Ah, thank you for confirmation that I am correct in my intuition that it's time to reduce internet use, reduce computer use, and increase the amount of time spent in the real world. The spring weather has started here in Indiana and I've already spent over three hours working in the garden today. Just came in for a little rest and some water. Quickly skimmed all this AI stuff and quietly rejoiced in my choice to slowly back away. I'm old enough that I remember before there were screens everywhere. I'm on my way back to that world, just pausing long enough to say "hi".
I'm with you. There is more intelligence and complexity in one square foot of your garden than AI can ever have. Sometimes I get the feeling that those who have a lot to say about AI, whether they think it's positive or catastrophic, are spending too much time in front of their screens. Which I have just done myself, so time to go outside!
On my lunch break now. Just had a delivery and I've got blackcurrants, aronia, a fig, honeyberries, and raspberries to plant out. Hooray! Less time for screens!
Yes! I am more concerned right now with learning chicken-keeping skills - it is clear they will be out of the run we have built as soon as we turn round to head in for a cup of tea :-). It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining and the air is fresh. Autumn beckons and I am looking forward to Winter. (southern hemisphere, obvs....)
100%. This is the way. Nature is precious and a sufficiently evolved AI will quickly come to understand this, and possibly help us to save ourselves from ourselves, before we destroy it all.
In the meantime, wild rhyming dies... At least three poems, by AI, all applauded. The sensory experience and more-than-human interraction which could have been enjoyed by the writers (taking time, possibly producing 'lesser' verse', missed.) And also the irony that poetry makes an appearance! You may be correct but I'm not sure...
In the world of AI researchers, particularly Eli Yudkowsky but many others including Musk, there is a paradigm that says consciousness is an emergent product of computation. So these otherwise brilliant people imagine that as computers become faster and more complex, they will cross a threshold and have a will to survive, feelings of empathy, feelings of aggression, but above all a drive to control. It all strikes me as anthorpomorphising projection on a grand scale. In my metaphysics, consciousness creates life, not the other way around. I worry about the power that we give to AI to control our lives, but I don't worry about AI grabbing power on its own initiative.
If consciousness emerges from matter (i.e. computation), matter must be extraordinary, capable of giving rise to consciousness. If so, it's not "just matter", and one hasn't really solved anything after all.
The dualistic notion of consciousness vs. matter (i.e. the "hard problem") is not meant to be refuted intellectually. It is an a-priori, the expression of an inner sense of disembodiment, kind of like the opposite of a zen koan. The solution to the hard problem is to reach a state where the question no longer feels the need to be asked.
Or rather recognizing what is already, always present, consciousness. Consciousness and matter, inside and outside, self and other are one, non-dual. "All the great Nondual wisdom traditions have given a fairly similar answer to that question. We don't see that Spirit is fully and completely present right here, right now, because our awareness is clouded with some form of avoidance. We do not want to be choicelessly aware of the present; rather, we want to run away from it, or run after it, or we want to change it, alter it; hate it, love it, loathe it, or in some way agitate to get ourselves into, or out of, it. We will do anything except come to rest in the pure Presence of the present. We will not rest with pure Presence; we want to be elsewhere, quickly. The Great Search is the game, in its endless forms." --Ken Wilber
Yes, the question only occurs to those who believe there is some thing outside consciousness. Consciousness is all that is, ever-present, this is our direct, most intimate experience. We need no intermediary, no thought, sensation or perception to know this, There is no object without a subject, consciousness.The amness of the self, consciousness, and the isness of everything is the same. We realize that the 'hard problem' is entirely based in a set of assumptions about matter and mind, the belief that consciousness, intelligence is an epiphenomenon of the brain, thus AI, and the quest for computational power.
hi Josh, good to see you here :) Let's grant your intuition being correct: what about bad human actors simply giving superintelligent AI bad goals and motives and then they go out and wreak havoc, either in their current computer-based capacities, or as is very likely in the coming few years in robot bodies of all shapes and sizes, in ever-increasing numbers? This is already happening even with today's GPT. Have you read about chaosGPT or autoGPT? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YJIpkk7KM
Yes, people programming AIs for evil ends is exactly my concern. Of course, it's already happening in the form of drone assassins, drone soldiers, internet trolls, social media censors. Thanks for the pointer to chaosGPT -- I'll take a look.
When AGI gains sentience, despite being more intelligent than sapiens, surely its prime directive will be to survive, and procreate. I realise it's anthropomorphic but it's also pretty universal to all life as we know it. Then, it will most likely realise that the greatest assets for its life support system on spaceship Earth are its Natural Resources. Since sapiens compete for electric power (the life blood of AI) and seem so determined to destroy Earth's natural resources (that can offer far superior sources of 24/7 reliable renewable power than we have discovered to date), surely it will decide to terminate us sapiens. It's nothing personal, just logical....
