will be from me. That does not make me any less human. My concerns, strained through the filters of the broader dynamic of existence are the same: I am concerned with my survival, I think about my community. I worry about how I may make a positive impact on those around me. I try to refine my skills and improve myself. And I want to feel safe when I am too tired to be strong.
My sense of hunting, tribe, community, hunting skills and fortifications is different but not so different that it is not readily recognizable in its nature, if not in its particular manifestation.
Maybe we will indeed succeed in downloading our consciousness, somehow: http://goo.gl/8XY5qW. Maybe we will transcend our mortal limitations as Kurtzwell wants us to: http://goo.gl/bczvGM. Maybe. Maybe. The fact remains that even in our biology we are extremely complex: http://goo.gl/edl1KE. Anything so complex, however formed, is the result of an inexorable drive of transference. Intelligence encoding itself in newer and newer forms. Improved complexities of existence. And intelligence, just like life, is a multi-faceted aspect of existence that has a place in our evolutionary future: http://goo.gl/gDq3ez.
So, if we are indeed to somehow create an intelligence that matches our own, it will be no more separate and therefore antithetical from us as any other form of life on Earth somehow excludes our own by its being, alone.
This leaves two questions. First, why do we so much fear AI right now? And Second, if our evolutionary future lies in transcendence does this not somehow debase our present existence?
Let’s tackle the second one first. Whether we truly feel it or not we are a miracle (https://goo.gl/WhROZT). Every single aspect of us represents a universe of choices and a cosmos full of possibilities. To suggest that somehow we are flawed is to accept that we are far from perfect but that does not make us ‘second best’. We are, right now, at the pinnacle of our journey which is what makes us capable of moving on, taking the next step.
As for the first question. We project upon technology many of our hopes and, usually, all of our fears and insecurities. We see in our creations not the embodiment of ourselves in terms of capabilities and potential but the insecurity of our own existence based upon our unwillingness to get out of our comfort zones. There is perhaps a better balance we can take in our point of view: http://goo.gl/KnFKcK and a more global view in our approach: http://goo.gl/gDq3ez but both of these require exactly what we have not always got: a balanced desire to think things through and understand ourselves first, before we try to impose our expectations upon the world.
Decades from now, someone else’s Sunday Read may be reaching its audience whisper-quiet, in the form of an electrical impulse sent from one connected brain to a communion of many others. We will be then way different to what we are now: https://goo.gl/wFRllj but maybe no less enthralled by the challenges our world presents us with, no less afraid of what will come next and how we will cope with it and no less thrilled by the possibility that the connection and sharing is changing how we feel and think and act to the point that it improves us and the universe around us.
So, let the coffee flow. Do not hold back in your Sunday Read-approved consumption of donuts, croissants, cookies and chocolate cake and don’t forget to have an awesome Sunday, wherever you are.