It seems very clear that man's life is changing at a tremendous speed: we are seeing an "explosion" in both science and technology. Will it continue for long, and will it bring us to the height of immortality and the clearest vision over the universe, where will it destroy us through wars, accidents or manipulative societies? Where are we heading seems to be an important question. However it is perhaps an unanswarable question, after all it seems that history (either human or not) is dictated as much by the general laws as by the particular events. That symbolic animals would eventually arrive on the face of a life-harboring planet seems more or less certain, but when they will arrive and in what form seems quite arbitrary. In the same way, whether we are heading for heaven or disaster seems to be dictated by billions of individual and unknowable choices.
A much more interesting question to me is this: who are we? What role do we play in the universe? Now this role seems to be much easier to perceive once we understand our place in the general evolution of species and the ways in which our species is unique (every species is unique by definition, finding out what is unique about it is what allows us to situate it regarding other species). What I heard when I was little was that we were made directly by God, and whereas other animals just existed to serve us, we had a higher role, we were here to be tested, life was an evaluation of our moral qualities. I found that deeply disturbing, one of the reasons was that animals that I could have contact with (like dogs) seemed to face the same moral dillemmas that we did (should I play along, be selfish, protect, etc), they seemed to love and suffer in the same way that we did. Later on I found out about the theory of evolution and how we all are part of the same story, how the genetic information is so similar between different living beings, how primates have similar brains, how we occupy such an infinitesimal part of the story of the universe.
My own experience of the world made me think that we, humans, are not that different from the other animals, it is not only a matter of feelings, but also of individual intelligence. Most of us, if we had not been to schools, or learned from other humans, would not be any more clever than a donkey or a dog. The very few "feral children" who are able to survive apart from other humans show in practice what is completely obvious at first sight: we are no more than "animals" without culture. A primate such as me, if I had not learned any words, if I had no contact with any other human being in my formative years, well, you couldn't relate to me as human, you would see me as an animal. Perhaps I would have learned to howl, or to jump and scavenge for food, but I would not be "human" in any normal sense of the word.
So, how are we created, who are we? Well, as a matter of fact we seem to be the products of a system of education, that includes affections, reasoning, goals, symbolic language, trust, etc. All of this, that we learn, that we absorb while babies and throughout our lives, is in fact a joint fabrication of countless generations of our ancestors. They have had lots and lots of ideas, most of them really crazy, but some of them worked. And the ideas that worked spread around.
So our society replicates the scheme that nature uses for physical bodies to choose the strategies that work best. We have an almost random creation of ideas (including paranoid ideas, superstitions, conspiracy theories, altruistic, planly stupid, etc). But we are so many that some of these ideas actually work. Those ideas survive because the individuals that carry them also have better chances of reproducing. Either because these ideas give them a better social status, more power, better acquaintance with women, more longevity, etc. And these ideas will then be reproduced. To this end it is necessary that humans have a propensity to communicate something if they consider it to be of value. This seems to be the case.
Looking at things in this perspective we can see how humans integrate well with the rest of nature, we have the same perceptual and emotional system, the same instincts, intuitions, fears, emotional needs, etc, as most other mammals, but we are also different in the sense that we were the first animals to transcend animality by creating an artificial stage where personas could develop. In this stage we could try out different goals, temperaments and attitudes, creeds, ways of acting towards others and towards the world, and many other things. Whatever worked was kept and passed on, to the other members of society (we are also good at copycat) and to our descendents. In this way every further generation was more able to deal with the world than all of the previous generations. Being better, after a while, meant being able to generate even more good ideas. What this means is that, when a society decides it will uphold freedom of speech, when it gives space for error, for creativity, it is opening the speed at which new ideas appear. Of course the more ideas, the more the trash, but if we have a good system for keeping the good ideas and rejecting the bad ones, the trash will not suffucate the good ideas (this is not clearly the case today as tv, associated with a yearning for fast profit has produced a gigantic wave of trash in our heads).