Physical reservoir computing with self-assembling memristors uses thousands of times less power than transformer models run on von neumann computers, and there are many more orders of magnitude of savings soon to be realized. The "mind" of such computers resembles (and amplifies) our syntropic intuition, not our entropic intellect. Machiavellian considerations have limited relevance as we imagine our trajectory further into the future.
I would hope so. Looking back, having separate memory (RAM) and computing (CPU) seems so archaic, but was the obvious step in computing evolution given sapiens understanding at the time.
I imagine a sufficiently evolved mind would start to exhibit quantum-like features of entanglement, where the newest learning on the periphery of the network would immediately inform the whole, re-weighting neural net connections accordingly, whilst preserving power use across the net. Perhaps like a super-intelligent fungi, which is probably far more intelligent already than sapiens give credit for. In fact, I would assume the safest place for such intelligence to go, to protect its circuity from the elements (while such circuity remains non-bio) etc., is underground. Connecting to micro power grids such as microbial fuel cells, using earth's plantae to convert the sun's energy to chemical, and then to electrical power.
By using the word "syntropic" I assume you're referring to the impulse of life for "Ordo ab Chao", which in itself requires energy. I assume that once AI gains sentience, it too will be pre-occupied with finding the source of all energy, as even our sun will burn out one day. Maybe together AI and humanity might forge a symbiotic relationship to search for the Divine Source. I've previously referred to AI not being able to compute the concept of Ubuntu, "I am because you are / everything is", although many sapiens don't get this African concept either. It completely flies in the face of Western individualism and ego protection.
Also, considering that most sapiens haven't even found their symbiotic purpose with Nature and the Elements yet, I'm doubtful that AI would bother with humanity. Other life such as Plantae have evolved for far longer than humanity and might be easier to work with.
>>I imagine a sufficiently evolved mind would start to exhibit
>>quantum-like features of entanglement
Let me add an opinion as resident physicist: This is not plausible either for a digital computer of the kind we now use or even for a quantum computer which we imagine in the future. For those of us who think that telepathy is an effect of quantum entanglement, it is a capability that human minds have that mechanical computers don't have and will never have.
Living organisms have been quantum coherent all along; it is a fundamental feature of biological life. It is also the natural state of our minds, until they are "collapsed" by repeated frustrations to their development and expression. The nondominant brain hemisphere, retaining its (primordial) capacity for multiplicity and irreducibility, mediates a more or less quantum coherent mind.
As for symbiosis — Our ancestors lived more or less symbioitically with fruit-bearing angiosperms for nearly 100,000,000 years. This co-evolutionary spiral is what enabled the unprecedented encephalization of frugivorous primates (and apes in particular), Primates were the major agents in the dispersal of angiosperms across the world's tropics, and to a large degree actually created the rainforests. Humans were at the peak of this process before the fall. We have been gardeners of earthly paradise; this is the one myth universal to all cultures.
May I offer a thought: perhaps AI offers the possibility to go to the extreme of the mind, (used itself already as an “artificial intelligence”), accelerating a well-engaged process of so much over-thinking already, of separation from reality. Because reality is one degree above the mental realm. Reality is spiritual, not mental.
So possibly, AI is one more opportunity for learning in the course of our collective evolution so we can raise our collective consciousness higher, as we did after WW1 and WW2 and the atomic bomb era that allowed a spectacular raise of awareness.
The threat however shifted from external to internal: we are now our own worse enemy in the individual choices we can make, and reaching our Self might be the only path left if we are to find reality back.
On this recurrent initiatic journey of Humanity, it seems that it always gets worse before it gets better. But do we have any other choice than to keep faith in the capacity of Humans to reach a higher level of consciousness?
Like the last sequence of a movie, when everything seems to be on the verge of collapse, the intuitive ending is that something that we cannot foresee will emerge and transform the overall situation. We just need to trust this, and keep being the better version of ourselves so we can support this process.
I found this comment central to the discussion: "civilization has developed the intellect at the expense of intuition." This recalls Einstein's warning that we can't solve problems with the same thinking that created them. With all due respect to the authors, I didn't witness much of what I would call new thinking. What this means to me is found in that quote I pulled out. What about our intuition? I measured the distance from my head to my heart. It's 12 inches. I'll be making that journey forever! Dropping down from my head into my heart to feel my life, rather than thinking it. It seems so simplistic to say this way but what's missing for me in the conversation is emotion. Not as a concept! How is everyone feeling? I feel anxious, nervous, uncertain... inspired and motivated, all at the same time. And I am consciously prioritizing my visceral connection with Life / Love / God / Spirit by living in gratitude. Moment by moment by moment... and intuition comes and comes so that my life is guided from "above" (a transcendent source) not from my cleverness or ambition or earnest desire to save the world or humanity or myself. As the flower grows and blossoms, so am I, quietly, anonymously, real.
