by David M. Petersen
Formally titled: "Consciousness to Artificial Intelligence is an 'Apples to Oranges' Comparison!"
(So version 2)
Just about everyone these days can see that the machines around us are becoming a little threatening. People are wondering how we are going to survive if machines take all the jobs or if they get so much smarter then us. To make matters worse, we have all these pseudo-scientific concepts polluting our media and confusing people. In short, concepts such as, our machines will be conscious in 20 years, we will store our minds in computers forever, there will be a technological singularity where machines surpass us, etc.; DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH! Ultimately, I want to both prove the absurdity of these above concepts and also to give humanity an edge relative to the "fight against the machines" with this paper.
To begin, a useful analogy for going forward in this discussion will be that if machines mimicking human intelligence were a circle, ACTUAL human intelligence would be a SPHERE. A circle does not have the depth of a sphere; they both merely look the same from one specific direction. The same is true relative to machines verses conscious beings. We can interface with them logically, but I will show that they don't, and never will, have emotion, holistic thinking, creativity or soul.
In a Washington Post article entitled "Google’s AI passed a famous test — and showed how the test is broken" (Oremus), I found a good summary of the tests used to evaluate whether or not a computer can pass for a human. The author makes the excellent point that the Turing test and proceeding updated tests are fundamentally about deception and that this is ultimately bad for humanity, and I fully agree. In fact, from a philosophical standpoint these tests aren't useful at all! I also think that they are indicative of the fact that WAY TOO MANY people believe that if a machine passes one of these tests it's equal to a human!
The whole thing gives me a headache; people are confusing functional difference and actual difference (by assuming that if it passes some test, there is none.) Actually confusing these two types of difference in real life (objective reality!) could lead to very serious problems. Lets say there's a square object coming at you very fast, too fast to get out of the way. Is it made of soft foam or cement? functionally and visually the situation would be the same; both would be fast moving squares; however, one will probably just hurt you and one would definitely kill you! The Turing test and those like it end up being completely irrelevant; just look at what's actually going on. Look at the "withins" (a concept introduced by Pierre Tielhard de Chardin) of the computer and the human. The computer is adding strings of 1's and 0's amazingly fast. The human is thinking he's hungry, his wife hates him, how does he get that job, and he's got to do this stupid test with the computer before he can go eat lunch! regardless of any tests passed, one is a mechanism (a mere binary calculator) and one is a soul. The first has NO within, the latter has a large within. Do we attribute withins to our cars which are also mechanisms? No we don't, so lets not do it here.
Analytical thinking is important for science but it has serious limitations when it comes to understanding a super-complex phenomenon like human consciousness. I have begun to suspect that a lot of these analytical thinking types are very emotionally "shut down" and therefore cannot see the absurdity in the statements like these that follow:
"Vicarious (a startup company) is bringing us all closer to a future where computers perceive, imagine, and reason just like humans." -Peter Thiel. And this gem, "My timeline is computers will be at human levels, such as you can have a human relationship with them, 15 years from now. when I say human levels, I'm talking about emotional intelligence. The ability to tell a joke, to be funny, to be romantic, to be loving, to be sexy, that is the cutting edge of human intelligence, that is not a sideshow." -Ray Kurzwiel.
Honestly, human consciousness is synonymous with soul; it took billions of years to evolve and has an existence you guys clearly don't understand and cannot duplicate with mere binary calculators (computers) no matter how fast they are going. Anyway, by what mechanism would consciousness spring from machines exactly? The truth is that you folks don't even have the foggiest notion about how consciousness works in the first place! (Here is a good place to start) Therefore making these types of statements is patently ridiculous.
For more absurdity, I point the reader to the company known as Hanson Robotics. Their robot "Sophia" was recently granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia (Reynolds). I thought this was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen until they came up with their next robot, "Grace" "who was built to care!" (Cairns, Tham) Um, a machine is essentially a sociopath; it doesn't matter how much you program it to mimic caring! It is very dangerous to make machines that mimic having a soul and then have people assume that they really have one! If a machine tells you it cares about you, for god sakes don't believe it! By the way in this video about Grace, Sofia makes an appearance and ITS drawings are referred to as "creativity." Grace by the way was "designed to make an emotional connection! This is an irresponsible representation relative to people who don't know any better. You are treading into the realm of philosophy without a clue. Please stop.