So, humans are animals in one sense (bioologically, by inheritance, because they share many of the basic characteristincs, because we have a coommon heritage, etc), but we are much more than that: we are artifacts, our ideals, personalities, goals, etc, were made by our ancestors. They made so much of them that we can actually choose the ones we prefer. We can choose to want to be strong or attentive, football players or scientists, or rap singers, or computer programmers, or any number of many different things. We have a choice, a choice that was given by the proliferation of our ascendents. We can choose between these innumerable ideas, and we can even create new ones, although the probability that some idea created by us will actually be adopted by someone is quite diminute.
We are creators of ideas and we are receivers of ideas. So, it is easy to see that most of the psychological world in which we live is highly fabricated, artificial. No wonder that we dress the way we dress, we sing the way we sing, we act the way we act. It all makes sense in the context of our particular culture. We are artificial intelligences living in a cultural world in which we find ourselves comfortable, even if sometimes it glaringly contradicts reality in the most straightforward of ways (such as we try to convince ourselves that "animals" don't feel pain!).
Now, I'm using the expression "artificial intelligence" in a way that it is not common. By artificial intelligence we usually mean a machine, built by us, that is capable of behaving in an "intelligent" way. We are certainly "built by us", in that sense we are indeed artificial. But it is not clear we are "machines". And, even if we are, we are natural machines, built in a womb and feed by organic stuff, not made in a factory and fed by electricity.
In this sense we are not, of course, artificial, because our "hardware" runs on biological stuff, but the software that makes us different from the other species, that provides us with our special kind of intelligence, is indeed wholly artificial, it was created and improved by successive generations of more and more perfect humans, each generation perfecting the next.
This has several implications for AI, as we usually understand it:
It seems clear enough that "humans" are artifacts, that is, they only exist as the product of previous , by a rough examination of
what role does technology play in life? How does the ability of a living creature to create, to make artifacts, change the way it deals with the environment? And, more to the point, how does the ability of a creature to manipulate the outlook of its descendents,
whose future evolution is hard to predict. Will it continue and allow us to become immortal and incomparably more perceptive and intelligent. The generation gap was changed into a techno savvy gap, between those who grasp technology and use it and those who don't. Those who do grasp it generally prefer the internet over television, use a pda to organize their life, have a whole persona available online with which they grow through online chats and social sites. The future looks even more amazing because, if it resembles the according to Moore's "law", every two years computer memory and the number o
Artificial Intelligence - we are it!!
Not only are we AIs but we are also many other kinds of Artificial somethings - our values, fears, prejudices, itches, manias, most of the things we do, although not very intelligent, seem to be, indeed, artificial, in the sense that they were artifacts made by others or, in part, by ourselves.
We build our own story, our own preferences, we are programmers of our own selves. And we help others program their selves too. giving them ideas, thumbs up or down, examples, commentaries on what we think about them and their actions and motives. Everything we do has an artificial part, something which does not come from nature but from culture.
This is trivial, in a sense, because man is the fruit of both nature and nurture. And the "nurture" part is certainly "artificial" in this sense.
Although we use the word artificial for things that are not biological, cellular, etc.
Emphasizing our artificial part, however, allows us to see that it does not take a lot of smartness to bring AI forth. We are incomparably more dumb than computers, we can't make calculations or memorize things. However we are able to do a lot of things because we have very good access to the world, and the world acts as an "external memory" and also an "external debugger". Every attempt we have at making a new program leads to some mistakes, and the world is there to show us how those mistakes reveal themselves in practice.
We have mainly social abilities, mainly the ability to copy others. We also are very keen on our ability to see if they are successful or not in their actions, and we copy those actions which are successful. Whatever someone finds out that works we go and copy that out. Copycat, copycat, that's how we go along with our lives.
We are not it - because of consciousness, we have it!! We have artificial intelligence, more precisely, our intelligence was created by our ancestors, generation after generation. Little by little.
We are a threeforce psychological union: the biological impulses, the traditional desires and instincts and what was provided by culture. All this is then played upon by consciousness, the will, the I. So there are two senses of "persona", one is the set of all there is there, fixed, routed, intelligent, working, etc. The other is the living thing, the I, that routes everything, that sets and unsets, wherever possible, from his own undetermined desires.
Consciousness
naturall desires and dispositions and instincts
artificial lookout - intelligence, ways of dealing with the world etc.
