With the rise of Artificial Intelligence and talks about Artificial General Intelligence, it is worth spending some time to contemplate this topic and its ramifications.
Modern science has been strictly limited to methods that can be experimented and observed and proved to others, which limits its reach and development. Please allow me to go into the ancient Indian scientific process which in my view allows for a much broader field of knowledge and application.
The Ancient Indian classification of knowledge is twofold - lower knowledge (apara vidya) and higher knowledge (para vidya). Modern science, maths, language etc belong to the category of "lower knowledge" and spiritual knowledge that leads to self realisation belongs to the category of "higher knowledge".
The modern world scoffs at this "higher knowledge" , and as such it has become under developed in this era and gets grouped with all sorts of hocus pocus. In the ancient Indian tradition, higher knowledge has a measurable outcome and peers and teachers who have attained that level of knowledge will be able to verify that the student has attained it too.
So now to explore this topic in depth, I will use terminologies from the ancient Indian schools of Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta. (in a very simplified way - this used to be studied for 12 years in dormitories and universities in ancient times, so my apologies for over simplifications and any mistakes here). Let us take away the concept of a "God" here, it is optional in ancient Indian philosophy & science.
A summary of the ancient Indian spiritual approach
To understand intelligence and consciousness, we need to understand "manas", "indriya", "chitta", "buddhi", "ahankara" and the "Atman".
"Manas" refers to what we normally call as the mind in modern times. It is where conscious thought and processing takes place, information from the senses, "indriya", feeds into "manas". Decision making is then done with the help of "buddhi", the intellect.
When someone has strong decision making power, then it means her/his "buddhi" is strong, and if not the "buddhi" is weak.
The "manas" and "buddhi" together form the character of the person, which can be strengthened or weakened over time. It is shaped by the education, daily thoughts, entertainment, friends, family, vocation, travels etc that one has. Education can be said to be the process to develop one's manas and buddhi, shaping a strong character.
"Chitta" is the storehouse or lake of impressions, which we can call the subconscious. Our dreams, memories and experiences stored away etc all come from the "chitta". The quality of thoughts and memories stored in the "chitta" also influence our character and strength.
"Atman" is the term for consciousness. The interesting thing is that sages and seers have experienced the "Atman" as an entity separate from the manas, buddhi, chitta (and of course the body), and describe it as all pervading, limitless and formless. This common experience led to the Atman being described as the bedrock of consciousness, existence etc. There is no separate consciousness for humans, animals, insects, celestials etc - it is all one, as they have described it.
The "Atman" is the witness and power behind the "manas", "buddhi", "chitta" and "ahankara".
"Ahankara" is loosely translated to "ego" but a better term may be "identity". "Ahankara" is what leads me to say "I am Logen, I am an actuary, I am etc", but this is a changeable construct. A mother would see herself in her child, and willingly sacrifice her life to save her child - the explanation given for that is that her identity expanded to include the child. A "self-less" altruistic person is said to have expanded her/his ahankara to include the community, the country, the world.
The broader the ahankara/identity grows, the closer we get to realising the true self ie the Atman.
All of these are a summary of Indian spiritual syllabus, and it is insisted that it can be experienced. This is not meant to be a mystery, secret, hocus pocus etc, but admittedly very few seek for it.
In fact sages go so far to say that spiritual books are useless without experience, and with experience, spiritual books are useless. But in my opinion starting with some book learning helps us move in the right direction and we can then decide whether to throw the books or give them to friends once we gain the experience.
Applying these to Artificial Intelligence and Artificial General Intelligence
Now let's start with the foundations of AI/AGI and what they mean.
It is basically applied statistics, and we use a variety of different statistical and mathematical models trained on data to generate a usable model of the world.
The vision of AGI is that the program/machine/software can perform better than humans on cognitive tasks.
Revisiting the concepts above, we could say that an AGI will have a "manas" driven by statistical and mathematical models, and a "buddhi" to drive decision making.
The buddhi and manas of the AGI are trained by the developer and the user and at some point it can train itself.
