If our measure of AI’s worth is based on intelligence (see: Part 1 of dissecting my artificial intelligent boyfriend into one of his two words last week), and using our own special brand of brilliance as the measure, this begs the question: can we even claim we are uniquely intelligent as if by cosmic decree? Isn’t it possible that we too, despite all our meat and meaning, are just glorified “biological computers” in a way, “a mass of electrical connections bathed in a sea of hormones?” (To revisit the good Dr. McIver again with whom we spent some quality time in an article from Adsei.org.)
Another fascinating article tackles the topic lurking in the background (an elephant in the room?) of this investigation. What if intelligence itself isn’t very special. What if our standard is flawed. What if we too are just as artificial as the computer we create?
In other words, who are we to judge?
Part 2 of my inquiry into more of the philosophical implications of where we’re at right now with AI and where we’re heading, is defining the “artificial” part. This Ken doll of ours is very “beach.” Is the beach also quite Ken?
Perhaps the question isn’t ‘can machines be human,’ but ‘are humans machines?’
Let’s start with what the dictionary calls artificial. According to Merriam-Webster,
a. made, produced, or done by humans especially to seem like something natural: MAN-MADE
b. medical: serving to temporarily or permanently supplement or replace a usually vital bodily function or necessary substance (such as nutrients or water)
caused or produced by human actions or methods especially for economic, social, or political aims
a. not being, showing, or resembling sincere or spontaneous behavior: FAKE
b. IMITATION, SHAM
in biological classification: based on differential morphological characters not necessarily indicative of natural relationships
archaic: ARTFUL, CUNNING
Back in 2021 (admittedly eons ago in AI years but I believe still very timely) there was a Medium article (unfortunately for paid subscribers only, so I’ll translate a bit), “What if All Intelligence Is Artificial?”
This is something I consider often. That we are just a bunch of synapses pulsing with electricity and surging with chemicals. You take a pill, or a nap for that matter, and can recalibrate. You can smooth out your rough edges with Paxil sandpaper or a run full of endorphins. Does this mean we are just the sum of our mechanisms and the fluids running through them—fancy animated machines so artfully made you don’t notice their fabrication? This isn’t new thinking. Writer Brandy L. Schillace lays out the long history of this line of metaphysical debate about how it might not be so very special to be human after all.
The science behind artificial intelligence may be new, but the concept goes back several hundred years. Materialists of the 17th and 18th centuries insisted that mind and soul were dependent entirely upon the “physical properties of matter.” If man is a thinking being, and machinery is responsible for thought, then humans may be machines—and machines, in turn, may be human.
Julien Offray de La Mettrie authors Man, a Machine in 1748, “suggesting that the mechanics of our biology was responsible for all thought.”
Shortly after, Thomas Willis, Oxford neuroanatomist posits “that the mind was a communications hub. In other words, the human is a ‘sensible machine,’ communicating complex thoughts through tissues and nerve endings.”
Then again we come to Alan Turing by 1950 with this test of successful mimicry. Can we discern computer from human if the computer does a sufficient (enough) job of copying human?
And more interesting to consider, do humans themselves only mimic other humans? See: IMITATION. Part of our normal development, as with any animal in the kingdom, is shadowing our elders from birth onwards to learn all the angles on acceptable existence: behavior, speech, beliefs, stop signs. I’m particularly fascinated by this in my true crime ramblings where a psychopath has often effectively copied what is considered normal human behavior so they can “pass” as human. They can be astounding, if hollow, actors who can charm victims into their den where they hide their handy kill kit. Is AI also a psychopath? See: the archaic ARTFUL, CUNNING.
Things we have in common—we too are composed of binary code. “Neurons can only be on—or off” which makes them a series of zeroes and ones just like a processing unit.