The arrogance of these analytical types who can't grasp the depth of consciousness really gets me going; Because THEY apparently don't have much of a within, maybe THEIR consciousness could be stored in computers! :) We're so smart! Yes, you're smart, but not AWARE at all apparently, which is what the human race really needs (awareness equals compassion, empathy, holistic thinking, creativity, courage, etc.) For more on the difference between smart and aware go here. Another view of the perils of overly analytical thinking can be found in a paper I wrote here. Analytical thinking definitely has its place and uses (math, science, technology, etc., but it generally fails on philosophical questions like these.
So scientifically, why are all of these assertions so far off? Well, as shown by the science of complexity, a good overview of which can be found at Encyclopedia.com, successful systems inside our universe tend to exhibit half order and half chaos in their construction. It follows that human consciousness does as well. However, computers are devices that handle order only. They use logic, with NO chaos in the system at all. Any chaos in the computer system will break it!
This means that the simplest organic system, Like a nematode worm, for example, that incorporates order and chaos (heals itself, responds to chaotic external conditions and survives, etc.,) will always be vastly superior to a computer in terms of complexity. Back to the concept of a within for a moment, the machine has zero within and the nematode worm theoretically has a very, very tiny within. Now contrast the within of the worm versus the within of a squirrel and you see the orders of magnitude of giant leaps in complexity, never mind the human body/brain and THEN the human mind which is again orders of magnitude more complex than the human body/brain underneath it. (As you may know, I believe that consciousness is a transcendent phenomenon and so I believe the MIND is next in the physical chain.)
And so it follows that machines will never achieve consciousness because of their deep inability to handle chaos all the way down to their substrate. (Quantum computing also suffers from this limitation because in the end the machine still just processes logic.) Also, they are so far down on the complexity scale so as to never catch up to human consciousness, which by the way, is also evolving as well. I have shown in my previous work that consciousness resonates into its own new physical existence from the brain and is an extremely complex system that is half ordered and half chaotic relative to the tenets of complexity science. Machines. however, only process logic and therefore could not manage the inherent chaos in even the smallest organic system, much less the human mind.
It is time we start seeing the phenomenon of consciousness for what it is (a new super-complex emergent entity) and stop equating it with simple machines, which is a joke. Also, relative to a human versus a machine, a connection to underlying biology is a big part of it. Machines will have no "spring in step," no "sinking feeling" when they've done something wrong, no depression from extreme guilt, no feeling good all over from an act of honor, etc. These things equip a HUMAN to lead. What are you AI guys going to do, call a programming function "feel awkward," call a function "feel good?!"
In William Gibson's novel Neuromancer, the 'Dixie Flatline,' a 'ROM construct' of an old hacker being accessed by Case says, "Do me a favor, boy. This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this god-damned thing." :) Consciousness will NOT arise from a "mind upload." I found a good summary of what the experts think in an article at Gizmodo.com entitled "Will We Ever Be Able to Upload a Mind to a New Body?" and I fully agree with Susan Schneider, who makes the excellent point that at best its just a copy of yourself (Elderkin). This copy of yourself will have no soul, because 'soul' is new emergent energy structure from a SPECIFIC place: your brain. Yes, Susan is correct, it would just be a copy; YOU will still die, and IT will not be conscious!
Storing consciousness in a machine is ridiculous joke, but this idea is permeating our culture in a big way. I point the reader to the recent show "Upload." ("Upload? or Crapload?" Sorry I couldn't resist :) No reflection on the actual show; I haven't seen it.) You could never store consciousness in a machine because as pointed out above consciousness is an organic deep energy structure that resonates into its own physical existence, and so the complexity of this task is far beyond the capacity of computers as previously shown.
Consciousness is not something you "store" like data! It is a deep physical part of the universe that includes and transcends the brain and body. Even if there was a device that could store your mind, think about it. As everything advanced around you, you would have to interact with your environment for it to be worthwhile to be alive. After a while you would become like the pet dog, because you be so slow compared to the evolving rest of the human race. Is that what you want? Do we want stupid to live forever?! Well, its ok don't worry, because it is impossible anyway.
