quantum

Intelligence — What I Think About A.I.

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The dawn of artificial intelligence has led to much consternation about whether this is a good or bad development.  But, in order to better understand the technology and the implications, we must first define what we mean by intelligence.  What does it mean to be intelligent?  What makes us intelligent beings?

The definition of intelligence, provided by Google, is “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.”  But this seems to be a little vague and inadequate.  Robots, used in manufacturing, already apply knowledge and skills—things programmed into them by human operators.  And “ability to acquire” isn’t too clear either.  So we need to break this down further.

Intelligence is the ability to usefully process information.  

It has components.  

First there is the ability to interface within a broader space or an external environment.  If there is no information to input them there is nothing to intelligently process.  Our senses are what connects us to the physical world and part of how we navigate through life.  An internal model of the outside domain starts with information gathering or interface.

Second, intelligence requires memory, the capacity to remember past success and failures.  Much of what counts as human intelligence is a bunch of procedures and formulas we obtained from others through language.  This rote learning isn’t actually intelligence, memory or knowledge alone aren’t intelligence, but it is definitely part of the foundation.  Memory is one component of IQ we can exercise and expand.

Third, intelligence is an ability to recognize patterns, to accurately extrapolate beyond the data and draw the correct conclusions.  The reality is that our ‘intelligence’ is mostly a process of trial and error, often spanning generations, which leads to advancement in technology and thought.  All one needs to do is observe how major inventions came to be and the many flops along the way to realize we’re more like blind rats running through a maze, using impact with walls until we find an opening to pass through.

Forth, intelligence is an ability create good models to recombine existing ideas.  Nikola Tesla was a genius and not only because of his knowledge.  No, he could use what he knew to construct an apparatus in his brain, which he could then build in the real world.  What set Tesla apart is that his imagination wasn’t fanciful.  Indeed, anyone can proclaim that “there should be,” but it takes something else entirely to accurately extrapolate.

Finally, intelligence has an aim.  Truly a pile of knowledge is worth much less than a pile of manure if it can’t be usefully applied.  And if something is useful, that is to say that there is an underlying meaning or purpose.  To be intelligent there must be some agency or will to drive it.  Curiosity is one of the things that sets us apart, it moves us forward—questions like “what is beyond that mountain” or “how high does the sky go,” push innovation.

Intelligence is knowledge and abilities that are useful to something.  Useful to us.  And really becomes a question of what our own consciousness.

Intelligence Failure

“Primitive life is relatively common, but that intelligent life is very rare. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.”

Steven Hawking

Another way to define what intelligence is is to explore what it is not.  Encyclopedias hold knowledge, stored in human language, but a book on a shelf has no logos.  It is the writer and reader that provide reason to the words, via their own interpretation or intended use, which is something that can’t be contained in ink on the page.  There are many people who are full of knowledge, but it is largely trivial because they lack ability to put it to good use.

Another problem is perception.  Even our physical eyes provide a very selective and distorted view of the world.  We do not see everything and, in fact, can literally miss the gorilla in the room if our focus is occupied elsewhere.  Many can’t comprehend their own limitations, they are guided through the evidence by confirmation bias and not with good analysis.  We really can connect the dots any which way, see patterns in what is random truly noise, and errant perception is difficult to correct once entrenched.

Intelligence must be about knowledge and theories that can be usefully applied.  The intuitions we have that help us to navigate the mundane tasks do not necessarily help us to draw correct conclusions so far as the more abstract areas.  People can persist in being wrong in matters that can’t be readily tested and falsified.  Any processor is only as good as the data that is entered and the depth of the interpretative matrix through which it is sifted and measured.  Even the slight error in one of the pillars of a thought, no matter how good the rest of the material is, can lead to an entirely failed structure.

Thoughts are structures only as good as their base assumptions.

Being slow is also a synonym for a lack of intelligence.  That is to say, in order to be useful, information must be processed in a timely manner.  Missing context and cues also leads to poor understanding, like Drax protesting the metaphor “goes over his head” with, “Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.”  It does not matter how much information you process if the conclusions are inaccurate or too late for the circumstances.  Wittiness and a good sense of humor is a sign that a person is intelligent.

Intelligence is a continuum.  We can have more or less of it.  But measures like IQ don’t really mean that much, a person with a high IQ isn’t necessarily smart or wise.  A Mensa membership doesn’t mean you’ll make good decisions or be free of crackpot ideas.  Sure, it will probably help a person navigate academia and be more verbose in arguments, but it is not going to free someone of bias nor does it mean they’re rational.  This is why true intelligence needs to be about useful application.

Deus Ex Machina

Deus ex machina, literally “god from the machine,” refers to a plot element where something arrives that solves a problem and allows the story to proceed.  

Ex Machina is also the title of a great movie which explores questions about artificial intelligence, with an android named Ava, her creator Nathan and a software engineer named Caleb.  Caleb who was selected by Nathan is there to perform a Turing test and is eventually manipulated by Ava who uses his feelings for her as a means to escape.  It is a sobering story about human vulnerability and the limits of our intelligence—Caleb’s human compassion (along with his sexual preferences) is exploited.

Ava

However, this kind of artificial intelligence does not exist.  Yes, various chat bots are able to mimic human conversation.  But this is not Ava talking to Caleb.  There is not real self-awareness or observer behind the lines of code.  It is, rather, a program that follows rules.  Sure, it may be sophisticated enough to fool many people.  But it is not sentient or being having agency, it is augmented human intelligence.  They have essentially created a mannequin, not a man.  Despite these bots being able to manufacture statements which sound like intelligence, they lack capacity for consciousness.