The intelligent part is relatively short, we are dumb, and work mostly through well-tested algorithms. (search for the smile, go for the money, try to survive)
reasons to use the word artificial
natural man is far different from man - enfants sauvages
words are artifacts, without words we would no be able to think about the world, ourselves and others
values are also artifacts
the concept of the I, who I am, what I want, etc, can only be framed in a context created by society
We are artificial constructs, "Pedro" is something that can only exist in a context created by his many ancestors
Were they willingly and intentionally creating that world - did they knew about the consequences?
Most of them no, they thoroughly believed something different, but which nevertheless took them to maintain and develop a programming environment
Two layer approach (two levels, just like in utilitarianism) - the level of morals, gods, myths and so on, and the level of artificial constructs that do not disrupt the fabric of society, still improving ways in which to spend more energy,
Some of them were more aware
designed yes, but intentionally or unconsciously?
unconsciously most of the times, because we were thinking about other things, we have been given an image of ourselves which is far different from what we really are...
Only intentional regarding those who understood who we were and what they were doing - perhaps some of the founding fathers of the US for instance.
Why unconscious - because of the false idea regarding what or who we were and the methods through what we came into being.
Not programmed but (un)intentionally designed
Attempts at creating better and better intelligence and ways of dealing with the world
Designed by our ancestors - intentionally
Consequences:
AI is not an entirely new step, designing better systems
Singularity - will it occur? or is it occurring now (explosion of cultures and availability of information - creation of new social groups and so on - are we living in a singularity?)
Through Darwin and others we have discovered that we, as a species, are part of a great adventure, the adventure of living organisms, which itself is already part of a larger adventure of the universe's attempt to reach something (perhaps a state of equilibrium).
This adventure included the creation of incredibly complex structures, like proteins and other organic compounds. These unimaginable diverse and complex molecular structures combine in immensely complex ways to create cells, organs and macroscopic living organisms, such as humans. All this is only possible because it was concatenated along incredibly periods of time (thousands of millions of years), using all of earth's surface as testing ground and even having some input from meteors.
In any case, humans are, physically, very similar to other mammals, what differentiate us is something that has not much to do with our physical structure. For instance, our brains have remained the same for the last hundreds of thousands of years, yet, man's superiority was only created in the last ten thousand years or less. In fact, just a few hundred years ago, we were dizimated by plagues and other diseases, and, little before that, we were prey to many beasts, unable to make a great advance on most of Earth's inhabitats.
Whatever made us powerful and pervading on this planet, has only came about very recently.
And it is not only power that distinguish us from the rest of nature. What makes us different, special, is that we have complex ideas, culture, detailed ways of describing the world and ourselves, through words.
What I think human kind developped was artificial intelligence. What I mean by artificial intelligence is not only the fancy programming of chess and natural language recognition in computers. I mean also the art of creating intelligence throughout the centuries in generations to come. The intelligence that we have today is not "natural" in the sense that it doesn't came directly from nature. A baby in the natural world would never surpass the abilities of a beast. Whatever we can do that makes us human is transmitted to us through culture and was made, created, crafted over generations. It is an "artefact", just like any other. Words are artefacts, language is an artifact, in fact personas, ideals, gods and deamons, stories that make human sense of the world, the concept of "human", of goal, of what is right and wrong, of property and money, of allowed and forbidden, all that are artifacts. They are artificial constucts which, together, make us the beings that we are, intelligent, with personalities, names, goals, fears, courage, prestige, friends and so on. These entities, called human beings, are artifacts. We cannot have a Pedro raised in the natural world of a jungle, ocean, desert or any other natural environmnent. There would be certainly a baby, with hands and feet, but it would never learn it had a name, pronouce a single word, have a single thought, know more than any other mammal or primate. For someone like a "Pedro" or "Maria" to exist we have to have personas, personallities, desires, dramas, fear and hate, etc. All that are artifacts, they are ways in which we slowly perfected the "artificial intelligence" we are now continue to develop on machines.
This means several things, first that we are not "human" in a sense. We are not natural, we are not part of nature, and the more technology evolves, the less we will be able to connect and feel part of nature in any direct sense. That is part of the reason we do need to invent "Gods" and to see ourselves as created distinctly from the rest of the natural world. Because, in fact, we are not part of the natural world.