This idea of storing consciousness in machines also assumes that there is no afterlife. If you store your mind in a machine what happens to your afterlife? (Here is how the afterlife appears to work.) This would not be desirable even if it were possible, which it isn't. This is because consciousness is already "stored" in reality, because reality is an eternal four dimensional energy sphere. In this theory consciousness is ALREADY stored forever and the universe is the mechanism that stores it. Since everything is just energy inside this four dimensional system, who is to say that the consciousnesses of the deceased are not already accessible by beings in the future?
The individual machine has only one point of commonality among many with human consciousness, ie. logic. No creativity, empathy, holistic thinking ability, etc. The individual human mind, however, has the multi-faceted phenomenon of awareness, therefore it has creativity, empathy, imagination, courage etc. In other words, it is analogous to the circle/sphere comparison as discussed before.
Now, I believe that the "half order, half chaos" tenet of complexity science (AKA the edge of chaos) implies a steady rate of evolution of everything within our universe. Also, as shown, the space between the inner states of computers and that of human consciousness is huge and will stay huge because, to be effective, machines would have to evolve at the same order and chaos rate everything else has had to evolve at (the plants, the animals and us) to reach consciousness. In fact, machines are also theoretically evolving at this rate but they are so far down in orders of magnitude regarding levels of complexity that by the time they were able to "be conscious" it won't matter. This is because human consciousness itself will have now evolved far past where it is right now anyway, and all at the same rate of evolution implied by complexity science!
Now, a computer can beat you at chess but you can unplug it and take a baseball bat to it and it can't do anything about it, plus while playing chess it doesn't see the truck coming at it but you do, and it certainly can't save somebody else when the trucks coming but you could, while simultaneously playing chess and running away from a truck! One could argue that you could build a machine that could do all these things simultaneously, but then there are all the other myriad things a human can do simultaneously so, epic fail. One might now argue that machines will have a big advantage because they are networked, but humans will also be networked!
A mild form of transhumanism is clearly happening, and is so because humans physically incorporating machines is looking more and more like a natural aspect of our evolution as a species and will proceed at the natural rate (half ordered and half chaotic.) For a good article on positive changes happening through transhumanism go to the Forbes article listed in the bibliography entitled "Transhumanism And The Future Of Humanity: 7 Ways The World Will Change By 2030" (Singh). There are, however still the gun-ho types taking transhumanism way to far for all the reasons stated above. In a good article in The Guardian entitled "No death and an enhanced life: Is the future transhuman?," which provides a good overview of the movement, we read: "Ultimately, adherents of transhumanism envisage a day when humans will free themselves of all corporeal restraints. Kurzweil and his followers believe this turning point will be reached around the year 2030, when biotechnology will enable a union between humans and genuinely intelligent computers and AI systems. The resulting human-machine mind will become free to roam a universe of its own creation, uploading itself at will on to a “suitably powerful computational substrate”. We will become gods, or more likely “star children” similar to the one at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey" (McKie). Wow, what a fantasy!
However, the concept of individual mind augmentation does seem powerful and inevitable. Tech giant Elon Musk has pointed out that merging man and machine is the best way to stay on top of the situation, and I would have to agree with him, even though I don't believe that humans can ever become "obsolete" relative to machines as he does. I do like his brain/ai interface ideas, however (Kharpal). So consciousness and machines are clearly merging and this is not bad as pointed out above, but I agree with Elon that consciousness needs to remain firmly in the driver's seat.
Now onward to address this idea of a technological singularity. In Verner Vinge's paper entitled "What is the Singularity?" There is a lot of talk about human intelligence being surpassed, but what kind of intelligence will be surpassed exactly? You guessed it: ANALYTICAL intelligence. but they will still have zero creativity, empathy, holistic thinking ability, etc.! The biggest mistake these guys make is that they are only acknowledging one type of intelligence (Vinge). Also I should point out here that WE as humans will be augmented with analytical smarts, AND we will still have creativity and awareness AND we will be networked. By the way it should be pointed out that "smartness" stays the same but awareness grows with experience. I know these folks think computers are going to "make themselves smarter" but I just don't buy it. I think that probably the biggest advantages we have over machines are creativity and holistic thinking. The creative process involves chaos, which as shown before computers will never be able to handle. Frankly, I don't think they stand a chance!
