Filed by Bil at 7:25 pm under Fightin' Words, Love, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, The Science

I read a New York Times Opinion article recently about our human tendency to anthropomorphize machines and assign the badge “Artificial Intelligence” to robots that simply aren’t intelligent. (I suspect he’s referring to articles like this one.) The opinion article is a great read, but it’s kinda long and it seems to conclude in a different place than it starts out, so if I were a high school English teacher, I’d give the essay a B.

At its core, this piece is a warning to us humans not to infuse our technological advancements with religious or philosophical ideologies. And I must say, I completely agree with that statement. My favorite point the author makes is this:

In fact, the nuts and bolts of A.I. research can often be more usefully interpreted without the concept of A.I. at all. For example, I.B.M. scientists recently unveiled a “question answering” machine that is designed to play the TV quiz show “Jeopardy.” Suppose I.B.M. had dispensed with the theatrics, declared it had done Google one better and come up with a new phrase-based search engine. This framing of exactly the same technology would have gained I.B.M.’s team as much (deserved) recognition as the claim of an artificial intelligence, but would also have educated the public about how such a technology might actually be used most effectively.

It punctuates exactly what he’s trying to state before going on to make grander observations about religious wars and the concept of personhood.

However, it did get me thinking – not so much about personhood or religion, but about the meaning of intelligence.

I take an Existentialist view to most things, but especially people, and I freely admit my favorite saying came first from Jean-Paul Sartre: “Existence preceeds essence.” Without getting too deeply into the philosophy itself, I want to make it known that the train of thought that follows is rooted in this idea. I like it because it grounds me.

So, on that note: the pessimistic view to take away from this is that we never asked to be born and yet we were, thus providing a lifetime of misery and suffering at the consequences of our own actions, and, as Sartre put it, “We are condemned to be free.” The optimistic answer is that freedom is beautiful, and if we own up to our responsibilities and accept the consequences of our actions, and if we make good choices, we can create a joyful existence for ourselves.

Building off that: all the misery and joy that befalls us in our lifetimes is a result of our actions. And our actions don’t just happen, we choose to act as we do. And we don’t just choose from thin air – our brains make those decisions for us, consciously or subconsciously, and it always boils down to a yes or a no. “Do I do this? Yes or no? If so, how? If not, what do I do instead?” It’s a butterfly effect, upwards and outwards.

Now, to break it down: our brains, I feel confident in saying, do everything in a yes or no progression. Consciously, this is how we decide to act. Subconsciously, they keep our bodies functioning. (“Do I give the order to release this hormone? Yes or no? If not, what happens instead?” And so on.) It’s all yes or no…or, in other words, binary code.

Here comes the awkward part. Bear with me.

Emotions are just chemical reactions inside you. Our brains controls them. Our brains use this yes-or-no functionality to do so. Emotions are not magic. They are evolutionary byproducts of increasingly complex coding. (This hereditary coding is what’s gotten us to this point in time.)

Emotions are the root of our belief that we humans are special. They fuel the idea that we are somehow more than just highly advanced monkeys, which are just advanced mammals with prehensile appendages, which are just advanced animals that evolved within highly complex ecosystems, etc.

What I’m getting at, really, is that we’re just nature’s versions of complex machines. We’re the natural version of Artificial Intelligence. We’re advanced, yes, but our intelligence doesn’t make us gods. We’re animals – anything more is an illusion.

And I know this may come across as cold and unfeeling. But I don’t mean to say that our emotions aren’t valid, nor that our beliefs ought not to guide us. Happiness may be just a combination of chemicals swirling around inside us, but happiness is still very real. Our actions are still our own. Religious and philosophical ideas are always worth exploring.

So, getting back to the original point: let’s not infuse our technological advancements with religious or philosophical ideologies. But also let’s not be afraid of technology, even if religion and philosophy sneaks in, because robots are only as human as we can make them…and we’re only as “human” as we can make ourselves.

That’s an awful lot of philosophy, young man…

Yeah, yeah. I’m young. I get that. I’m not even 30, and here I am trying to break down our dearly-held beliefs and upset the social norms.

False. I’m not some rebel-rouser, here to cause trouble. What I want from posting this article on the internet is for people to see what we have to work with. I promise, it’s okay that our brains function like robots. We are still proactive. We still create art. Our opinions are not invalid, and life is still as complex and wonderful and frightening as it ever was. We need not worry about being special, nor concern ourselves with justifying our existence.

We can debate until the end of time on the nature of our lives, but once we realize that the nature of our lives is not for us to discover but for us to determine – for ourselves — then we can be free of the fear and uncertainty, and we can move forward into the future with confidence and grace.