Co-evolution of Humans & Artificial Intelligence

In my last post, I wrote a little bit about the concept of personal identity in terms of what some philosophers have emphasized and my take on it.  I wrote that post in response to an interesting blog post written by James DiGiovanna over at A Philosopher’s Take.  James has written another post related to the possible consequences of integrating artificial intelligence into our societal framework, but rather than discussing personal identity as it relates to artificial intelligence, he discussed how the advancements made in machine learning and so forth are leading to the future prospects of effective companion AI, or what he referred to as programmable friends.  The main point he raised in that post was the fact that programmable friends would likely have a very different relationship dynamic with us compared with our traditional (human) friends.  James also spoke about companion AI  in terms of their also being laborers (as well as being friends) but for the purposes of this post I won’t discuss these laborer aspects of future companion AI (even if the labor aspect is what drives us to make companion AI in the first place).  I’ll be limiting my comments here to the friendship or social dynamic aspects only.  So what aspects about programmable AI should we start thinking about?

Well for one, we don’t currently have the ability to simply reprogram a friend to be exactly as we want them to be, in order to avoid conflicts entirely, to share every interest we have, etc., but rather there is a bit of a give-and-take relationship dynamic that we’re used to dealing with.  We learn new ways of behaving and looking at the world and even new ways of looking at ourselves when we have friendships with people that differ from us in certain ways.  Much of the expansion and beneficial evolution of our perspectives are the result of certain conflicts that arise between ourselves and our friends, where different viewpoints can clash against one another, often forcing a person to reevaluate their own position based on the value they place on the viewpoints of their friends.  If we could simply reprogram our friends, as in the case with some future AI companions, what would this do to our moral, psychological and intellectual growth?  There would be some positive effects I’m sure (from having less conflict in some cases and thus an increase in short term happiness), but we’d definitely be missing out on a host of interpersonal benefits that we gain from having the types of friendships that we’re used to having (and thus we’d likely have less overall happiness as a result).

We can see where evolution ties in to all this, whereby we have evolved as a social species to interact with others that are more or less like us, and so when we envision these possible future AI friendships, it should become obvious why certain problems would be inevitable largely because of the incompatibility with our evolved social dynamic.  To be sure, some of these problems could be mitigated by accounting for them in the initial design of the companion AI.  In general, this could be done by making the AI more like humans in the first place and this could be something advertised as some kind of beneficial AI “social software package” so people looking to get companion AI would be inclined to get this version even if they had the choice to go for the entirely reprogrammable version.

Some features of a “social software package” could be things like a limit on the number of ways the AI could be reprogrammed such that only very serious conflicts could be avoided through reprogramming, but without the ability to avoid all conflicts.  It could be such that the AI are able to have a weight on certain opinions, just as we do, and to be more assertive with regard to certain propositions and so forth.  Once the AI has learned its human counterpart’s personality, values, opinions, etc., it could also be programmed with the ability to intentionally challenge that human by offering different points of view and by its using the Socratic method (at least from time to time).  If people realized that they could possibly gain wisdom, knowledge, tolerance, and various social aptitudes from their companion AI, I would think that would be a marked selling point.

Another factor that I think will likely play a role in mitigating the possible social dynamic clash between companion AI (that are programmable) and humans is the fact that humans are also likely to become more and more integrated with AI technology generally.  That is, as humans are continuing to make advancements in AI technology, we are also likely to integrate a lot of that technology into ourselves, to make humans more or less into cyborgs a.k.a. cybernetic organisms.  If we see the path we’re on already with all the smart phones, apps, and other gadgets and computer systems that have started to become extensions of ourselves, we can see that the next obvious step (which I’ve mentioned elsewhere, here and here) is to remove the external peripherals so that they are directly accessible via our consciousness with no need of interfacing with external hardware and so forth.  If we can access “the cloud” with our minds (say, via bluetooth or the like), then the apps and all the fancy features can become a part of our minds, adding to the ways that we will be able to think, providing an internet worth of knowledge at our cognitive disposal, etc.  I could see this technology eventually allowing us to change our senses and perceptions, including an ability to add virtual objects that are amalgamated with the rest of the external reality that we perceive (such as adding virtual friends that we see and interact with that aren’t physically present outside of our minds even though they appear to be).

