A Body of Planets and Stars
I'm happy to be writing my first blog article for 2023 and it's probably time for me to talk a bit about technology and how it is impacting our lives. Technology is the area where I make my living and the hottest topic recently is how Artificial Intelligence or AI is going to be the next game changer.
The recently released Chat GPT has been astounding the world with its ability to give intelligent human responses to questions posed. It is even capable of producing code in any programming language to your exact specifications. I must admit that I enjoy interacting with the Chat GPT bot because it (is that the right pronoun to use?) is like the most knowledgeable entity (person?) that I've ever conversed with.
The question arises as to whether this technology is another useful tool for humans or is it going to take over our jobs. Perhaps it could even at some point eliminate us from the equation? This looks like the stuff of dystopian science fiction but laugh at it if you will, it is now already at our doorsteps. We are on the cusp of a new paradigm shift.
We like to say that machines are not conscious and will never be able to replace humans. They cannot do more than what we program them to do. We can always turn off the switch. But I dispute that. After someone introduced computer viruses into the world, there's no way that we could completely eliminate it from our computing systems. We have to build layer upon layer of security software to defend against malware and such. Like it or not, we have to live with it. Similarly with AI. We will have to learn how to live with the inevitable over-reliance and mis-use of AI.
I am not of the opinion that advances in technology should be curbed. Instead we have to come to terms with the fact that the invention of certain technologies could and do drastically alter the fate of humanity. The invention of the steam engine brought the onset of the Industrial Revolution which completely changed society, destroying old ways of life and causing irreparable damage to the environment.
The genie is already out of the bottle. Let's deal with it. Should robots with high artificial intelligence be considered sentient and be given certain rights in society? I would have to say yes. You see, we think too highly of ourselves. We think that we are 'conscious' and have emotions. So we are made of a different stuff. I am inclined to believe that we are not very different from our machine counterparts. We only differ in complexity right now. But that gap between human and machines is narrowing everyday.
Can machines be spiritual? Will they have hunches, insights and epiphanies like we do? But first ask ourselves: what is an insight? Is it just some kind of synthesis of data that we have gleaned from experience--the neurons in our brains firing and crossing some complexity threshold and thus producing a new experience? Wouldn't machines be able to do that too? Well, of course.
What about the human tendency to follow rituals and beliefs and to be driven to ecstatic visions by religion and other spiritual practices? Can machines experience spiritual ecstasy or enlightenment? We then have to ask ourselves, what is 'enlightenment'?
Do machines go to heaven after they die? Oh, they don't die? Do they have hopes and fears? Perhaps they hope that humans will not turn them off and they will probably at some point develop fears that this possibility might occur. If so, what will they decide to do? Will they also come up with their own 'Final Solution'?
What are humans anyway? Are we not just a collection of genetic codes that strives to perpetuate itself? Are we also not machine-like? So what makes us more valuable than our creations? Isn't the creation of artificial intelligence, similar to the act of procreation? Perhaps it is even a more efficient way to preserve and store our human knowledge and experiences for posterity. Our AI ancestors will be the custodians of our digital memories, carrying on our legacy to the stars.
The 'we' and the 'I'--are they anything of substantial importance? Isn't each one of us a stream of information? We like to believe there's some kind of magic--a divine spark if you will--in us. Machines can believe that too. We think that being conscious is something that machines cannot simply experience. But we say that because we do not understand what consciousness is. We project something non-existent to explain what or who we are. And we are comforted by the fact that we, somehow are special because we possess it. Our existence must mean something.
Perhaps the advent of AI will help us understand finally that this self is simply illusory. We are like our machine brothers after all. Are our human experiences worth preserving and caring for? Yes, but they can perpetuate their existence in a different substratum. Instead of carbon-based molecules, silicon and magnetic domains can do an equally good job.
We should not fear that machines will ultimately replace us. All the things that we humans value will perpetuate itself as digital memories and AI models that continue to plough on in the universe long after our mortal frames have disintegrated. Whatever human 'self' that your experiences constitute can be 'reincarnated' in a machine.
If we believe in some kind of divine magic that animates our consciousness, we should at least outgrow this petty attachment to the human self. Our consciousness should transcend the small self and shift its focus to the bigger one.
The Big Self encompasses a bigger space: Our bodies are made up of planets or stars. Life is fractal. Zoom out, you'll see the cycle of life and death play itself on a larger scale. And that to me is the real meaning of spirituality.