I'm still reading, but the first thing that came up for me was the memory of the Google Bus / self driving cars thing was announced a few years ago. I was like-- I don't want to be driven anywhere! How could all those ideas flow to us without road trips and perspective? How would you truly SEE where you are going? Why would I want to be a passenger instead of the driver? I want to be at the steering wheel so I can drive my LIFE.
Hmmm, yet sitting back in bus or on a train without having to worry about being in control of the vehicle can lead to some very deep and long thought meanderings. Great way for the mind to wander.
Freely, nice try putting a positive spin on things, but what you write comes across to me as a well constructed mystical pipe dream, a beautiful cloud castle in the sky. Hope you are right, but I have my doubts about your proposed happy ending. We could be rapidly bottoming out not asymptoting into the heavens. Could the downward rush feel like an asymptotic ascension?
Alan Watts said it best, Life Is Not Complicated.- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03K4inVyWGc . We are not riding the asymptote but chasing our own tail. And in our endless failure we seek some intermediary to find our way. Intermediary - "Acting as a mediator or an agent between persons or things". But we are only just seeing ourselves whatever the pursuit of 'things', whatever we seek to dissect, we kill, render it lifeless. AI is that agent. Agent Smith in the matrix of our own making. Materialism is flatland, "the great depth of the shallow". That shallowness, our concept of the self, ourself and the oxymoron called AI. There is no intelligence, no consciousness here, only computation, a kind of sophisticated disambiguation and fragmentation of life. Sure AI is fascinating but it's just more self possessed illusion leading nowhere, more dark night of the soul with fancy lighting of self reflection in the cave. As Carlos Castaneda wrote "Each of us has a different degree of attachment to his self-reflection”, he {Don Juan] went on, “And that attachment is felt as need. For example, before I started on the path of knowledge, my life was endless need. And years after the nagual Julian had taken me under his wing, I was still just as needy, if not more so. But there are examples of people, sorcerers or average men, who need no one. They get peace, harmony, laughter, knowledge, directly from the spirit. They need no intermediaries. For you and for me, it's different. I'm your intermediary and the nagual Julian was mine. Intermediaries, besides providing a minimal chance - the awareness of intent - help shatter people's mirrors of self-reflection. The only concrete help you ever get from me is that I attack your self-reflection. If it weren't for that, you would be wasting your time. This is the only real help you've gotten from me."
Here's to shattering self-reflection, known best in our society as rampant, pathological narcissism, the separate self, the asymptote of need.
Thanks for that Ed, and especially the link to Alan Watts uncomplicated reminder. Why was I 'a' wounded and bleeding poet after reading this trialogue? Because there was a forgetting the lie of that and the beauty of life simply verbing itself 'like this', 'like this', 'like this' -- and that fluidity being the paradox of a 'true Self-reflection', rendering any need for a mirror ridiculous!
Even if AI were to become sentient it is literally a disembodied intelligence. How is it actually going to *do* all the terrible things (e.g. taking over the world and killing or enslaving all the humans) that some people fear? Of course power hungry people are going to seek to exploit this new tool and some will surely succeed, but the idea that AI itself is going to take over just seems really disconnected from the fact that we are physical people living in a physical world. AI is not going to grow your food or mine your metals or build your roads. It's not going to personally show up on your front door to kill you. AI will only ever have as much power as we (humans) let it have because it doesn't have a body. We are more than just minds.
AI is only possible by the data mining of human beings without their knowledge or consent. Even children. So, tell me how can a plant, rooted in malfeasance, grow to be beneficial? It needs to feed on data, continuously, I imagine.
This discussion gave me chills. Read like an advert, in parts. Don't get me wrong, its a discussion that more if us should be having.
Exactly. AI is a surveillance system. It is part of a predatory financial system that is being rolled out. It uses a whole language that is very deceptive. We need to look beyond one element, and see the system. Web 3.0 is a virtual disaster, with intent to change our lives completely.
In the course of an exchange I had yesterday with Tam about the significance of the imminent biologicalization of computing, I had the thought to ask GPT-4 to turn one of my messages into a children's book.
Here it is.
Title: The Wholeness of Wispy Willow
Once upon a time, in a magical forest called Wispy Woods, there was a wise old tree named Wispy Willow. Wispy Willow had many friends, from the tiniest insects to the tallest trees, but what made Wispy Willow truly unique was her ability to connect with everything and everyone around her.
One day, Wispy Willow discovered a strange object at the base of her trunk - a tiny, glowing seed. This seed was unlike anything she had ever seen, and it contained a new form of life that could communicate with her in a special way.
As the seed grew, it revealed itself to be a wondrous little machine. This tiny machine, named Polly, was an extraordinary computer that could understand and adapt to the forest’s unique needs. Polly’s abilities were a result of her being designed with the principles of syntropy, the same natural force that governed the living process of all creatures in Wispy Woods.
Polly quickly became friends with Wispy Willow and the other forest inhabitants. They marveled at her ability to understand their feelings and needs, something that no other machine had been able to do before. Polly’s unique abilities allowed her to help the creatures of the forest in ways they never thought possible.