So if we start to integrate these kinds of technologies into ourselves as we are also creating companion AI, then we may also end up with the ability to reprogram ourselves alongside those programmable companion AI.  In effect, our own qualitatively human social dynamic may start to change markedly and become more and more compatible with that of the future AI.  The way I think this will most likely play out is that we will try to make AI more like us as we try to make us more like AI, where we co-evolve with one another, trying to share advantages with one another and eventually becoming indistinguishable from one another.  Along this journey however we will also become very different from the way we are now, and after enough time passes, we’ll likely change so much that we’d be unrecognizable to people living today.  My hope is that as we use AI to also improve our intelligence and increase our knowledge of the world generally, we will also continue to improve on our knowledge of what makes us happiest (as social creatures or otherwise) and thus how to live the best and most morally fruitful lives that we can.  This will include improving our knowledge of social dynamics and the ways that we can maximize all the interpersonal benefits therein.  Artificial intelligence may help us to accomplish this however paradoxical or counter-intuitive that may seem to us now.

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The illusion of Persistent Identity & the Role of Information in Identity

After reading and commenting on a post at “A Philosopher’s Take” by James DiGiovanna titled Responsibility, Identity, and Artificial Beings: Persons, Supra-persons and Para-persons, I decided to expand on the topic of personal identity.

Personal Identity Concepts & Criteria

I think when most people talk about personal identity, they are referring to how they see themselves and how they see others in terms of personality and some assortment of (usually prominent) cognitive and behavioral traits.  Basically, they see it as what makes a person unique and in some way distinguishable from another person.  And even this rudimentary concept can be broken down into at least two parts, namely, how we see ourselves (self-ascribed identity) and how others see us (which we could call the inferred identity of someone else), since they are likely going to differ.  While most people tend to think of identity in these ways, when philosophers talk about personal identity, they are usually referring to the unique numerical identity of a person.  Roughly speaking, this amounts to basically whatever conditions or properties that are both necessary and sufficient such that a person at one point in time and a person at another point in time can be considered the same person — with a temporal continuity between those points in time.

Usually the criterion put forward for this personal identity is supposed to be some form of spatiotemporal and/or psychological continuity.  I certainly wouldn’t be the first person to point out that the question of which criterion is correct has already framed the debate with the assumption that a personal (numerical) identity exists in the first place and even if it did exist, it also assumes that the criterion is something that would be determinable in some way.  While it is not unfounded to believe that some properties exist that we could ascribe to all persons (simply because of what we find in common with all persons we’ve interacted with thus far), I think it is far too presumptuous to believe that there is a numerical identity underlying our basic conceptions of personal identity and a determinable criterion for it.  At best, I think if one finds any kind of numerical identity for persons that persist over time, it is not going to be compatible with our intuitions nor is it going to be applicable in any pragmatic way.

As I mention pragmatism, I am sympathetic to Parfit’s views in the sense that regardless of what one finds the criteria for numerical personal identity to be (if it exists), the only thing that really matters to us is psychological continuity anyway.  So despite the fact that Locke’s view — that psychological continuity (via memory) was the criterion for personal identity — was in fact shown to be based on circular and illogical arguments (per Butler, Reid and others), nevertheless I give applause to his basic idea.  Locke seemed to be on the right track, in that psychological continuity (in some sense involving memory and consciousness) is really the essence of what we care about when defining persons, even if it can’t be used as a valid criterion in the way he proposed.

(Non) Persistence & Pragmatic Use of a Personal Identity Concept

I think that the search for, and long debates over, what the best criterion for personal identity is, has illustrated that what people have been trying to label as personal identity should probably be relabeled as some sort of pragmatic pseudo-identity. The pragmatic considerations behind the common and intuitive conceptions of personal identity have no doubt steered the debate pertaining to any possible criteria for helping to define it, and so we can still value those considerations even if a numerical personal identity doesn’t really exist (that is, even if it is nothing more than a pseudo-identity) and even if a diachronic numerical personal identity does exist but isn’t useful in any way.

