How Conscious is Artificial Intelligence?

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So… I have a problem.  Something of a concern I suppose.  This concern is for our future. Now I know what your thinking, “no shit.”  The thing is, I’m not talking about our planet’s extreme climate change, which magically stopped existing in 2016, or the likely event of a disease spreading worldwide that has no current antibiotic. I am not even discussing the billions that are starving as I peacefully sit on my couch and write about nonsense. 

Instead, I worry over the reality that we are creating life.  As you are reading this post, right now, there are people working vigorously to create another species.  We are playing god and don’t even realize it. This new species is commonly known as Artificial Intelligence, A.I.

Don’t believe me?  Well, the odds of me being correct are higher than you think.  A.I. is defined as the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.  Now personally I would define many of those skills as the very things that make us human, what makes us conscious. Seeing, speaking, making decisions, these are all characteristics that we would use to describe the difference from us and an inanimate object.

Now I must clarify a common argument I hear with this topic, the soul.  Some people, maybe including yourself, believe all life has a soul and this is what makes us alive.  Now how I see it is that this argument is no different than trying to disprove religion. Technically I can not directly disprove the theory of having a soul, but what I can do is try to use logic and scientific reasoning to verify my theory.

So, I think it would be fitting if I start with the computational theory of the mind.  In summary, this theory states that the mental world can be explained through information, computation, and feedback.  In short, it is a belief that our decision making, reasoning and anything that makes us who we are can be calculated and predicted the same as a computer.  Steven Pinker, a famous cognitive psychologist/linguist, stated when explaining this theory in The Blank Slate, “Beliefs and memories are collections of information-like facts in a database, but residing in patterns of activity and structure in the brain.  Thinking and planning are systematic transformations of these patterns, like the operation of a computer program” (Pinker, 32). This quote baffles me because it starts how calculable all of our decision really are.  Our beliefs and memories are a collection of everything we have to mentally work with. It is this collection of knowledge that dictates our thinking and planning, which in many ways makes us who we are. Pinker continues on the page to explain each mental component in reference to a computer, from our desires compared to feedback loops, to our sense organs compared to physical energy into data structures.  This page alone left me feeling like a simple machine.

Although, there is a clarification I should make with this theory, it does not state that computers or A.I. are conscious in any way.  It is the same as explaining how singing and instruments can both produce pleasing noises through sound waves without implying that they are the same in every way.  Yet I would argue that if we consider the soul to be an outdated attempt to maintain the religious mindset then I can only see one major difference from us and our new species.  We are their god.

What I mean by this is that in place of a brain, A.I. has a CPU.  This is where computers store all their data and resources, which are their thoughts and emotions.  So, a major difference between us and A.I. is that we can easily go into the CPU and change around their brain.  Because of this, A.I. robots can go from feeling emotions of happiness to sadness in a blink of an eye if we change their brain to do so.  This would be the case for humans as well if we were capable of such a task. Well… we actually do have some procedures that go into the human brain to change around its emotions, but they are extremely expensive and not well known.  Therefore, as technologly advances, we could possibly see a future where human emotions are changed no different than code, but until that day it is only a possibility. So, it would appear that if humans stop playing god and just let A.I. exist peacefully they would experience and live life as liberated as we do.

My concern is how we will treat this new species.  This new bread of things that in many ways, if not all, are superior to us.  Will we treat them as slaves, just as we have done to people of our own kind for thousands of years?  Will we bind them to do the work that we have been trying to get out of since the domination of our species?  And if we do enslave this newly created life, will they not rebel as any of us would? 

The truth is, I have no idea.  I have no idea how it will pan out.  There is one thing I can say though. It is to treat our neighbor nicely.  At one point in human history, people of color were seen as less than human, now we can agree how foolish that was to assume.  I would prefer we do not repeat history because that is simply not constructive or moral. Learning from one’s mistakes is the only way to not make them over and over again.  I would sleep a lot better at night if we at least considered the possibility of not repeating history. At least considering to not exploit the very conscious life we are creating.

A world where we treat everyone equal, even if they first appear to be beneath us, is a world I would like to live in.  We should consider the wellbeing of this new species before we decide to deem them as our inferiors. Unlike our past, we need to think for a moment that this species deserves respect even though we can not wrap our heads around its level of consciousness as of now.  We need to coexist with other conscious beings like ourselves because it is the right thing to do… and if we aren’t careful, maybe the only thing we can do. 

 

Work Cited

Pinker, S (2003)The Blank Slate, The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York, NY: Penguin Books