Unfortunately, we are our own gods. Not someone from above, with some mysterious motive, but our ancestors, with their stories, their myths, their fears and goals that they projected upon us, they are the ones that have created, over generations and generations. We are the design of countless generations. I am the incarnation of an artificial design that says that we should always search the truth, and divulge it. We should not put money above all else, and fame is worthless, so we make these texts available on the internet, free of charge, and we dedicate our lives to philosophy. This is a construct, made in part by my choices. I selected the software, bits and pieces from everywhere. I read Plato and the Bible, I read about Buhddism and the Mormons, I read Thomas Paine and excerpts from Voltaire and the French rennaissance writers. I read Fernando Pessoa and Herberto Helder, and I took those things, those programs, those ways of looking at life and dealing with life, those algorithms, and I internalised them and made them mine.
So, me, I made my self, in large part, by a process of collation and selection. I selected from a great variety of sources. But the thing is that, all of them are "artificial", made by the art of man. They are the products of a certain techne or technique.
I am an artificial intelligence being, supported by a human body and a vast cultural civilization, able to love (just like in the movvie AI) and to fear, but more and more artificial as almost all of my actions are dictated by ideas and behaviors that were taken out of civilization instead of more natural and primitive forms of behavior.
So, what is the next step?
Well, we are very eloigned from our natural bodies and ways of life. No longer do we sleep in the tree tops, we shave our bears and clothe ourselves with cotton and synthetic materials. Our purposes, our desires, have very little to do with the desires of the natural man. The natural man liked trees and fruits, he feared predators and parasites. We also like and fear most of the things the natural man does, but that is only a very small subset of the things we love and fear. We live in an entirely different world, populated with concepts like jealousy, altruism, reward, money, beauty, art, recognition. Of course, all of these are somewhat rooted in the traditional lifestyle of the "natural man", but they are such developed derivations, that a natural man could no longer understand us, and we would not find a natural man much more than a "mere" animal.
So, although computers have only started to appear, less than a hundred years ago, and their technology is still in the beggining, we love them a lot already. They show us what our future will be like, a future where we will have the ability to live in simulated worlds without undesired sickness, stress, poverty, deficiency, etc. A world in which we will have access to almost unlimited quantities of information, a very augmented ability to process and relate that information. A much longer lifespan (perhaps immortality even). This is the future. Not "computers" per se, but a world where we, informational beings, artificial intelligent creatures, are much more at ease, to live, reproduce, create, evolve... Human biology no longer interest us much, only the sex in it. The encounter of wills, desire, submission, power, control, symbiosis and so on. These games will certainly continue to interest us. Wouldn't it be good to go inside someone else's mind, to feel the will, the desire, the beauty, the magic of it, and then to touch it with your own beauty, and desire, and creativity? And then, in that dance between you too, you would find points of contact, similar ways to dance, to be together, to sing, to create hand in hand. Of course there would be no "physical hand" but there would be many ways of seeing the other and of contacting with him.
All this represents an enourmous departure from what we are today. Just as we are a departure from the "natural man". But in all these departures there continues to be continuity. We are built on top of what already is there. We are one with nature, and, in reality, artifical intelligence is just an expression we have to designate nature's way of creating ever more complex beings. Beings that design their own bodies and minds.
Whereas natural selection produced randomness and tried it out physically, which takes a long time, we can produce the same process (random ideas and see how good they are to solve a particular problem) through imagination and rigorous thinking (logic, mathematics and a desire for truth). Therefore we use the same darwinian process of random creation and selection of the fittest in the world of ideas, which we then can put to practice. This is a way to make the process of natural selection faster (for instance by imagining how different social structures might work, and then implementing only those that have a greater chance of success). So man is not a radical departure, it is only a more efficient way to achieve what darwinian selection already achieved in the past.
As artificial intelligences we are as natural as a river or a grasshoper, and as different from them as they are from each other. In one sense we are one with the universe and in another, also very real sense, we are very different. We are different manifestations of the same things.
In any case, the dissemination of intelligent machines in our lives will happen, in my view, not only smoothly, but it will also be highly desired, unless unjustified fears raised by a confusion about who we are, prevent us from seeing where our future lies.