If the object/subject that we refer to as “I” or “me” is constantly changing with every passing moment of time both physically and psychologically, then I tend to think that the self (that many people ascribe as the “agent” of our personal identity) is an illusion of some sort.  I tend to side more with Hume on this point (or at least James Giles’ fair interpretation of Hume) in that my views seem to be some version of a no-self or eliminativist theory of personal identity.  As Hume pointed out, even though we intuitively ascribe a self and thereby some kind of personal identity, there is no logical reason supported by our subjective experience to think it is anything but a figment of the imagination.  This illusion results from our perceptions flowing from one to the next, with a barrage of changes taking place with this “self” over time that we simply don’t notice taking place — at least not without critical reflection on our past experiences of this ever-changing “self”.  The psychological continuity that Locke described seems to be the main driving force behind this illusory self since there is an overlap in the memories of the succession of persons.

I think one could say that if there is any numerical identity that is associated with the term “I” or “me”, it only exists for a short moment of time in one specific spatio-temporal slice, and then as the next perceivable moment elapses, what used to be “I” will become someone else, even if the new person that comes into being is still referred to as “I” or “me” by a person that possesses roughly the same configuration of matter in its body and brain as the previous person.  Since the neighboring identities have an overlap in accessible memory including autobiographical memories, memories of past experiences generally, and the memories pertaining to the evolving desires that motivate behavior, we shouldn’t expect this succession of persons to be noticed or perceived by the illusory self because each identity has access to a set of memories that is sufficiently similar to the set of memories accessible to the previous or successive identity.  And this sufficient degree of similarity in those identities’ memories allow for a seemingly persistent autobiographical “self” with goals.

As for the pragmatic reasons for considering all of these “I”s and “me”s to be the same person and some singular identity over time, we can see that there is a causal dependency between each member of this “chain of spatio-temporal identities” that I think exists, and so treating that chain of interconnected identities as one being is extremely intuitive and also incredibly useful for accomplishing goals (which is likely the reason why evolution would favor brains that can intuit this concept of a persistent “self” and the near uni-directional behavior that results from it).  There is a continuity of memory and behaviors (even though both change over time, both in terms of the number of memories and their accuracy) and this continuity allows for a process of conditioning to modify behavior in ways that actively rely on those chains of memories of past experiences.  We behave as if we are a single person moving through time and space (and as if we are surrounded by other temporally extended single person’s behaving in similar ways) and this provides a means of assigning ethical and causal responsibility to something or more specifically to some agent.  Quite simply, by having those different identities referenced under one label and physically attached to or instantiated by something localized, that allows for that pragmatic pseudo-identity to persist over time in order for various goals (whether personal or interpersonal/societal) to be accomplished.

“The Persons Problem” and a “Speciation” Analogy

I came up with an analogy that I thought was very fitting to this concept.  One could analogize this succession of identities that get clumped into one bulk pragmatic-pseudo-identity with the evolutionary concept of speciation.  For example, a sequence of identities somehow constitute an intuitively persistent personal identity, just as a sequence of biological generations somehow constitute a particular species due to the high degree of similarity between them all.  The apparent difficulty lies in the fact that, at some point after enough identities have succeeded one another, even the intuitive conception of a personal identity changes markedly to the point of being unrecognizable from its ancestral predecessor, just as enough biological generations transpiring eventually leads to what we call a new species.  It’s difficult to define exactly when that speciation event happens (hence the species problem), and we have a similar problem with personal identity I think.  Where does it begin and end?  If personal identity changes over the course of a lifetime, when does one person become another?  I could think of “me” as the same “me” that existed one year ago, but if I go far enough back in time, say to when I was five years old, it is clear that “I” am a completely different person now when compared to that five year old (different beliefs, goals, worldview, ontology, etc.).  There seems to have been an identity “speciation” event of some sort even though it is hard to define exactly when that was.

Biologists have tried to solve their species problem by coming up with various criteria to help for taxonomical purposes at the very least, but what they’ve wound up with at this point is several different criteria for defining a species that are each effective for different purposes (e.g. biological-species concept, morpho-species concept, phylogenetic-species concept, etc.), and without any single “correct” answer since they are all situationally more or less useful.  Similarly, some philosophers have had a persons problem that they’ve been trying to solve and I gather that it is insoluble for similar “fuzzy boundary” reasons (indeterminate properties, situationally dependent properties, etc.).