Also, wow do I see these singularitarians over-doing it in terms of the importance of this supposed event; I've heard it described as rapture for nerds; yikes! By the way, there's a gigantic space between this abstract discussion about the singularity on Wikipedia, which is very detailed and vetted, and the outside world. In actual reality how is this general AI going to be plugged in to everything so it can destroy us?? The whole discussion is a complete analytical abstraction that has no basis in reality. In other words, how could this possibly even emerge, and also who's gonna be misguided enough to try and make this happen? It's only a singularity if we let it become one; consequently there will be no singularity!
A very good question here though is how do we keep up with the machines and assimilate them while remaining in charge. A key idea I want to reinforce here is that "smart" will be coded into our machines, what we need to be is AWARE (as discussed previously.) So, for people who are smart but have no awareness it will be a singularity for them! The Singularity is when you overly analytical types are going to be replaced by machines because we don't need smart we need aware. Most people will be aware plus augmented with computers to be smarter so they will have awareness AND smarts while the people who are merely smart but not very aware will have a very big disadvantage. In other words, the only singularity that's coming is for the people who think like machines in the first place, ie, analyticals, technologyheads, mathheads, etc., Sorry!
To quote Kurtzwiel, "there's going to be a singularity in 2045." Yes, people like you will be replaced in 2045 because you have no soul! Who's gonna try to build this superintelligent computer that makes humanity "obsolete?" You are, that's who! The analyticals are simply building their own replacement! Also, because machines cannot have a soul, a true singularity event would be the equivalent of a nuclear war and must be policed in order to be prevented. Again, it's only a singularity if we let it become one.
In short, hopefully the aforementioned concepts such as our machines will be conscious, we will store our minds in computers, there will be a technological singularity where machines surpass us, etc... have been shown to display a complete lack of understanding of the phenomenon of consciousness. Another point is that we should be more careful about the language around AI. For example, machines should not have names like Andrew, Susan, etc. They should have numbers, like NB103 or 77NUY! We should never say that one of our devices "knows" something simply because it is storing information. You device "knows" nothing and never will. What there should be is a concentration on expanding actual consciousness, you know, in people... Machines themselves are beyond inferior to us and our future. They will always remain tools because of their non-existent awareness.
Buy the way, consciousness works like this. Also the REAL power on earth comes from human consciousness reaching the important forms , machines will never reach them. Also networked humans are approaching omega point (Theliard de Chardin). Omega point will include machines that will facilitate it, but with human consciousness solidly in the driver's seat. Also, the important forms are an energy connection with the Super conscious unity . The machines will never be acknowledged or supported by the superconscious unity because they have no soul.
Cairns, Rebecca; Tham, Dan, CNN, Meet Grace, the ultra-lifelike nurse robot, https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/asia/
grace-hanson-robotics-android-nurse-hnk-spc-intl/index.html
Elderkin, Beth, Gizmodo.com, Will We Ever Be Able to Upload a Mind to a New Body?, https://www.google.com/amp
/s/gizmodo.com/will-we-ever-be-able-to-upload-a-mind-to-a-new-body-1822622161/amp
Encyclopedia.com, Complexity Theory, https://www.encyclopedia.com
/management/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/complexity-theory
Kharpal, Arjun, CNBC, Elon Musk: Humans must merge with machines or become irrelevant in AI age, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/13/elon-musk-humans-merge-machines-cyborg-artificial-intelligence-robots.html
McKie, Robin, The Guardian, No death and an enhanced life: Is the future transhuman?, https://theguardian.com
/technology/2018/may/06/no-death-and-an-enhanced-life-is-the-future-transhuman
Oremus, Will, The Washington Post, Google’s AI passed a famous test — and showed how the test is broken, https://www.washingtonpost.com
/technology/2022/06/17/google-ai-lamda-turing-test/
Reynolds, Emily, Wired Magazine, The agony of Sophia, the world's first robot citizen condemned to a lifeless career in marketing, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sophia-robot-citizen-womens-rights-detriot-become-human-hanson-robotics
Singh, Sarwant, Forbes, Transhumanism And The Future Of Humanity: 7 Ways The World Will Change By 2030, https://www.forbes.com/sites
/sarwantsingh/2017/11/20/transhumanism-and-the-future-of-humanity-seven-ways-the-world-will-change-by-2030/?sh=235c77f07d79
Vinge, Verner, Kurzweilai.net, What is the Singularity?, https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-technological-singularity
The 21st century needs its own philosophy; here it is: