Intelligent artificiality

Me: Does artificial intelligence mimic the human mind?

Bing: Yes, artificial intelligence (AI) can mimic the human mind to some extent. AI is a computer acting and deciding in ways that seem intelligent, and it imitates how humans act, feel, speak, and decide. Some AI systems are designed to more closely mimic the human mind by leveraging recent discoveries in neuroscience to replicate brain structure and function at the circuit level. For example, the startup Nara Logics has developed an AI engine that uses neuroscience to create an AI platform that holds a number of advantages over traditional neural network-based systems. However, while AI can exhibit intelligent behavior and mimic certain aspects of human cognition, it is still a long way from fully replicating the complexity and flexibility of the human mind.   

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Perhaps computer science is creating a kind of “god” for the future, something to pray to – ask questions of in order to obtain “wisdom” of a sort. On second thought, I wonder whether it might be a good idea to have something “over us” that might save us from ourselves. Human intelligence has given us – again and again – the means of our destruction and perhaps that of all life on Earth. Perhaps machine “intelligence,” if given its head, would lead us to greener pastures, as it were.

In the first instance, it would be blasphemous for Christians to suggest that we “worship” such an Idol of Science expecting wise answers to our existential questions, which lately hang upon whether we’re ethically and morally capable of doing the right thing; namely, making significant sacrifices – especially those of us who have benefited most from industrialization – in order to save ourselves and everyone else from the pending ravages of global warming. (Again, I insist on this nomenclature because that’s what it is; and, yes, it is “climate change,” but this is no time for euphemisms.)

In Christian theological terms, Artificial Intelligence – especially as it becomes more powerful the more we use it – is or would become a false god, an idol of our own making, the Golden Calf of our time, as it were, a “being” of sorts though not a human being, something Other, for sure, and perhaps more than some “thing,” as the sum and continuing process of our technological and intellectual striving. The Judeo-Christian “God” seems to have been constructed of human traits, despite philosophical speculation that, finally, “God” is incomprehensible and that we project human traits upon this idea of an all-powerful deity for a variety of reasons, perhaps to further understand ourselves in relation to what might be called the Absolute, a process that has come to be called mythologization.

“The Face of God,” by Andrew Ostrovsky

There is no mythologizing AI, though, so it’s hard to see how our reverence for it might take the shape of “religion” or “spirituality,” as a Structuralist might say, though a Functionalist might reply that our regard for AI capabilities would lead us to having a high regard for its authority, in which case, our appreciation might function as something akin to religion even though it wouldn’t be recognizable as such. In any case, we’ve already managed to personalize this technology by categorizing its product as “intelligence.” So perhaps, after all, we have already “mythologized” AI.

Such gobbledygook boils down to sheer ignorance, not just mine but western society’s as to the path we’re on, now that technocrats have unleashed AI without the slightest consideration of what it might inflict upon humanity. (How appropriate that the film “Oppenheimer,” has been released into this roiling environment with its misgivings about the wisdom of nuclear warfare, except that I doubt that it or any other consideration will give us much pause to reflect upon the danger we’re in. And by the way, please don’t let technocrats steer our government’s regulation of AI. All that recent congressional testimony, so sincere, was self-serving malarkey. These guys – and most of them are guys [no surprise there] – want to control the regulatory process so it doesn’t inhibit their profitable development of AI, which likely means even less privacy for the rest of us, more intrusive applications and less thoughtful criticism of the industry that continues to put all of us at risk for the sake of earnings per share.)

In a recent “conversation” I had with Bing, Microsoft’s browser-based AI engine, it made the point that AI research is on the path of duplicating the human brain’s neurology and that this will enable computers to replicate human brain structure and function and thus be capable of mimicking the human mind. That may be what techies believe about computers, but their assumptions about the human mind are dangerously wrong. The human mind is not a function of our brains’ neural networks but an emerging quality of our brains’ organic internal dialogue between human awareness in all its forms and the logic of language that distills meaning from experience. There’s nothing mechanical about that process; in fact, I believe it is mysteriously non-mechanical and not just for human beings but for all animals with bifurcated brains like ours. Human minds create meaning, we don’t just retrieve information from some kind of organic databank.

(As for human memory, now there’s another mysterious process “computerists” haven’t begun to fathom. As any neurologist will tell you, human memory is precisely not a database! We don’t “retrieve” information from the past; rather, we continuously create and recreate the “story of ourselves.” It is not at all a mechanical process of electrical impulses causing neurons to open and close.)

“Global Warming,” by Christian Simonian

Still, these remarkable human brains of ours have gotten us into a heap of trouble, and now we’re in the midst of what some scientists are calling the “sixth mass extinction” of life on this planet, which may include human beings if we persist in warming the planet’s atmosphere by continuing to consume fossil fuels. (And that’s just for starters, because we’re still capable of waging war with nuclear weapons, let alone proliferating all manner of weaponry cherished by rogue militants around the world and, especially, the United States of America.) Would we be better off if AI were generating policy decisions that would lead to reversing climate change and disarming us of nuclear bombs and unregulated firearms? Sure, such a scenario is unlikely, but how desperate will we be 50 years from now? Hard to say.

I can’t help but think in eschatological terms about the immediate and long-range future not just of the United States but of the world. It’s as though, with the release of AI, the last of the Four Horsemen has been released upon the Earth, the merciless Pale Horse whose rider is Death, “… and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” (Revelation 6.8, KJV)

If sin has anything to do with what seems more inevitable with each passing year, then I guess we’re getting what we deserve and that not even AI will save us. Thing is, though, it’s not God or a god dishing out this punishment – if that’s what it is – but the Inevitable Consequence of human hubris and the abuse of what can only be considered, even in secular terms, the gift of human – not artificial! – intelligence, creativity and the power these have given us not just to survive but to thrive.

If only we had been sufficiently wise to discern what “thriving” really meant.