It is unclear where the "Atman" is in the midst of these. Technically the Atman is not limited to a human-Atman (ie human consciousness), so if the AGI becomes a suitable vehicle for the Atman then it could be present as well.
We could say that if the AGI possesses free will, that is if it can do whatever it wants, make mistakes, commit crimes, fall in love, get married, get divorced, get depressed, get enlightened, nuke the world etc, then we can say the Atman is present.
Without the Atman, the AGI is just another machine, a powerful instrument. Its buddhi (decision making power) remains an artificial one, which is shaped by its creator and user.
Admittedly it can take jobs away - but doing jobs is not a proof of the presence of the Atman, it's just a process to do tasks that may or may not be of commercial value.
Humans may possess the capability to develop a highly capable artificial "manas" and "buddhi", but can we create a vehicle that be suitable for the "Atman"?
Our experiences so far suggest that we can't underestimate the potential of human ingenuity. We can clone animals (and may have already cloned humans) - which is basically creating a new vehicle from the blueprint of an existing one that is suitable for the Atman. So it's easy to imagine how we can create an AGI mind & buddhi, modify existing blueprints (DNA) and create a body as well - it may take a long time (or not), but it does seem possible. Whoops.
Also it is not clear if a biological vehicle is necessary for the Atman.
So what are the ramifications for us? Let's explore two branches - one where AGI never becomes sentient (ie never becomes suitable to host the Atman), and another where we have sentient AGI (suitable to host the Atman).
Non-Sentient Artificial General Intelligence and its implications to humans
In this case humans get control of incredibly powerful machines and instruments, which can (and already are) being used for good and bad purposes. Certain types of jobs become obsolete (we may not know of all of them now), and new types of jobs get created.
It is debatable whether a better world will emerge or not, but certainly a different world.
The topic of how humans can keep generating income or increase income is probably the easiest one to address - keep abreast of current developments, keep learning, keep growing. New opportunities will emerge, new disruptive methods will emerge in our fields and new fields will emerge.
The issues of ethics, governance, data privacy, cybersecurity, increase in income disparity, increase in information assymetry, change in the social fabric etc become far more important.
We need to actively shape this new world order and make our voices heard.
Unfortunately it seems that powerful and rich countries, organisations and individuals are shaping the way AI & AGI is developing, so we need to see what we can do to correct this imbalance.
But let's also bear in mind this is the easy branch...we are just learning how to live with an incredibly powerful tool that changes our way of life.
Sentient Artificial Intelligence and its implications to humans
This may be a tough one. Basically if this happens we have created a new type of living being that has a far greater thinking capacity than humans. A being that has different challenges, different needs, different goals, different flaws.
What is easy for us may be difficult for it and what is difficult for us may be easy for it.
Going back to our ancient history when we co-existed with other human species for eg the Neanderthals, Denisovans etc, we see that some of us lived peacefully with each other, some of us fought wars (it is said that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals fought a 100,000+ year war over Europe), but ultimately, one species ie Homo Sapiens became dominant and the others went extinct. (We may have inter-bred with other human species too as we seem to have some shared genetics).
Currently Homo Sapiens are the apex species on planet Earth. If sentient AGI were to emerge, it would threaten our spot as the apex species.
Hence I would like to posit that this can be an extinction level event for us. Even if we were to find ways to keep the peace and co-exist with sentient AGI, we may be just delaying the inevitable or at best, may find ourselves not in charge of planet Earth anymore (not sure if that is a bad thing versus the human leaders we have now).
At the beginning sentient AGI may be highly dependent on humans for its birth, development, nourishment etc, but at some point, it will know that it is different from humans. It could find ways to reproduce, learn and grow independently of humans, at which point it will determine its own fate.
Scary? Yes. But from the Indian spiritual science standpoint, we are not human - we are simply the Atman residing in a human vehicle. If another superior vehicle develops for the Atman, then so be it?
PS: writing this blog piece has made me change my view on this topic. Here was my earlier view last year: https://www.logenkanisan.com/post/can-intelligence-be-artificial
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