Spock and an artificial intelligence symposium
View(s):This week, a childhood hero of mine died. Of course, heroes of the calibre of Mr. Spock never really die. But the mortal coils that hold their glamorous alter egos – ever so briefly, by eternity’s canon – do. So the passing of 83-year-old Leonard Nimoy was – even though neither a shock nor a surprise – an event tinged with more than a patina of sadness for me and other likeminded Star Trek fans.
Now, the unflappable Vulcan of the 1960s and 1970s TV series – and later the 1980s and 1990s movies – was a hero for many seasons and many reasons.
Firstly, he was – as I said – unflappable: almost all the time… except during the ‘seven-year itch’ when Volcanic mating rituals meant that Spock went berserk (well, even a superhuman, er, half-human, alien must have some ‘vices’).
Secondly, he was extremely knowledgeable and resourceful; not only a veritable walking computer but superlative both at command and strategy, as well as at combat and tactics.
Thirdly, and oddly enough (possibly as a combination of the two factors above), he was a walking embodiment of what passed for ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in the days before his alter ego – the equally unflappable Commander Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation – emerged.
Oh, you might quibble about the AI bit (especially as Data was an android, and therefore ‘the real McCoy’ – no pun intended, Trekkies!). I know it and I feel it in my ‘Bones’ (again, not punny?). But hear me out, folks. While Spock had a Vulcan father and a mother from Earth, theamalgamation of their genes – however unlikely outside science fiction – gave rise to a unique superhero. Not a superhero with incredible superpowers, like those who inhabit the world of Marvel or DC Comics. But a super-aware, super-intelligent, super-controlled being who was virtually programmed to do math, ‘science-magic’, and other marvels – at near the speed of light. Super-intelligent, hyper-intelligent, superhumanly-intelligent, artificially intelligent: get it?
Beam me down to earth, Scotty!
Which reminds me of my encounter with the absorbing and interesting field of AI in the fortnight before Mr. Spock went on his last great trek beyond ‘the final frontier’.
In-between work and study and research, I had the good fortune and great privilege to be invited to a confab or chinwag with Colombo’s AI community. The prompt for the invite to boffins and brainiacs was a bit tarnished by the presence of a Mere Mortal (AKA Me!); but there was an eminent AI & Robotics don from overseas scouting out the possibility of partnership with likeminded professors in the region – so no one really noticed yours truly. So there I was, absorbing every iota of wit and wisdom that was bandied about, together with Alan Turing’s name being dropped as regularly as our cricketers once dropped catches!
(Turing’s ‘polite convention’ was that since no one asked, “Do people think?”, we could or should extend the same courtesy to machines. But listening to the badinage, I wasn’t sure some of us were missing the point!)
Don’t worry, dears, I won’t bore you with the bits and pieces. But permit me – since we’re on the subject – to highly recommend the movie about the ‘enigmatic’ (ha ha, pun intended – for AI/robotics insiders) Alan Turing movie starring the mysteriously charismatic Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s The Imitation Game, and worth every 113 minutes of it to restore the reputation of this much-maligned mathematician who virtually singlehandedly shortened World War II by approximately two years, saving an estimated 17 million lives in the process.
Where was I? Oh, yes: AI& Robotics! Here is the gist of what I garnered about what the scene is, during those heady and head-spinning two hours with the boffins and brainiacs:
Artificial Intelligence is impossible.
Some sceptics suggest that machines don’t – and can’t – think. They are not conscious or sentient, in the way that we are (or think). But are we conscious, or is that a ‘pathetic fallacy’, too? You might think this is a no-brainer, but the conversation around the philosophy of mind is such a fascinating one that claims there is ground for arguing humans don’t think, either. I can well believe it!
Artificial Intelligence is immoral.
For a plethora of reasons. For one, the cruelty of creating a silicon-based consciousness that arguably cannot die, like we carbon-based life forms can. (A panoply of books and movies – I, Robot; AI; the Terminator series) have explored related themes at length. For another, that the caprice of ‘recursive self-improvement’, whereby smart machines could easily create smarter machines at an increasingly exponential rate, might pose a threat to humanity’s very existence. (StephenHawking recently freaked us all out by indicating he believed this possibility – ‘singularity’ – was very real…)
Artificial Intelligence is incomprehensible.
Chief among proponents of this view is John Searle, whose ‘Chinese Room’ conundrum is a mindboggling insight into the absurdity of claiming that anyone or anything is conscious/thinking/sentient. Do look it up, won’t you, would-be boffins and brainiacs?
In the course of our discourse, we (see how easily I assimilate myself into such exalted company, dears!) explored what the future of AI/Robotics might hold for people of the Thrice-Blessed Isle where the philosophy of the mind is supposed to be Theravada Buddhism. One of the questions we asked was, “How would a philosopher of the mind in our land have his or her worldview challenged or changed by the possibility that machines might one day think live and think as we humans do?”
Here’s part of the response the bs. & bs. I hobnobbed with gave:
Artificial Intelligence is immutable.
Despite fond imaginings of science fiction, there is very little likelihood that even cyborgs – a largely theoretical amalgam of carbon and silicon, meat and machine – would go on to generate a soul. Such emergent imaginings notwithstanding, there is no ‘ghost in the machine’.
Artificial Emotion is improbable.
Even if cyborgs become a reality one day, they will never ever develop a soul.
Come back, Spock! All is well…