A.I. Brainstorm
A:: General Direction
As many contributing artists will potentially be focusing on the technological aspect of Artificial Intelligence development, I assume, so that I would like to focus instead on the wider implication of what the technology should have, could have, should be, could be, may be, and will possibly be bringing to the way humanity organises and rationalises the running of this planet and beyond. It must be noted that one thing I am not taking into account in these argument is the stupidity of us humans, there’s nothing you can do about it unfortunately. And for the sake of the argument, I am using overly simplified models and hypotheses here.
B:: We don’t have “Artificial Intelligence” yet
Before we define ‘A.I’, we inevitably need to define ‘Intelligence’
Unfortunately this is one of the oldest questions that we have alongside ‘What is Consciousness’, thus it is safe to assume that when we say “A.I’, we don’t really mean it in the true sense of the word, as we still don’t know what the word means.
Can a Generative Pretrained Transformer systems be considered an intelligent systems? In other words, can intelligence emerge merely from a pool of information, however large the pool is. In other words, can what we instinctively consider as ‘intelligence’ emerge from simply accumulating huge amount of information?
I was speaking to a world renowned coder some time ago, and I was asking if qualities such as Self Awareness and Intuition can be replicated artificially.
His answer was that, Self Awareness is outside of the realm of A.I. research. This is understandable somehow, as I wouldn’t know how to observe and quantify Self Awareness in any beings. We can only infer the Self Awareness in sponges, beetles, liquorice plants etc. Also what we consider as ‘self’ may be an illusion created by our limitation in the first place.
My second question about Intuition is related to the question about GPT I’ve raised above.
Namely, can the phenomenon one recognises as Intuition emerge solely from the information accumulated within the person connecting in a way that is unknown to us, or, is there a yet
unidentified external influence that is essential for the ‘Intuition’ event to take place?
The coder thinks Intuition is a connection of preexisting information within the person connecting in yet-unidentified manner, and the mechanism may be able to be theorised but would not be able to be constructed physically or be incorporated into artificial algorithms at its current state of development.
I tend to veer towards the other option; there may be an external influence that is necessary to trigger Intuition events. I feel that, this external influence results from complex relative relationships between the time, space, intention (of both self and others), and many other factors. This is a huge question that we may not be able to find the answer for for some time.
We need also to consider the location of our ‘Consciousness’. We tend to believe it resides within our biological body but there is no rational reason why that is the case. If that is the case, how can, for example, siphonophores function in seemingly unified manner as if it were a one being, or, if you think about the complex communication network that plants utilise, I almost think that “Consciousness” actually exists externally in space as some form of energy and biological bodies are merely receiver/processor of such energy.
In any case, how can you tell Consciousness/Intelligence from something that simply mimics (albeit very well) Consciousness/Intelligence with our extremely limited ability of perception?
According to some, Artificial General Intelligence is just around the corner, like 2025. Realistically it’ll probably take a bit longer, new materials that may be utilised for stable quantum computer systems are still being developed as we speak, and new announcements are made on a regular basis. Then, when it finally happens, and somebody presents you with it saying “here, this is AGI” who or what will qualify if a system is a true Artificial General Intelligence?
C:: “A.I. will steal our jobs”
We need to start with the notion that, Artificial Intelligence development was “supposed to be” going in tandem with a fundamental change in social, political, and economic system to compensate the potentially seismic shift that the technology will bring to our lives. The bad news is that, it is not happening in that way, somehow unsurprisingly.
One can blame this on many different factors, many of which we only have ourselves to blame.
One example would be the fact that we have let so-called Military Industrial Complex to become more powerful than any nation state on the planet in all decision making process, short term and long term, that affect the entire planet. They are very much rooted in old school socio-political and economic model in the way it operates, and are privately owned entities outside the control of any government or nation state.
Every time a new ground breaking technology arise, the unfortunate truth is that the first thing human does is to militarise it. So that it is easy to assume that the all truly cutting edge researches of A.I. today are hidden in classified projects effectively run by private M.I.C. corporations, but still cheekily using taxpayers money of the state in which they operate.
Is there a room for the utopian notion of socio-political and economic shift for peaceful coexistence with A.I. technology in this picture?
Some people have compared A.I. development to Industrial Revolution, but it is a rather short sighted comparison.
Yes after the Industrial Revolution, new industries emerged and new jobs created, and in few decades, population was again employed to continue the society in seemingly a similar way as pre-Industrial Revolution days, but at the cost of irreversible environmental damage and devastating exploitation of natural resources. One could cynically say that we were lucky because we still had environment to destroy and resources to exploit back in this days. Today, we do not have that anymore.
We are reaching the point of fundamental re-thinking of the running of this planet and way we behave.
One of the main concerns of last year’s US actor and script writer’s strikes was the use of A.I. in the production of cinema, TV, radio and other media. Similar concerns are rife in many other industries and many of us have already been feeling the impact of the technology first hand in the past 5-10 years.
When people say “It steals jobs”, it really means “I make less money”, because you can still play a piece of music, put on a play, produce a film, and be appreciated by millions of people and may be even change their lives, for free. When people say “It steals jobs” they are not talking about the emotional aspect of accomplishing work.
So we need to go back to considering what money is on this planet today.
Currently, currencies we use daily are not guaranteed by any physical materials such as gold or silver, like it once was. Instead it is only guaranteed by the government of a nation state, or states in case of pan-nation states currency like Euro.
Therefore, currently ‘money’ is a truly abstract concept of value that is exchangeable to goods and services. The value is agreed upon, or forcibly set by, a complex web of economic and political structures that is beyond this A.I. argument.
