Footprints of the Spirit

According to Ray Kurzweil, the most important question we must ask ourselves today is “Will artificial intelligence enable the third stage of life?” According to MIT physicist and AI researcher Max Tegmark, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” Life 1.0 is represented by bacteria “… where both the hardware and software are evolved rather than designed.” (Tegmark, 2017). Life 2.0 is “… life whose hardware is evolved, but whose software is largely designed.” (Ibid.) – in other words, human life. Humanity represents an evolutionary leap that allows us to devise the algorithms used to process sense-based data. In this phase, we are mind-evolving creatures. But there is a final upgrade that must be installed to make us perfect: Life 3.0. In this phase we design not only our software but our hardware too. With this capacity, we ascend to total mastery of our destiny, finally free from the shackles left over from non-technological evolution. This new form of life can no longer be considered human. It is life fully fitted for membership in the galactic civilization.

The trend which Tegmark identifies is part of a larger transhuman, or perhaps more accurately, post-human, movement. Transhumanism promotes the idea that humans can be merged with advanced AI to create cyborgs that will fuse the best features of humans and cybertech. In order for minds and machines to truly mate, certain assumptions must be made about the nature of consciousness. The dominant model of consciousness among computer scientists today can be summed up as follows: “Most computer scientists think that consciousness is a characteristic that will emerge as technology develops. Some believe that consciousness involves accepting new information, storing and retrieving old information and cognitive processing of it all into perceptions and actions. If that’s right, then one day machines will indeed be the ultimate consciousness. They’ll be able to gather more information than a human, store more than many libraries, access vast databases in milliseconds and compute all of it into decisions more complex, and yet more logical, than any person ever could.” (Kak, 2017). But does our consciousness do no more than collect information and process it until it is transformed into perceptions and actions? That definition of consciousness may be more the result of the invisible groove into which technology has slid than reflective of the structure of consciousness.

In order to believe that computers are becoming self-aware, a number of questionable assumptions need to be internalized. The first is that life processes, including self-conscious actions such as thinking, emerge from complex electro-chemical interactions. This is the “meat computer” notion of the human being that is now being actively questioned by scientists from many fields. The supposition is that one such process – thought — is a literal reflection of material reality. As such, advanced AI should be able to carry it out as well as, if not much better than, human brains. If so, then it may be possible to call AI “conscious” in a certain sense. For these scientists, consciousness is an anomalous side-effect of internal operations which are as shallow in the human mind as they are in the CPU.

The question then becomes, “How and why does a human being think?” The answer is that this process has constantly evolved over many thousands of years. As worldviews have changed, the thought process and the perceptions informed by those views have been transformed over and over again. To project our current bias toward Boolean logic (a form of logic in which the values used in propositions are the truth values true and false) backward in time, judging all mental evolution by its standard, is a particularly crude form of cultural imperialism. It betrays a deep blindness to the richness inherent in the human mind.

Our thinking activity, to the extent it is truly human, encompasses much more than Boolean algebra. This inner richness is not derived from flaws in our organic processes, but is the force that enlivens logic and makes it fruitful. When we project our current knowledge back into earlier scientific epochs, we may succumb to the illusion that the great discoveries were mere extensions of the logical methods we now understand so well. These methods inform our present outlook to such a degree that a discovery such as the law of gravity, for instance, seems like a “no-brainer.” Yet it took thousands of years of intellectual evolution to reach the point where such a law could be formulated. How could this be if the human brain today is physiologically identical to the human brain of the last few thousand years? Clearly, the evolution of thought must have involved much more than the collecting information and “processing” it into perceptions and actions. A sequence of logical operations can never amount to more than a set of signifiers (the sounds and images designating realities), but the meaning of those signifiers can only reside in a human mind.

Rather than blindly accepting what computer scientists are reported to believe about consciousness, may we not be allowed a certain degree of expertise as to what occurs in our own minds? The creative efforts we make in our daily work reflect the same cognitive operations on a smaller scale as what occurs in scientific discoveries. In order to break through to an understanding of complex technical processes, we have to make inner efforts powered by a strong will for knowledge. Once the effort is made and significant understanding gained, the new truths often seem so obvious that we think we must have been idiots not to have seen them before. Actually, we are no less idiots after the breakthrough than before. But our stream of consciousness has shifted during the discovery, resulting in an inner growth that cannot be reversed.

While much of this effort seems to result from trying to follow a complex series of logical operations that a machine could perform more efficiently, it is not the operations themselves that drive the outcome. No matter what the source of the motivation, it is the will to know which is essential. We have to make a clear distinction between the operations needed to confirm the discovery and the inner strength required to capacitate the insight. Networks may provide vital information that permit logical conclusions, but they are not capable of supplying the inspiration that makes the revelation significant. The initial insight requires a powerful effort of the soul. For those who come after, the insight is easy to grasp because a pioneer has laid out the path to understanding. Driving over a mountain road on a sunny day and surfacing that road with molten asphalt are quite different experiences.

At this point, we see how an educated will must struggle when finding new pathways between ideas. However, there is another factor that must also be present. The constant inner push toward practical knowledge creates a mysterious quality known as “skill”, which is more than the sum of our mental habits. Its presence reveals itself in many ways. One example would be the perception of the beauty of a newly discovered mathematical theorem or a particularly elegant software design. Such perceptions are only available through a discipline that slowly blossoms into genuine expertise. This hard-won inner sense permits an engineer to review a new software design and immediately detect that it won’t work just by its “feel.” This would seem to require machinations of the soul that transcend predictable sequences of logic.

The code programmers write is executed using binary logic gates which form the basis for modern computing. It also incorporates the limits of that logic. As Gopi Krishna Vijaya demonstrated in his paper, “Technology and the Laws of Thought”

“This conversion of all logical statements into algebraic form is thus seen to remove everything that could not be quantified or mechanized and retain only that which could. It is not an extension, as Boole believed, but a reduction, or a filtration.” (Vijaya, 2015).