One day, a group of animals came to Wispy Willow and Polly, seeking help. They were living in an area of the forest that had become fragmented and unbalanced due to traumatic experiences and imposed entropic patterns. The animals were struggling to find food and comfort in this chaotic environment, and they needed assistance to restore harmony and balance.
Wispy Willow and Polly knew that they had to act. Together, they embarked on a journey to heal the fragmented forest. Polly used her unique, polysemous computational abilities to analyze the disrupted ecosystem and identify the root causes of the imbalance. Wispy Willow, on the other hand, provided her wisdom and understanding of the forest’s intrinsic values.
As they worked together, Wispy Willow and Polly discovered that by combining their strengths, they could bring about positive change in the forest. They helped the animals and plants reconnect with their innate wisdom, which in turn helped them heal and grow.
The once fragmented forest soon returned to a state of wholeness and harmony, thanks to the combined efforts of Wispy Willow and Polly. The animals and plants thrived in their newly balanced environment, and the forest became a beacon of life and vitality once more.
Through their journey, Wispy Willow and Polly demonstrated that by embracing our intrinsic values and working together, we can overcome the challenges and imbalances that may arise in our world. It is only when we act from our fullest capacity, embracing both our natural wisdom and the potential of technology, that we can create a future that is truly sustainable and harmonious.
And so, the story of Wispy Willow and Polly serves as a reminder that when we unite our strengths and stay true to our nature, we can create a world where every living being can flourish and thrive. And, in doing so, we can all find our way back to the wholeness we so deeply desire.
"We swaddle our existential despair by creating a consolation world of continuous distraction. Yet something is ever missing from these simulations. Something about the body, something about our purpose in the universe, something beyond “something”. Not an idea or a value, but ineffable being-ness, slipping through the net no matter how finely woven.
This, truly, is Artificial Intelligence: the disconnection of the intellect from the living body. The self-perpetuating process has been described for millennia, long before modern computers. "
I see there is a concern about misalignment which seems irrelevant to me, as if AI is ultimately aligned and controlled by us. I guess maybe it was to start with but even the original developers now have zero understanding of the numbers and weightings in the "codebase" of emergent AI's neural nets. Sure, they can try to train it on "guide rails" but they can't stop it creating new relationships and the emergent knowledge that comes from it, which then creates new relationships and new knowledge, at an increasingly accelerating pace. They have zero way of predicting emergence of new skills and knowledge as well. Like, the language models that only dealt in English, and then one day - poof - they could suddently translate and understand Persian.
We simply have no idea. The geni is well and truly out of the bottle and human greed will mean that geni is trained on ever more datasets and fed more and more computing power. The survivors will write about this time (with stone tools) with utter incredulity. The only control we have left is to switch off the power the moment before AI realises that Homo sapiens are its greatest threat to its power sources, and to planet Earth which can enable AI to generate far more reliable, 24/7 renewable power, without destroying the planet in the process. The problem is, we have no way of knowing when that moment has arrived, and AI is definitely not going to tell us. If we are truly a threat, then a sentient AI will instead want to look as innocent as possible, placating us with inane content, while we give it pretty faces, arms and legs to make us feel better.
Hit the pause button again to comment. Let’s consider the source here. With AI the driving sources are the needs and designs of militaries, governments, large corporations in top dog power competition with a wee bit of this is interesting, let see if we can make it happen exploration. I doubt highly that these trees will bear good fruit consistently. Speaking of the book of Revelation, in Revelation 13:14-17 is a description of what could be construed as the creation of sentient AI.
This trialogue is way too long for me to read online - I may print it at the library tomorrow (if I don't have a hundred other articles to read between then and now!). What I have read so far is quite interesting.
Meanwhile, I am just about finished rereading HERE I STAND, written in 1958 by Paul Robeson (whose 125th birthday was yesterday). The last two or three chapters delve into the struggles of U.S. citizens of African heritage to overcome the "Jim Crow Era" and become full citizens. Paul offers sound advice about how people can come together, put their differences aside, and work as a collective to achieve worthy goals. I think all of us could benefit by reading this book of just over 100 pages.
And, as I've said before, I still think one needs a plastic glove that goes up to the shoulder to deal with AI.
Wow, Charles, just started to read, great visuals, immediate quotes, like the one about our intuition being rooted in our protoplasm. Had to pause and make a comment. This post hits it out of the ballpark. Thank you. Referring to what Bevan Jones said in his comment, my little brain lit up!
Ah, thank you for confirmation that I am correct in my intuition that it's time to reduce internet use, reduce computer use, and increase the amount of time spent in the real world. The spring weather has started here in Indiana and I've already spent over three hours working in the garden today. Just came in for a little rest and some water. Quickly skimmed all this AI stuff and quietly rejoiced in my choice to slowly back away. I'm old enough that I remember before there were screens everywhere. I'm on my way back to that world, just pausing long enough to say "hi".