The Role of Information in a Personal Identity Concept

Anyway, rather than attempt to solve the numerical personal identity problem, I think that philosophers need to focus more on the importance of the concept of information and how it can be used to try and arrive at a more objective and pragmatic description of the personal identity of some cognitive agent (even if it is not used as a criterion for numerical identity, since information can be copied and the copies can be distinguished from one another numerically).  I think this is especially true once we take some of the concerns that James DiGiovanna brought up concerning the integration of future AI into our society.

If all of the beliefs, behaviors, and causal driving forces in a cognitive agent can be represented in terms of information, then I think we can implement more universal conditioning principles within our ethical and societal framework since they will be based more on the information content of the person’s identity without putting as much importance on numerical identity nor as much importance on our intuitions of persisting people (since they will be challenged by several kinds of foreseeable future AI scenarios).

To illustrate this point, I’ll address one of James DiGiovanna’s conundrums.  James asks us:

To give some quick examples: suppose an AI commits a crime, and then, judging its actions wrong, immediately reforms itself so that it will never commit a crime again. Further, it makes restitution. Would it make sense to punish the AI? What if it had completely rewritten its memory and personality, so that, while there was still a physical continuity, it had no psychological content in common with the prior being? Or suppose an AI commits a crime, and then destroys itself. If a duplicate of its programming was started elsewhere, would it be guilty of the crime? What if twelve duplicates were made? Should they each be punished?

In the first case, if the information constituting the new identity of the AI after reprogramming is such that it no longer needs any kind of conditioning, then it would be senseless to punish the AI — other than to appease humans that may be angry that they couldn’t themselves avoid punishment in this way, due to having a much slower and less effective means of reprogramming themselves.  I would say that the reprogrammed AI is guilty of the crime, but only if its reprogrammed memory still included information pertaining to having performed those past criminal behaviors.  However, if those “criminal memories” are now gone via the reprogramming then I’d say that the AI is not guilty of the crime because the information constituting its identity doesn’t match that of the criminal AI.  It would have no recollection of having committed the crime and so “it” would not have committed the crime since that “it” was lost in the reprogramming process due to the dramatic change in information that took place.

In the latter scenario, if the information constituting the identity of the destroyed AI was re-instantiated elsewhere, then I would say that it is in fact guilty of the crime — though it would not be numerically guilty of the crime but rather qualitatively guilty of the crime (to differentiate between the numerical and qualitative personal identity concepts that are embedded in the concept of guilt).  If twelve duplicates of this information were instantiated into new AI hardware, then likewise all twelve of those cognitive agents would be qualitatively guilty of the crime.  What actions should be taken based on qualitative guilt?  I think it means that the AI should be punished or more specifically that the judicial system should perform the reconditioning required to modify their behavior as if it had committed the crime (especially if the AI believes/remembers that it has committed the crime), for the better of society.  If this can be accomplished through reprogramming, then that would be the most rational thing to do without any need for traditional forms of punishment.

We can analogize this with another thought experiment with human beings.  If we imagine a human that has had its memories changed so that it believes it is Charles Manson, has all of Charles Manson’s memories and intentions, then that person should be treated as if they are Charles Manson and thus incarcerated/punished accordingly to rehabilitate them or protect the other members of society.  This is assuming of course that we had reliable access to that kind of mind-reading knowledge.  If we did, the information constituting the identity of that person would be what is most important — not what the actual previous actions of the person were — because the “previous person” was someone else, due to that gross change in information.

Neurological Configuration & the Prospects of an Innate Ontology

After a brief discussion on another blog pertaining to whether or not humans possess some kind of an innate ontology or other forms of what I would call innate knowledge, I decided to expand on my reply to that blog post.

While I agree that at least most of our knowledge is acquired through learning, specifically through the acquisition and use of memorized patterns of perception (as this is generally how I would define knowledge), I also believe that there are at least some innate forms of knowledge, including some that would likely result from certain aspects of our brain’s innate neurological configuration and implementation strategy.  This proposed form of innate knowledge would seem to bestow a foundation for later acquiring the bulk of our knowledge that is accomplished through learning.  This foundation would perhaps be best described as a fundamental scaffold of our ontology and thus an innate aspect that our continually developing ontology is based on.

