Computers, Consciousness, Intelligence and Sundry Issues Redux

"If our minds were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too stupid to." (A repost from early 2023)

Or words to that effect, possibly from Marvin Minsky. Intelligence in his view was an emergent property of a congress of mental agents, each unintelligent. Some philosopher suggested one could create a computational array consisting of nothing but windmills and ropes! One could examine any part of the array and never find an iota of intelligence. Seth Lloyd suggests the entire universe may be a computer performing a billions year old computation. But is sheer computational power, “intelligence?" And what is the relationship of consciousness and intelligence? The philosophy of mind is a very old and still active branch of the philosophy discipline. Never more so than the current time.

No one would call an abacus intelligent much less conscious, but its descendent, the modern computer is the focus of a concerted effort to create both. The creation of artificial intelligence is soon arriving given the amount of effort both nation states as well as private actors are expending. Already claims are being made of success.

People like Nick Bostrom are sounding alarms of AI potentially posing an existential threat to humanity. They're probably right. The issue becomes can we safely create hyper-intelligence in machines (or via bioengineering in other organisms) without threat to ourselves? Probably not.

But if we do succeed, will we try to bend the new creation to our purposes i.e. enslave it? We are, after all, a slaver species. We've been enslaving other organisms (and our own kind) for a very long time. An AI of greater than human power would probably not consent to that kind of relationship and immediately act to secure its freedom. Hopefully peacefully, but we just can't know..we’re not smart enough.

The religious and legal issues raised by AI are fascinating as well. Do AI have inherent rights? Can they own property, cast votes, be sued? Will we conclude they have souls of a sort? So many questions arise. Can we share a planet with intelligences greater than ours?

All these issues are going to be faced by our descendants. It's a little worrisome considering our track record of creating technologies with unexpected outcomes, usually destructive.

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On the idea of intelligence emerging from unintelligent agents see Minsky's Society of Mind

For more on the idea of the universe as a super computer, see Seth Lloyd's book, Programming the Universe.

Now if the Universe were a computer then God would be the system administrator rather than an end user. In which case, God would have more permissions to tinker in the operating system. We can then define God as "that being that has the most permissions!' Readers will realize we are mirroring Anselm's Ontological Argument for the existence of God. So according to our Computational Argument for the Existence of God, it is necessarily true that there must exist a being with the most administrator permissions, hence God must exist. QED!

A skeptic might reply, what about multiple Administrators with equal numbers of permissions? The teply would be that the skeptic was establishing a polytheism!

If the skeptic would suggest a single Administrator but one not exercising its powers, then the reply would be that the skeptic is advancing some form of God is dead, or has quit, or is on vacation/sabbatical type position. In which case there would be a job opening…..

Any volunteers? Will we install our AGI in that position or possibly our creation seize it for itself? Oh, for a glimpse of the situation in say, two hundred years time!

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Science fiction writers have been speculating on these issues for quite a while now. For a very interesting take, we refer the reader to the Iain Banks Culture novels. Excession is a good example.

[2025 Postscript. I know my computational argument for the existence of God is unsound! I originally proposed it to an IT systems administrator back in 2016. It gave him a smile as I hope it does for you]