And, since those with truly vast amount of this type of resources are focusing on the militarisation of A.I. , it is fair to say that we can’t expect this fundamentally new socio-political/economic system I have touched upon above to be realised in a top down manner anytime soon.
We ourselves need to devise the way in which we are going to live in the new reality that is unravelling as we speak.
D:: Static Borderline is redundant
In theory, this planet is currently run like this;
(yes we have many many problems, and I’m going use a super over simplified model here, bear with me for the sake of the argument.)
Landmass are divided with geographically immobile lines to define the territories of each Nation State.
A number of people reside in each of these territories, basically, those who are born in a particular territory is called a citizen of that territory.
The state that runs that territory has a number of obligations towards that citizen. The obligations can often be summarised as “Basic Standard of Living” which includes both services (education, judicial system etc) as well as physical (national grid, water supply etc)
The citizen, in return, gives them tax in a currency recognised and accepted by that particular state.
Now, for the sake of argument, let’s call this 100:0 model; the state takes care of you fully, and you pay them full price.
As such, under the current system, we are tied conceptually 100% to the state in which you are a citizen of.
However, theoretically, by reducing this dependancy to the state, we could, in effect, free ourselves partially from this stranglehold of individuals by the state. And when the dependancy goes below 50%, states’ and people’s obligations to each other becomes ‘even’. What this can also mean is that one is no longer physically tied to the territory that your birth state controls.
We can start shifting this balance by the citizens starting to exchange services themselves without any reliance on the state. The value can be exchanged between citizens in formats other than state-recognised currency, as long as the parties involved in the transaction all agree that the value exchanged are equal.
For example, let’s say I come over to your house and paint a wall. We agree that this service is worth the value of 10 Murtosaari. You, on the other hand, is a very good farmer, and you prepare a sack of potatoes that you think is worth 10 Murtosaari and give it to me in return. This type of transactions are nothing new, we all do it all the time.
Now, let’s see if we can connect with other communities in another states, and all agree on the
value of 1 Murtosaari.
Now we can start a basic interstate barter system without the need of state approved currency. We continue this until we have a globally accepted independent value system.
Now, yes cryptocurrency has/had all the potential for this. However, it has so far been let down by human greed, which is preventing itself from stepping outside the current monetary system completely to form a parallel, yet just as valid representative value exchange system. Exchange of services and goods made outside of state guaranteed currency should be seen as independent activity accomplished with less state dependency than the same action taken place within state-guaranteed monetary system.
The aim here is to actively control one’s dependency to the state. Some services inevitably require state scale assistance, such as national grid system, water supply infrastructure etc. For these, mainly large scale infrastructure projects, current state controlled taxation system can remain.
However, by increasing our non-state dependancy in other aspects of our lives, such as education, some aspects of medical care etc, by us taking care of ourselves via non-state guaranteed monetary system, our tax obligation to the state will also decrease accordingly, as we are freeing the state from some of its obligations to its citizens.
And, when our state dependancy level becomes lower than 50%, each of us will become ‘even’ against the state in terms of the responsibility to provide basic standard of living to the people.
In theory, this can, grant us a true freedom of movement, as we are taking care of 50% or more of our own basic standard of living with globally connected non-state guaranteed monetary system, and states are not obliged with 50% or more of their responsibilities to their citizens once existed
under the old system, we can choose to move to the territory that most suit each individual’s
needs to live in.
In other words, people will be able to choose which state territory we would decide to pay state controlled tax for, or, which state gives you the most ‘value for money’ based on your individual needs.
Under this system, ‘nation states’ as we know them, will cease to exist. They become a collection of different regions that can provide different sets of services and goods that each individual can choose to become a part of.
It is also likely that under this system, each ‘region’ will be a much smaller area than the size of current nation state, as small units are much more manageable, and coupled with our freedom of movement explained above, huge nation state entities will become simply unnecessary and redundant.
If you look back in history, you will notice that this is nothing new. Nomadic borderline concept was, if anything, more common than static borderline concept for the most part of human history.
A good example of how the 2 concepts crashing can be seen in European nation’ colonisation of Africa. Traditionally, African tribes had lived under mobile borderline concept; in one season, tribe A will stay in area 1 and tribe B in area 2, and in another season, tribe A will move to area 2, and tribe B to area 1. So that, while they may pass each other by during the move, they do not stay in the same area for a prolonged period of time, thus avoiding potential scuffles between the tribes.
When Europeans came in, they drew static borderlines on the continent with no regard to this intricate system of co-habitation and peace keeping. Now tribe A and B are stuck in the European-drawn static borderline, and conflicts between them, which was impossible to happen previously, ensued.
E:: Back to A.I.
So, what does our A.I,. Future hold?
Potentially, this is an incredibly positive opportunity for humankind to transform our fundamental perception of how we can live, the relationship between individuals and state entities, how we organise ourselves to live on this planet in a way that is acceptable to as many individuals as possible.
If only we can make the first step forward in the right direction.
Universal Basic Income experiments currently carried out in some cities are positive and realistic step that can be realised in the current system. However, one must recognise that this current (old) system is old and slow, and susceptible to various interference from the gatekeepers of the old system.
Therefore, grass roots movements to restructure the way we live in the light of the A.I. future is not only preferable but necessary. The odds are firmly against us, if you look back the history of humankind, we have almost always made the wrong turns and destroyed the chances presented to us, some of them so obvious yet proving to be somehow unattainable due to our own behaviour.
It may take a generation or 3, but with proactive movements and actions coming from the people slowly changing our perspective of ourselves, the world, and the universe in a bottom-up fashion, there is still a chance, and time left that maybe we can finally make the right turn this time.