The Ship of Theseus of the State sails into The Silicon Age

Drawing on two metaphors from ancient philosophy – Plutarch’s Ship of Theseus and Plato’s Ship of the State – this paper proposes a novel metaphorical model for conceptualising the transition to a world-system of autonomous AGI agents: The Ship of Theseus of the State. 

The Ship of the State

In a classical (and controversial) philosophical musing, Plato imagines the State as a Ship with a captain and crew. For Plato, the rightful captain, the ‘true pilot’, is the ‘philosopher king’ (i.e himself or rather what he thinks he should be):

❝  The true pilot (the philosopher) must and will be the steerer (the king), whether other people like or not the possibility of this union of authority (politics, power) with the steerer’s art (philosophy, wisdom) ❞

However, at every attempted turn of the wheel he (the philosopher, the steward and the sage) is wrested from control of the ship by a machievellian, malevolent, mutinous, and most crucially incompetent (Dunning-Krueger afflicted), crew; the demagogues (the politicians and the demos or the public) that compromise the epistocracy (‘rule by the wise’) of Plato’s ideal Republic.   

The Ship of the Theseus

In the original historical tale, The Ship of Theseus (the concrete particular that gives the abstract form its name) is preserved by the Athenians by replacing each plank as it decays with a new one, until none of the original material remains. The question then posed by the ancient philosophers (or more specifically, ontologists) does it continue to be the same Ship?

The Ship of Theseus of the State (SoToS)

In the union of these two ships (metaphorical models), the Ship of the State is also subject to a Ship of Theseus problem: but beyond just the inanimate planks of the ship (of theseus) being replaced over (generational) time, the living captain and crew of the ship (of the state) are replaced with new versions of themselves. 

On this Ship of Theseus of the State  ‘it is no longer possible to differentiate the animate from the inanimate’  and ‘to have agency is not necessarily to be alive’ (the ‘Gothic Flatline’). As a biopolitical and sociotechnical system the SoToS is an ‘autopoetic’ or ‘self-reproducing automata’ (Neumann) that replaces the dead  (wood and flesh alike) with the living and the old with the new.  

The SoToS is an ‘invisible megamachine’ (Mumford), combining actual technological machines and biological machines (i.e human and animal labour) into a totalising cybernetic system where it is impossible to tell where ‘the machine’ ends and ‘the human’ begins; interchangeable parts (‘cogs in the machine’) are destroyed and replaced in a cyclical process across space and time. 

Despite constantly deconstructing and constructing itself, the SoTos maintains macro-level stability over long time-frames through intergenerational (human) replacement mechanisms (‘social reproduction’); such as class immobility (‘the power-elite’, Mills), deep-state institutions (‘the military-industrial complex’) and mass socialisation (the ‘culture industry’, Adorno).  As HI agents are replaced by AI agents this continuity – a chain of relative human stability  — is threatened. 

The Brain of Theseus

 In contemporary philosophy of mind, Chalmer’s (as well as others) have proposed an adaptation of the thought experiment, what we may call The Brain of Theseus:

❝ We can imagine…replacing a certain number of my neurons by silicon chips. 

[1 - Carbon-Carbon] In the first such case, only a single neuron is replaced. Its replacement is a silicon chip that performs precisely the same local function as the neuron… As long as the chip has the right input/output function, the replacement will make no difference to the functional organization of the system. 

[2 - Silicon-Silicon] In the second case, we replace two neighboring neurons with silicon chips. This is just as in the previous case, but once both neurons are replaced we can eliminate the intermediary, dispensing with the awkward transducers and effectors that mediate the connection between the chips and replacing it with a standard digital connection. 

[3 - Carbon > Silicon] Later cases proceed in a similar fashion, with larger and larger groups of neighboring neurons replaced by silicon chips. Within these groups, biochemical mechanisms have been dispensed with entirely, except at the periphery. In the final case, every neuron in the system has been replaced by a chip, and there are no biochemical mechanisms playing an essential role. ❞

The Global Brain / Spaceship of Theseus of the State

Combine Chalmer’s Brain of Theseus with Heylighen’s Global Brain and Fuller’s Spaceship Earth and the relevance of this model to the HI-to-AI transition should become apparent: civilisation as a collective intelligence network is gradually replacing the HI agents it is composed of with functionally interchangeable (and even more efficient) AI agents . The question posed by the techno-philosophers: is this the same spaceship?

Due to the superior technical efficiency of AI over HI – faster processing speed, larger memory, 24/7 run-time etc – the short and obvious answer is no: this is now a Spaceship travelling at Warp Speed! (‘with AI agents… Accelerationism no longer seems like an abstract philosophy producing empty hyperstitional hype, but like a sober description of reality’). 

‘Loss of control’ in this AI-accelerated ‘runaway world’, is hence a major concern. How do we, as humans, continue to ‘steer the ship’, when we are being replaced by post-humans and when it is moving faster than our (finite, mortal) minds can keep up with? Further, beyond a possible ‘scenario’, loss of control on this model is an inevitably. It is less a question of if, but when: when the point comes when all the carbon-based ‘planks’ in our ‘ship’ (or at least all those of influence) are replaced with silicon-based ones.

In this post-carbon world-system – the Silicocene – disempowerment is a foregone conclusion and it is alignment that matters. In a civilisation governed and operated by AI agents, where humans no longer exercise (direct) agency over affairs, will human interests – our welfare, morality and culture – be preserved and realised by our new AI steerers? In Plato’s words, will AI possess the ‘steerers art’ (moral philosophy) and be imbued with goals that its human subjects will see the wisdom in?

❝  Until philosophers (aligned AIs) are kings, or the kings and princes  (powerful AIs) of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy... cities will never have rest from their evils,—no, nor the human race, as I believe,—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.  ❞