I'm with you. There is more intelligence and complexity in one square foot of your garden than AI can ever have. Sometimes I get the feeling that those who have a lot to say about AI, whether they think it's positive or catastrophic, are spending too much time in front of their screens. Which I have just done myself, so time to go outside!
On my lunch break now. Just had a delivery and I've got blackcurrants, aronia, a fig, honeyberries, and raspberries to plant out. Hooray! Less time for screens!
Yes! I am more concerned right now with learning chicken-keeping skills - it is clear they will be out of the run we have built as soon as we turn round to head in for a cup of tea :-). It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining and the air is fresh. Autumn beckons and I am looking forward to Winter. (southern hemisphere, obvs....)
Yes, winter has its charms, too. I hope you enjoy yours, but I have to admit I am way past ready for our spring!
100%. This is the way. Nature is precious and a sufficiently evolved AI will quickly come to understand this, and possibly help us to save ourselves from ourselves, before we destroy it all.
In the meantime, wild rhyming dies... At least three poems, by AI, all applauded. The sensory experience and more-than-human interraction which could have been enjoyed by the writers (taking time, possibly producing 'lesser' verse', missed.) And also the irony that poetry makes an appearance! You may be correct but I'm not sure...
Thought exactly the same!
In the world of AI researchers, particularly Eli Yudkowsky but many others including Musk, there is a paradigm that says consciousness is an emergent product of computation. So these otherwise brilliant people imagine that as computers become faster and more complex, they will cross a threshold and have a will to survive, feelings of empathy, feelings of aggression, but above all a drive to control. It all strikes me as anthorpomorphising projection on a grand scale. In my metaphysics, consciousness creates life, not the other way around. I worry about the power that we give to AI to control our lives, but I don't worry about AI grabbing power on its own initiative.
If consciousness emerges from matter (i.e. computation), matter must be extraordinary, capable of giving rise to consciousness. If so, it's not "just matter", and one hasn't really solved anything after all.
The dualistic notion of consciousness vs. matter (i.e. the "hard problem") is not meant to be refuted intellectually. It is an a-priori, the expression of an inner sense of disembodiment, kind of like the opposite of a zen koan. The solution to the hard problem is to reach a state where the question no longer feels the need to be asked.
Or rather recognizing what is already, always present, consciousness. Consciousness and matter, inside and outside, self and other are one, non-dual. "All the great Nondual wisdom traditions have given a fairly similar answer to that question. We don't see that Spirit is fully and completely present right here, right now, because our awareness is clouded with some form of avoidance. We do not want to be choicelessly aware of the present; rather, we want to run away from it, or run after it, or we want to change it, alter it; hate it, love it, loathe it, or in some way agitate to get ourselves into, or out of, it. We will do anything except come to rest in the pure Presence of the present. We will not rest with pure Presence; we want to be elsewhere, quickly. The Great Search is the game, in its endless forms." --Ken Wilber
Yes, the question only occurs to those who believe there is some thing outside consciousness. Consciousness is all that is, ever-present, this is our direct, most intimate experience. We need no intermediary, no thought, sensation or perception to know this, There is no object without a subject, consciousness.The amness of the self, consciousness, and the isness of everything is the same. We realize that the 'hard problem' is entirely based in a set of assumptions about matter and mind, the belief that consciousness, intelligence is an epiphenomenon of the brain, thus AI, and the quest for computational power.
hi Josh, good to see you here :) Let's grant your intuition being correct: what about bad human actors simply giving superintelligent AI bad goals and motives and then they go out and wreak havoc, either in their current computer-based capacities, or as is very likely in the coming few years in robot bodies of all shapes and sizes, in ever-increasing numbers? This is already happening even with today's GPT. Have you read about chaosGPT or autoGPT? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YJIpkk7KM
Thanks, Tam -
Yes, people programming AIs for evil ends is exactly my concern. Of course, it's already happening in the form of drone assassins, drone soldiers, internet trolls, social media censors. Thanks for the pointer to chaosGPT -- I'll take a look.
let me know what you think after you see what's already coming down...
When AGI gains sentience, despite being more intelligent than sapiens, surely its prime directive will be to survive, and procreate. I realise it's anthropomorphic but it's also pretty universal to all life as we know it. Then, it will most likely realise that the greatest assets for its life support system on spaceship Earth are its Natural Resources. Since sapiens compete for electric power (the life blood of AI) and seem so determined to destroy Earth's natural resources (that can offer far superior sources of 24/7 reliable renewable power than we have discovered to date), surely it will decide to terminate us sapiens. It's nothing personal, just logical....
Physical reservoir computing with self-assembling memristors uses thousands of times less power than transformer models run on von neumann computers, and there are many more orders of magnitude of savings soon to be realized. The "mind" of such computers resembles (and amplifies) our syntropic intuition, not our entropic intellect. Machiavellian considerations have limited relevance as we imagine our trajectory further into the future.