While the machines that execute these Boolean propositions can process huge amounts of data in milliseconds, the logic in the heart of the machine can only express a tiny fragment of the world we inhabit. This logic replaces the infinite gradation in the colors of the world with easy-to-process black and white values.

As Dr. Vijaya put it, “Instead of facing the paradoxes generated by using traditional logic and moving ahead, as was done for example by Hegel, the paradoxes were shunned by seeking refuge in a restricted form of logic … ” (Vijaya, Technology and the Laws of Thought, 2016, p. 42).   Apparently, when these thinkers sensed the shaky foundations of mathematics and logic, they clung to what they hoped would be unshakeable. Rather than launching out to discover logical modes that might encompass life, the birth of computing was an act of intellectual despair which sought refuge in the comforting predictability of the machine.

Today we shape ourselves by the requirements of that predictability. But our compulsive resonance with the mechanical can be breached. Through self-conscious growth which cultivates right feeling and focused will power, we can reverse the narcosis that threatens to engulf us. As Nicanor Perlas has said, “By focusing on super intelligence simply understood as super IQ, the cyborg revolution will start eliminating all our other intelligences and senses by simply ignoring them or substituting them. And when they get substituted imperfectly, we lose them.” (Perlas, 2018, p. loc. 3096). Unlike our software, we can reprogram ourselves through inner growth. But if we simplify our minds electronically in an attempt to make them super intelligent along a single dimension, we trade a spirit that can enrich itself through continual rebirth for strength without purpose or meaning.

Only if we are able to deny the experience of our own consciousness can we pretend that machines can be conscious. To understand why this is so, consider the mental effort involved in mastering a new way of developing software. For instance, a seasoned object-oriented developer may need to learn functional programming, a completely different style of coding. First, there is the barrier of inner motivation. Why is it necessary for me to study this? This hurdle is usually overcome by careful consideration of the career benefits and increased self-respect. Next, a set of deep-seated habits have to be broken. The difficulty here is that the old smoothly functioning practices have led to success in creating working software. Success sanctions intense commitment and strengthens resistance to change. However, with discipline and determination, this too can be overcome. Then the point is reached where the learner must transition from sample applications to building applications a customer can use. Once again, a whole set of new challenges must be encountered and overcome.

In the end, the programmer has added a new, well-polished instrument to his/her tool chest. But in addition, he/she can now approach software development in a way not imaginable before. Instead of a simple extension of previous methods, the new skill represents a change in the way the prior methods are perceived. The effort involved in mastering the new paradigm awakens previously unsuspected modes of development. This creative capacity is uniquely human. Some of its features might be imitated by a program, but it will never reach the human level because software cannot reprogram itself and change its primary directives.

The promise of computing is that by leaving what can be automated behind us, we can emerge into the infinities of the imagination. But the actual result has been a steady degradation of human creativity. In the words of Gopi Krishna Vijaya, “By the belief that thought is mechanical, inner shackles have been placed on the thought process which tend to direct it more and more towards atrophy.” (Vijaya, 2015, p. 51). Instead of using computers to free our minds from drudgery, we mime the automatisms which we are compelled to serve. We can’t navigate across the city we grew up in without a GPS. We are unable to write a letter without a word processor. Our memories have deteriorated to the point we can no longer remember our chores without to-do software. Rather than freeing us, the use of computers has weakened our mental agility and deadened our imagination.

Like Odysseus lashing himself to his ship’s mast as the Sirens sing their invitation to destruction, we have allowed ourselves to be enticed by the promise of artificial intelligence. The song tempts us into infantile fantasies of an Artificial Super Intelligence that can fulfill our every need. In place of the self-conscious effort required for living thinking, AI will ensure that our challenges are merely technical. At that point, since we will have abandoned our own conscious capabilities, we can safely lapse into the pretense that robots can be conscious.

But like Odysseus, we can transcend the enchantment while mastering the technology by putting it in its proper place. AI could be used to free us from all that should be mechanized rather than tempting us into becoming automatons ourselves. In the words of Robert Sardello,

“The manic urge to create a technological world arises when soul can no longer be felt as a creative force in the world. Strengthening the forces of soul, of imagination, can gradually bring about a balance – a balance that does not require abandoning technology but considerably diminishes the fantasies invested in it. When soul creates it does so in terms of qualities, and only as its action is severely impaired are we prone to take speed as a substitute for soul making.”

 (Sardello, Facing the World with Soul, 1991, p. loc. 2302).

Kak, S. (2017, 12 15). Will Artificial Intelligence Become Conscious? Retrieved from Singularity Hub: https://singularityhub.com/2017/12/15/will-artificial-intelligence-become-conscious/#sm.0000udrqcl1e4cpowdj29tl24lbbt

Lanier, J. (2011). You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage Books.

Perlas, N. (2018). Humanity's Last Stand. Forest Row, England: Temple Lodge.

Sardello, R. (1991). Facing the World with Soul. Great Barrington, Maine: Lindisfarne Press.

Tegmark, M. (2017, 8 17). Will AI enable the third stage of life? Retrieved from Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence: http://www.kurzweilai.net/will-ai-enable-the-third-stage-of-life

Vijaya, G. K. (2015). Technology and the Laws of Thought. Retrieved from Moral Technologies: Being Human in the Age of Technological Development: http://www.anthroposophy.org/fileadmin/being-human/bh-16-2016-Easter-Spring/Technology_and_the_Laws_of_Thought_GopiVijaya_2015.pdf

Vijaya, G. K. (2016, Spring). Technology and the Laws of Thought. Being Human, p. 42.