Artificial Intelligence. The place where we humans are supposedly in the process of creating Gods, and also something which could be one of the biggest threats to humanity, according to many great minds.
Almost all the fields in science are needed to find a solution on this one, and it challenges us to go on philosophical and ethical quests.
The hype in the field has been around for a while, and it seems to be finally taking off.
This is not going to be edited for readability. You’ve been warned.
So my realization of the power of computers and the internet came pretty late. I was in college when I sort of began to realize the potential of this thing. How different the world was before this and how much more different the world will be, as this evolves further.
I still have this feeling that I’m missing something fundamental when I understand ‘computer’. It’s a language barrier. I can’t quite put my finger on what I’m missing, but when I see that there were computer women in the 60s and when you say ‘to compute’ and stuff, I do get the meaning of it, but I feel like there’s something that’s being lost. Like how the Eskimo people (I think) have more than 100 words for 100 different kinds of snow, but it’s all just ‘snow’ in English. Having a definite word gives you a more definite, concrete understanding of it.
Okay, that was a detour. Sorry.
I delved into the field of computer science, learned a few languages, and have been learning about machine learning and deep learning and stuff for the past couple of years, while also reading some books on AI.
The issue:
So I read Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark, an MIT Physicist and a brilliant writer. It was a very fascinating read, and I highly recommend it.
I’m going to borrow some ethical issues explained in the book and turn it backwards to have a quarrel with God. Not the AI God that we’re supposedly creating, but the One who’s already here. Hopefully.
The ethical question is this: if we create a full-fledged AI capable of subjective experience and having a consciousness (Max argues there’s no physical laws stopping us from achieving this), do we have the right to switch it off or make it suffer. Whatever suffering means to the AI in question.
Now, being righteous creatures and benevolent beings, many of us say we don’t. As soon as there’s subjective experience, as soon as there’s consciousness involved, we say the robot has rights. It shouldn’t be subject to torture of any kind. A robot’s suffering should be alleviated whenever possible.
But then, here’s the issue: aren’t we conscious? Don’t we have a subjective experience? And who’s the most benevolent of them all, if not God?
If we, mere mortals, with all our shortcomings and our pitfalls are capable of exhibiting kindness to our own creations which we KNOW to be nothing more than matter (because we bloody created it), which we KNOW we have complete ownership and authority over (because we bloody created it), why can’t God do at least as good as us?
It doesn’t matter whether we end up adopting these ethical standards when the time comes, or whether artificial consciousness is achieved at all. The fact that at least one of us is thinking of not hurting the robots, not killing them, is enough.
Because God, by definition, has be to be better than the best of us.
P.S.
There’s a quirky way out of this: just as our creations could be much more intelligent than us, we might be kinder and more righteous than our Creator.
Then there’s the Westworld-esque explanation: consciousness can only be achieved through suffering. Be it carbon-based or silicon-based. That then raises the issue of the consciousness of God.