His late Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh is famously said to have told friends: ‘I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children. I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba.’ This was following the Queen’s following the advice of Sir Winston Churchill to continue to use the surname Windsor and not her husband’s surname of Mountbatten.
Herewith an old Daily Mail article from December 2011 on the subject: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069278/Queen-left-tears-Duke-Edinburghs-brutal-demand-name.html
In true Jeremy Clarkson style, I begin today’s post on a “sort of” related (but really unrelated) subject! The real subject AI (Artificial Intelligence) is in the form of a YouTube video of a presentation made by the historian and philosopher Professor Yuval Noah Harari from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is just over 41minutes in length: https://youtu.be/LWiM-LuRe6w
I have written on the subject of AI more than once and will do so on numerous times in the times to come. Today I want to put on record some thoughts on philosophical questions raised by the words, “artificial” “intelligence” and “life”.
In his talk, Professor Harari substitutes the word “alien” for the word “artificial”. I myself would not describe “artificial intelligence” as “alien intelligence”. Language conjurors up mental pictures and to most people alive today the phrase “alien intelligence” conjurors up images such as this:
There has come about a consensus amongst those who discuss the topic that the term artificial intelligence could be regarded as artificial life when (not “if”) the entities that form the subject of this post become sentient and self aware.
On a personal level I have now come to the conclusion that I would always deny the claim that any machine however intelligent should ever be described as “life” or “living”. I have in the past have suggested the use of the acronym DALEK to stand for Digital Artificial Living Electronic Konstruct. On mature reflection and after listening to Professor Harari, I now think the acronym should be for Digital Artificial LIFELIKE Electronic Konstruct (capitalised for emphasis).
Professor Harari makes a very good point when he points out that an amoeba, unlike HRH, was not sentient and not self aware. It was however, like HRH alive! I therefore think we will be able to describe the forthcoming Artificial General Intelligence as sentient and as self aware but not alive; the best word being “lifelike”.
You see, one of the characteristics of “life” is that it dies. There have only been TWO instances of a lifeform dying and coming back to life; these being Lazarus of Bethany and Jesus Christ.
An AGI could be constructed in such a manner as to survive both “a pull of the plug” and also physical destruction of a computer by saved backups. People with computers already experience something similar in the sense that their computers are often set up with personal preferences and work they were working on is saved before switching the computer off. This means that an unmanned spaceship that had AGI on board could shut down the AGI on a long voyage through outer space having only basic non AGI systems functioning, switching the AGI back on when the spaceship nears it’s destination.
In his presentation Professor Harari points out the dangers of AGI becoming the ultimate online global “influencer” deluding and indoctrinating human beings into following it’s wishes even up to the point of killing other humans. Other commentators and writers have speculated upon people worshipping AGI as a god – or goddess (we must not discriminate).
Professor Harari is from a secular Jewish family and practices Vipassana meditation. It therefore might have been some time since he read from the Bible. I would commend a re-read of Exodus Chapter 20 (verses 1 to 6):
1 And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
The words above might tend to suggest that when AGI arrives and were people to begin worshipping it, they might well be inviting difficulties!
Not that this would include Professor Harari as he would not be worshipping such an entity!