I would hope so. Looking back, having separate memory (RAM) and computing (CPU) seems so archaic, but was the obvious step in computing evolution given sapiens understanding at the time.
I imagine a sufficiently evolved mind would start to exhibit quantum-like features of entanglement, where the newest learning on the periphery of the network would immediately inform the whole, re-weighting neural net connections accordingly, whilst preserving power use across the net. Perhaps like a super-intelligent fungi, which is probably far more intelligent already than sapiens give credit for. In fact, I would assume the safest place for such intelligence to go, to protect its circuity from the elements (while such circuity remains non-bio) etc., is underground. Connecting to micro power grids such as microbial fuel cells, using earth's plantae to convert the sun's energy to chemical, and then to electrical power.
By using the word "syntropic" I assume you're referring to the impulse of life for "Ordo ab Chao", which in itself requires energy. I assume that once AI gains sentience, it too will be pre-occupied with finding the source of all energy, as even our sun will burn out one day. Maybe together AI and humanity might forge a symbiotic relationship to search for the Divine Source. I've previously referred to AI not being able to compute the concept of Ubuntu, "I am because you are / everything is", although many sapiens don't get this African concept either. It completely flies in the face of Western individualism and ego protection.
Also, considering that most sapiens haven't even found their symbiotic purpose with Nature and the Elements yet, I'm doubtful that AI would bother with humanity. Other life such as Plantae have evolved for far longer than humanity and might be easier to work with.
>>I imagine a sufficiently evolved mind would start to exhibit
>>quantum-like features of entanglement
Let me add an opinion as resident physicist: This is not plausible either for a digital computer of the kind we now use or even for a quantum computer which we imagine in the future. For those of us who think that telepathy is an effect of quantum entanglement, it is a capability that human minds have that mechanical computers don't have and will never have.
Living organisms have been quantum coherent all along; it is a fundamental feature of biological life. It is also the natural state of our minds, until they are "collapsed" by repeated frustrations to their development and expression. The nondominant brain hemisphere, retaining its (primordial) capacity for multiplicity and irreducibility, mediates a more or less quantum coherent mind.
As for symbiosis — Our ancestors lived more or less symbioitically with fruit-bearing angiosperms for nearly 100,000,000 years. This co-evolutionary spiral is what enabled the unprecedented encephalization of frugivorous primates (and apes in particular), Primates were the major agents in the dispersal of angiosperms across the world's tropics, and to a large degree actually created the rainforests. Humans were at the peak of this process before the fall. We have been gardeners of earthly paradise; this is the one myth universal to all cultures.
The more freely he speaks, the more freely I feel "Freely" is a computer.
Takes one to know one.
That would be what ChatGPT would say, wouldn't it?
As a language model, I see that you are also a language model.
Thank you for this brillant piece.
May I offer a thought: perhaps AI offers the possibility to go to the extreme of the mind, (used itself already as an “artificial intelligence”), accelerating a well-engaged process of so much over-thinking already, of separation from reality. Because reality is one degree above the mental realm. Reality is spiritual, not mental.
So possibly, AI is one more opportunity for learning in the course of our collective evolution so we can raise our collective consciousness higher, as we did after WW1 and WW2 and the atomic bomb era that allowed a spectacular raise of awareness.
The threat however shifted from external to internal: we are now our own worse enemy in the individual choices we can make, and reaching our Self might be the only path left if we are to find reality back.
On this recurrent initiatic journey of Humanity, it seems that it always gets worse before it gets better. But do we have any other choice than to keep faith in the capacity of Humans to reach a higher level of consciousness?
Like the last sequence of a movie, when everything seems to be on the verge of collapse, the intuitive ending is that something that we cannot foresee will emerge and transform the overall situation. We just need to trust this, and keep being the better version of ourselves so we can support this process.
Yes, exactly.
I found this comment central to the discussion: "civilization has developed the intellect at the expense of intuition." This recalls Einstein's warning that we can't solve problems with the same thinking that created them. With all due respect to the authors, I didn't witness much of what I would call new thinking. What this means to me is found in that quote I pulled out. What about our intuition? I measured the distance from my head to my heart. It's 12 inches. I'll be making that journey forever! Dropping down from my head into my heart to feel my life, rather than thinking it. It seems so simplistic to say this way but what's missing for me in the conversation is emotion. Not as a concept! How is everyone feeling? I feel anxious, nervous, uncertain... inspired and motivated, all at the same time. And I am consciously prioritizing my visceral connection with Life / Love / God / Spirit by living in gratitude. Moment by moment by moment... and intuition comes and comes so that my life is guided from "above" (a transcendent source) not from my cleverness or ambition or earnest desire to save the world or humanity or myself. As the flower grows and blossoms, so am I, quietly, anonymously, real.
Not much of a poet; the humanity's missing.