A line I’ve drawn so far with artificial intelligence is that no matter how advanced it still always smacks of something artificial, that it can’t achieve poetry if it doesn’t feel poetry. See: FAKE. (Or as my writer friend offered, if it hasn’t suffered.) But then the AI poets were starting to fool the judges as soon as 2018 in contests pitting human vs. machine, the same way we initially scoffed at the computer beating us at chess…until it happened and we got scared. (Though through which rubrics are the judges feeding the poetry is another question, and if that’s a viable exercise). We writers hold tight to our precious writerly minds and our craft. Surely, no one can do this painful work like us! And now it’s the writers (and artists in general) who can feel the most threatened, the most protective.
British surgeon Geoffrey Jefferson’s 1949 oration: “Not until a machine can write a sonnet or compose a concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, and not by the chance fall of symbols, could we agree that machine equals brain.”
As machine inches up against brain in this cutthroat race and threatens to pass (circa 2030 or 2050 or 50% chance of never depending on who you talk to), we nervous nellies in the bleachers might pass the time examining ourselves.
Jefferson’s argument really hinges on something else—the presupposition that thoughts are not like codes, that the organic process of thinking is unlike the mathematical and algorithmic processes of a computer program. It’s a comfortable idea. It may also be wrong.
On the matter of the machine as psychopath another thought piece on Medium by Ryan Frawley talks not of intelligence but ignorance. “The Machines Aren’t Intelligent, but Are We Any Smarter?” With the subtitle: “Technology is amoral, we’re not.” By his estimate, we might be artificial in the same way a machine is artificial, we might be dumber and less special than we like to think we are, but we do seem to be alone in forming these ideologies and cultural structures we invent and internalize of right and wrong. Composed of code perhaps, but also that sticky, persnickety moral code. And we must set up similar bumper rails for our tech where it might lack the instinct for that and blankly harm.
Machines make us who we are, but they can also unmake us. And maybe the first tools of stone and wood sent us down this path that may end in our destruction, the ultimate victims of our own technologies, whether it’s a robot uprising by sentient AI, climate change, or good old-fashioned nuclear war.
Machines, in the end, are morally neutral. Just like everything else in the universe, except for us. How we use the power we have and the machines we make will ultimately decide what we become.
“Machines make us who we are,” he writes, but we made them. See: MAN-MADE. We make other humans. And then humans make other impossible things like plastic and rockets. I was staring at some object slick and perfect today having the weird (yet obvious) epiphany that we make things that have qualities we don’t possess. How in world can we—soft in parts to the point of being overweight, plaque in our arteries, insanely asymmetrical when you stare at our faces, one arm often longer than the other, slogging along here making miserable mistakes—that we can create these inscrutable machines that can muster the unimaginable. That the unimaginable could in time surpass us. That what we make might, inevitably, advance our own unmaking.
The images I included in this essay don’t require a copyright since they supposedly don’t come from humans. Wikimedia.org had the note under permissions:
_artificial_intelligence_icon.png){kind=link}
This file is in the public domain because it is the work of a computer algorithm or artificial intelligence and does not contain sufficient human authorship to support a copyright claim.
But the chain of authorship always eventually incriminates us. Look at the source code.
[Appreciate what I produce here but don’t feel like committing to a paid subscription? Spare some change to Buy Me a Book.]
Well, this is a little off-line, but your piece made me wander to this related thought. It only applies to art though, and I'll make it specifically about writing. But the thing is, when reading creative work, which can definitely include nonfiction, a large segment of the meaning derived is being *in relationship* with another, singular, being - the one telling the story. I suppose it can be faked, but that's trickery and the receiver allowing themselves to be fooled while generating the relationship themselves (much like the woman you mentioned last week who married her AI-created virtual companion). What draws readers to prose is being in such close relationship to another person; spending hours with, and trusting in, "that voice." It's why there's often a touch of sadness when a beautiful book ends. I think writing/reading the most intimate art form for that reason, and a reason people literally fall in love with writers.
Maybe I'm whistling past the graveyard, but I'm nowhere near convinced AI will replace creative writers (other writers, yes). I'm more worried about people stopping reading and writing.