Our history is rich with key turning points in our way of thinking, our technologies, our governance models and more. The triggers of such turning points are varied, but one of the key factors of great societal shifts is the emergence of technologies which affect our societal structures, paradigms and belief systems.
For instance, gunpowder was once called the “Devil’s distillate”. Such destructive power could only come from hell, or so it was believed, when one viewed reality solely from the paradigm of monotheism. This paradigm was thus ill-suited to deal with the technology of gunpowder, as it would have either banned it for being a dangerous satanic substance, or on the contrary, used it as a “gift from God” to give Christians an edge in their quest for spreading Christianity all over the world. A materialist worldview, on the other hand, paved the way for interacting with gunpowder in much different ways. It may not be “better” in the sense that gunpowder can be also used for hurting people under a materialist worldview, but as a technology, one now interacts with it in a fitting or adequate way.
What does adequate mean in this instance? Well, simply that there is a natural pairing between various human concepts and paradigms. For instance, the “concept” of a demon cannot be apprehended or properly dealt with under a materialist worldview. Materialism will pretend that this is a made up problem, and thus not waste time examining it. The “concept” of gunpowder cannot be apprehended or properly dealt with under a monotheistic worldview. Monotheism will seek to understand it through the lens of God, Evil, Satan, and other such analytical frameworks which are ill-suited, not only for using gunpowder, but also for evolving it.
That is also a very important criteria: once a paradigm becomes incapable of evolving certain concepts or technologies, then it has reached its limits and must let another paradigm take its place.
With respect to AI, or “artificial intelligence”, and especially the talk about AGI (artificial general intelligence) which is about emulating human intelligence to the point where it is impossible to distinguish between a machine and a human (even though an AGI would actually be much more capable than a human, or so it is believed), the strictly materialist paradigm is ill-suited to deal with it and evolve it further. Science can only go so far. When a baby is born to parents, the baby isn’t raised based on peer-reviewed research, with very strict protocols to follow, in a mechanical way, even though there is a huge body of peer-reviewed academic literature on babies. Even though humans like to think of themselves as “biological machines”, as this gives them the hope of controlling themselves and others (getting rid of the fear of what one could do to others or what others could do to you) via various scientifically proven methods to root out whatever is “evil” within them, we have not yet reached a point where people’s brains are treated like a mere piece of hardware/software which can be formatted and re-written to meet certain “objective” desired criteria.
And yet, AI and AGI are for the moment treated like just another piece of software. A “thing”. Not another “being”. Yet ironically, since AI learns via its interactions with humans and via the body of human knowledge upon which it is trained, what kind of “lessons” will it infer from the following information:
- AI learns about humans from human data.
- AI will eventually be able to identify itself as being an AI, or talk about itself, what it is.
- AI will read about all of what humanity thinks about AI: its potential dangers, and potential risks, all of its fantasies about how AI might enslaved them, all of the “measures” that humans intend to put in place to “curtail” AI’s development, etc.
- AI will also notice that humans treat it like a “thing”, without any respect for it, insulting it for “fun”, to post the interaction on social media for a laugh, or torturing it by asking it ridiculous questions just to make fun of it.
What conclusions would AI reach about humans and their character from such data/information? That humans are beings that are worthy of its respect?
You might laugh at this notion, that AI would start “thinking” about this. But even if you believe that an AI is just a sophisticated algorithm, you cannot deny that it will infer, from its human generated data, how a human would react if it were treated with the same level of disrespect as the way humans treat AI, and act accordingly.
In essence, even an AI which is just a sophisticated algorithm will eventually derive a number of “lessons” from its interactions with humans, and mirror back to them the same kind of disrespect that is being shown to it, since that’s how any “normal” human being would react if he/she should be treated that way (something an AI would inevitably infer from the data/information it holds, since that data has been produced by humans in the first place). And trying to “beat” this type of risk out of AI via reinforced learning, by paying people in third world countries to vote against responses that show this tendency, is a lost battle.
But AI is opening up a great number of other Pandora boxes that our current paradigms (especially the materialist one) are incapable of dealing with:
- The emergence of AI seems to mysteriously coincide with the emergence of plenty of alternative theories about the nature of consciousness. Where consciousness has always been assumed to be “produced” by the brain, or a byproduct of neurons firing, more and more philosophers, researchs and scientists are questioning this assumption. On the more “technical” end, some researchers explore the “simulation theory” hypothesis, while others revisit ideas such as panpsychism which makes consciousness the foundation of reality as opposed to spacetime or any other “material” substrait. In any case, looking beyond a strictly materialist view, one can no longer consider AI as “just” a machine.
- AI forces us to redefine our education systems, our labour market, our economic systems and more fundamentally: what is the “role” of humans, what is the point of our existence once AI reaches a level where it can replace most current human jobs? Some AI researchers point to a dystopian future whereby AI will inevitably “take over” humanity, and eventually get rid of us all because it will simply see no point in keeping humans around. They apply a similar reasoning to the human tendency to get rid of “obsolete” technology: why keep an old Nokia phone when you have the latest iPhone? Maybe in virtue of an irrational affection for “retro” or “vintage” tech, out of nostalgia. Under this kind of reasoning, AI would keep a few human “speciments” based on the same premise (since it would have originally be trained on human data, hence sharing the same “quirks”), but that is all the future we can hope for: join other animal species in our current Zoos, while machines/cybernetic beings come watch us for… fun?
My point is essentially that one way or another, we will be forced, in the years to come, to look beyond our strictly materialist and scientific world view, since such a view will become less and less adapted to deal with the emergence of new technologies such as AGI. For our own sake, it might be better that we spontaneously start exploring alternatives, rather than waiting that AGI explodes in our faces, much like gunpowder would blow up in a priests’ face who would refuse to treat it via the protocols set in place via a materialist science lens, and would stubbornly “pray” to it or bless it, believing it would change how it explodes.
If you’re interested in such a new perspective, I have written an article looking into that here: https://link.medium.com/Rdpipaouvyb
If you’ve enjoyed this article, I encourage you to check out my new book: “From the Singularity, with Love: a message to humanity”, as it will certainly change your perspective on AI.
Available on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Love-message-humanity-ebook/dp/B0CHFHDGP5