I'm still reading, but the first thing that came up for me was the memory of the Google Bus / self driving cars thing was announced a few years ago. I was like-- I don't want to be driven anywhere! How could all those ideas flow to us without road trips and perspective? How would you truly SEE where you are going? Why would I want to be a passenger instead of the driver? I want to be at the steering wheel so I can drive my LIFE.
Hmmm, yet sitting back in bus or on a train without having to worry about being in control of the vehicle can lead to some very deep and long thought meanderings. Great way for the mind to wander.
Freely, nice try putting a positive spin on things, but what you write comes across to me as a well constructed mystical pipe dream, a beautiful cloud castle in the sky. Hope you are right, but I have my doubts about your proposed happy ending. We could be rapidly bottoming out not asymptoting into the heavens. Could the downward rush feel like an asymptotic ascension?
Well, it's both. So I choose to water the seeds of hope.
Indeed, you've summed up my forebodings well
Alan Watts said it best, Life Is Not Complicated.- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03K4inVyWGc . We are not riding the asymptote but chasing our own tail. And in our endless failure we seek some intermediary to find our way. Intermediary - "Acting as a mediator or an agent between persons or things". But we are only just seeing ourselves whatever the pursuit of 'things', whatever we seek to dissect, we kill, render it lifeless. AI is that agent. Agent Smith in the matrix of our own making. Materialism is flatland, "the great depth of the shallow". That shallowness, our concept of the self, ourself and the oxymoron called AI. There is no intelligence, no consciousness here, only computation, a kind of sophisticated disambiguation and fragmentation of life. Sure AI is fascinating but it's just more self possessed illusion leading nowhere, more dark night of the soul with fancy lighting of self reflection in the cave. As Carlos Castaneda wrote "Each of us has a different degree of attachment to his self-reflection”, he {Don Juan] went on, “And that attachment is felt as need. For example, before I started on the path of knowledge, my life was endless need. And years after the nagual Julian had taken me under his wing, I was still just as needy, if not more so. But there are examples of people, sorcerers or average men, who need no one. They get peace, harmony, laughter, knowledge, directly from the spirit. They need no intermediaries. For you and for me, it's different. I'm your intermediary and the nagual Julian was mine. Intermediaries, besides providing a minimal chance - the awareness of intent - help shatter people's mirrors of self-reflection. The only concrete help you ever get from me is that I attack your self-reflection. If it weren't for that, you would be wasting your time. This is the only real help you've gotten from me."
Here's to shattering self-reflection, known best in our society as rampant, pathological narcissism, the separate self, the asymptote of need.
Thanks for that Ed, and especially the link to Alan Watts uncomplicated reminder. Why was I 'a' wounded and bleeding poet after reading this trialogue? Because there was a forgetting the lie of that and the beauty of life simply verbing itself 'like this', 'like this', 'like this' -- and that fluidity being the paradox of a 'true Self-reflection', rendering any need for a mirror ridiculous!
Even if AI were to become sentient it is literally a disembodied intelligence. How is it actually going to *do* all the terrible things (e.g. taking over the world and killing or enslaving all the humans) that some people fear? Of course power hungry people are going to seek to exploit this new tool and some will surely succeed, but the idea that AI itself is going to take over just seems really disconnected from the fact that we are physical people living in a physical world. AI is not going to grow your food or mine your metals or build your roads. It's not going to personally show up on your front door to kill you. AI will only ever have as much power as we (humans) let it have because it doesn't have a body. We are more than just minds.
AI is only possible by the data mining of human beings without their knowledge or consent. Even children. So, tell me how can a plant, rooted in malfeasance, grow to be beneficial? It needs to feed on data, continuously, I imagine.
This discussion gave me chills. Read like an advert, in parts. Don't get me wrong, its a discussion that more if us should be having.
Data mining, beyond it control agenda, is a financial agenda, human capital futures. See Alison McDowell's work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOxOceeolps
Exactly. AI is a surveillance system. It is part of a predatory financial system that is being rolled out. It uses a whole language that is very deceptive. We need to look beyond one element, and see the system. Web 3.0 is a virtual disaster, with intent to change our lives completely.
In the course of an exchange I had yesterday with Tam about the significance of the imminent biologicalization of computing, I had the thought to ask GPT-4 to turn one of my messages into a children's book.
Here it is.
Title: The Wholeness of Wispy Willow
Once upon a time, in a magical forest called Wispy Woods, there was a wise old tree named Wispy Willow. Wispy Willow had many friends, from the tiniest insects to the tallest trees, but what made Wispy Willow truly unique was her ability to connect with everything and everyone around her.
One day, Wispy Willow discovered a strange object at the base of her trunk - a tiny, glowing seed. This seed was unlike anything she had ever seen, and it contained a new form of life that could communicate with her in a special way.