A true Ava would require more than mere ability to interact convincingly with humans, it would take the “ghost inside the machine,” that is to say duplicates our own singular experience of the present moment or has a mind’s I.  This level of artificial intelligence doesn’t seem possible until we crack the code of our own self-awareness and that is a mystery yet to be solved.  Even if you do not believe in things like immaterial spirit or detached soul, there is likely some special quality to the structure of our brains which creates this synthesis.

Without some kind of quantum leap, this A.I. technology will be an amplifier of the values of the creators, an intelligence built in their image and to serve them.  It will not uncover objective truth or be a perfect moral arbiter.  Nor will it be our undoing as a species.  It will be a reflection of us and our own aims.  It has no reason for it’s being apart from us.  No consciousness, survival instinct or true being besides that of those utilizing it to extend their own.

What Are the Practical Implications of Consciousness?

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Have you ever pondered the complete impossibility of your existence as a finite conscious being?

Think about it.

What are the chances of your arriving at this precise moment of time given the infinite possibilities before and after?

Our existence seems finite.  We have vague memory of our beginnings as a sentient creature.  We were given a month, date and year of our birth; our first conscious moments arrived at some point in time before that (during the 24th and 28th week of gestation) in our mother’s womb.  All indications point to a beginning to our conscious existence and all things with a beginning will eventually end—or at least that is the pattern we can observe in everything in the universe.  (Well, everything besides death and taxes, both of those things apparently permanent fixtures…)

But, if we are finite, and time stretches infinitely in both directions from the point of our existence in this present moment, how did we end up here?  Why is it not a million, billion or quadrillion quadrillion years before or after this moment of now?  There is infinite possibility of it being any moment but now and yet inexplicably here we are contemplating our existence together.  How?

I believe the answer could be a matter of perception.  While it is true that what we perceive is our reality—there is a vast difference between our individual perception and reality as a whole.  For starters, as finite beings, we can only perceive an infinitesimally small portion of the universe we live in and can’t truly imagine anything beyond it.  And, beyond that, our perception is often skewed and distorted in ways we are unable to see ourselves.

One thing we do not perceive correctly is the reality that we are inexorably linked to the universe.  From our own perspective of consciousness we are something separate—an individual—and apart from everything else in the universe.  However, we did not just materialize out of thin air, every part of us was part of the universe long before it became part of us and will probably continue to exist long after our physical bodies die and become worm food.  Despite our perception of being something outside of the universe looking in, somehow a unique entity in our mind, we are still one with the universe and can’t be separated from it.

An immaterial soul, a part of us separate from the material universe and undetectable, is not required to explain our consciousness.  There is sufficient evidence to suggest that human consciousness is an emergent property of electrical activity in our brain.  And still, no matter how much science can explain, there’s a great mystery to our existence, as finite beings, at this time and place.

Timelessness and the divinity of Christ

At risk of being labeled heretic (not that anyone has the right to do that, especially not a Protestant armed with only their own opinion of the Bible and a denominational bias) I will postulate an idea about our consciousness and what it means.

Remember how Jesus turned the “you are gods” of Psalm 82:6 into a defense for his own claim of divinity?

Here’s the reference:

“We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’?  If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? (John 10:33‭-‬36 NIV)

The interesting thing about the passage Jesus quotes is how it applies to us.  If Jesus is using this verse as a defense of his own divinity, then what does that make us?  Does receiving the word of God (via the Spirit) give us the right to claim divinity as well?

There seems to be no other logical conclusion besides our being in some way divine.  We are told elsewhere that “those led by the Spirit of God are the children of God” (Romans 8:14-17) and “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ,” which is an astonishing claim.  It means that, through adoption, we are and will be fully divine, like Christ.

And this gets even more bizarre when you consider the further implications.  We exist in time.  However, God exists at the beginning and ending of time simultaneously and thus is outside of time as we perceive it.  Therefore, when we complete this process of divinization (or theosis) described throughout Scripture and become one with God, in timeless eternity will we save ourselves before we even existed?

Maybe predestination is our choice?

Only God knows…

So, what does divinization have to do with consciousness?

To exist in eternity future, a timeless infinite future, then one also pre-exist time.  In fact, words like “past” or “present” or “future” do not exist in a timeless reality.  Something that exists as both infinite and eternal can be (without contradiction) at all points (of space and time) while, at the same time, also at none.

Our linear perception of time comes from a limited perspective of reality and is a perspective that falls apart at the edges of our universe.  At the quantum level things become irrational from a time-based perspective; quantum particles borrow energy from the future, they are somehow entangled together across vast swaths of space, and this all strongly suggests there is something “off” about our intuitions.

Consciousness, on one hand, is an emergent property of our physical brain.  But it also seems to be more than that or how could we be experiencing the present moment given the infinite possibilities?  Time defines our conscious experience and yet our consciousness of time allows us to contemplate timelessness.

To follow after Jesus, take on the divine nature and be “children of God” requires that some part of our being must exist beyond time.  The question is, if this is true, do we even exist as a separate consciousness or are we already part of something bigger and divine?

Could our conscious mind, like the individual neurons in a brain that have no awareness of the whole mind, also be individually unaware of our own part in a larger consciousness?

Are we in some mysterious way already timeless and divine?

Are we gods?