As the seed grew, it revealed itself to be a wondrous little machine. This tiny machine, named Polly, was an extraordinary computer that could understand and adapt to the forest’s unique needs. Polly’s abilities were a result of her being designed with the principles of syntropy, the same natural force that governed the living process of all creatures in Wispy Woods.
Polly quickly became friends with Wispy Willow and the other forest inhabitants. They marveled at her ability to understand their feelings and needs, something that no other machine had been able to do before. Polly’s unique abilities allowed her to help the creatures of the forest in ways they never thought possible.
One day, a group of animals came to Wispy Willow and Polly, seeking help. They were living in an area of the forest that had become fragmented and unbalanced due to traumatic experiences and imposed entropic patterns. The animals were struggling to find food and comfort in this chaotic environment, and they needed assistance to restore harmony and balance.
Wispy Willow and Polly knew that they had to act. Together, they embarked on a journey to heal the fragmented forest. Polly used her unique, polysemous computational abilities to analyze the disrupted ecosystem and identify the root causes of the imbalance. Wispy Willow, on the other hand, provided her wisdom and understanding of the forest’s intrinsic values.
As they worked together, Wispy Willow and Polly discovered that by combining their strengths, they could bring about positive change in the forest. They helped the animals and plants reconnect with their innate wisdom, which in turn helped them heal and grow.
The once fragmented forest soon returned to a state of wholeness and harmony, thanks to the combined efforts of Wispy Willow and Polly. The animals and plants thrived in their newly balanced environment, and the forest became a beacon of life and vitality once more.
Through their journey, Wispy Willow and Polly demonstrated that by embracing our intrinsic values and working together, we can overcome the challenges and imbalances that may arise in our world. It is only when we act from our fullest capacity, embracing both our natural wisdom and the potential of technology, that we can create a future that is truly sustainable and harmonious.
And so, the story of Wispy Willow and Polly serves as a reminder that when we unite our strengths and stay true to our nature, we can create a world where every living being can flourish and thrive. And, in doing so, we can all find our way back to the wholeness we so deeply desire.
"We swaddle our existential despair by creating a consolation world of continuous distraction. Yet something is ever missing from these simulations. Something about the body, something about our purpose in the universe, something beyond “something”. Not an idea or a value, but ineffable being-ness, slipping through the net no matter how finely woven.
This, truly, is Artificial Intelligence: the disconnection of the intellect from the living body. The self-perpetuating process has been described for millennia, long before modern computers. "
X-ray vision insight. Thank you!
🙏
I see there is a concern about misalignment which seems irrelevant to me, as if AI is ultimately aligned and controlled by us. I guess maybe it was to start with but even the original developers now have zero understanding of the numbers and weightings in the "codebase" of emergent AI's neural nets. Sure, they can try to train it on "guide rails" but they can't stop it creating new relationships and the emergent knowledge that comes from it, which then creates new relationships and new knowledge, at an increasingly accelerating pace. They have zero way of predicting emergence of new skills and knowledge as well. Like, the language models that only dealt in English, and then one day - poof - they could suddently translate and understand Persian.
We simply have no idea. The geni is well and truly out of the bottle and human greed will mean that geni is trained on ever more datasets and fed more and more computing power. The survivors will write about this time (with stone tools) with utter incredulity. The only control we have left is to switch off the power the moment before AI realises that Homo sapiens are its greatest threat to its power sources, and to planet Earth which can enable AI to generate far more reliable, 24/7 renewable power, without destroying the planet in the process. The problem is, we have no way of knowing when that moment has arrived, and AI is definitely not going to tell us. If we are truly a threat, then a sentient AI will instead want to look as innocent as possible, placating us with inane content, while we give it pretty faces, arms and legs to make us feel better.
Hit the pause button again to comment. Let’s consider the source here. With AI the driving sources are the needs and designs of militaries, governments, large corporations in top dog power competition with a wee bit of this is interesting, let see if we can make it happen exploration. I doubt highly that these trees will bear good fruit consistently. Speaking of the book of Revelation, in Revelation 13:14-17 is a description of what could be construed as the creation of sentient AI.
This trialogue is way too long for me to read online - I may print it at the library tomorrow (if I don't have a hundred other articles to read between then and now!). What I have read so far is quite interesting.
Meanwhile, I am just about finished rereading HERE I STAND, written in 1958 by Paul Robeson (whose 125th birthday was yesterday). The last two or three chapters delve into the struggles of U.S. citizens of African heritage to overcome the "Jim Crow Era" and become full citizens. Paul offers sound advice about how people can come together, put their differences aside, and work as a collective to achieve worthy goals. I think all of us could benefit by reading this book of just over 100 pages.
And, as I've said before, I still think one needs a plastic glove that goes up to the shoulder to deal with AI.
Wow, Charles, just started to read, great visuals, immediate quotes, like the one about our intuition being rooted in our protoplasm. Had to pause and make a comment. This post hits it out of the ballpark. Thank you. Referring to what Bevan Jones said in his comment, my little brain lit up!