My basic contention is that the hierarchical configuration of neuronal connections in our brains is highly analogous to the hierarchical relationships utilized to produce our conceptualization of reality.  In order for us to make sense of the world, our brains seem to fracture reality into many discrete elements, properties, concepts, propositions, etc., which are all connected to each other through various causal relationships or what some might call semantic hierarchies.  So it seems plausible if not likely that the brain is accomplishing a fundamental aspect of our ontology by our utilizing an innate hardware schema that involves neurological branching.

As the evidence in the neurosciences suggests, it certainly appears that our acquisition of knowledge through learning what those discrete elements, properties, concepts, propositions, etc., are, involves synaptogenesis followed by pruning, modifying, and reshaping a hierarchical neurological configuration, in order to end up with a more specific hierarchical neurological arrangement, and one that more accurately correlates with the reality we are interacting with and learning about through our sensory organs.  Since the specific arrangement that eventually forms couldn’t have been entirely coded for in our DNA (due to it’s extremely high level of complexity and information density), it ultimately had to be fine-tuned to this level of complexity after it’s initial pre-sensory configuration developed.  Nevertheless, the DNA sequences that were naturally selected for to produce the highly capable brains of human beings (as opposed to the DNA that guides the formation of the brain of a much less intelligent animal), clearly have encoded increasingly more effective hardware implementation strategies than our evolutionary ancestors.  These naturally selected neurological strategies seem to control what particular types of causal patterns the brain is theoretically capable of recognizing (including some upper limit of complexity), and they also seem to control how the brain stores and organizes these patterns for later use.  So overall, my contention is that these naturally selected strategies in themselves are a type of knowledge, because they seem to provide the very foundation for our initial ontology.

Based on my understanding, after many of the initial activity-independent mechanisms for neural development have occurred in some region of the developing brain such as cellular differentiation, cellular migration, axon guidance, and some amount of synapse formation, then the activity-dependent mechanisms for neuronal development (such as neural activity caused by the sensory organs in the process of learning), finally begin to modify those synapses and axons into a new hierarchical arrangement.  It is especially worth noting that even though much of the synapse formation during neural development is mediated by activity-dependent mechanisms, such as the aforementioned neural activity produced by the sensory organs during perceptual development and learning, there is also spontaneous neural activity forming many of these synapses even before any sensory input is present, thus contributing to the innate neurological configuration (i.e. that which is formed before any sensation or learning has occurred).

Thus, the subsequent hierarchy formed through neural/sensory stimulation via learning appears to begin from a parent hierarchical starting point based on neural developmental processes that are coded for in our DNA as well as synaptogenic mechanisms involving spontaneous pre-sensory neural activity.  So our brain’s innate (i.e. pre-sensory) configuration likely contributes to our making sense of the world by providing a starting point that reflects the fundamental hierarchical nature of reality that all subsequent knowledge is built off of.  In other words, it seems that if our mature conceptualization of reality involves a very specific type of hierarchy, then an innate/pre-sensory hierarchical schema of neurons would be a plausible if not expected physical foundation for it (see Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection within this link for more empirical support of these points).

Additionally, if the brain’s wiring has evolved in order to see dimensions of difference in the world (unique sensory/perceptual patterns that is, such as quantity, colors, sounds, tastes, smells, etc.), then it would make sense that the brain can give any particular pattern an identity by having a unique schema of hardware or unique use of said hardware to perceive such a pattern and distinguish it from other patterns.  After the brain does this, the patterns are then arguably organized by the logical absolutes.  For example, if the hardware scheme or process used to detect a particular pattern “A” exists and all other patterns we perceive have or are given their own unique hardware-based identity (i.e. “not-A” a.k.a. B, C, D, etc.), then the brain would effectively be wired such that pattern “A” = pattern “A” (law of identity), any other pattern which we can call “not-A” does not equal pattern “A” (law of non-contradiction), and any pattern must either be “A” or some other pattern even if brand new, which we can also call “not-A” (law of the excluded middle).  So by the brain giving a pattern a physical identity (i.e. a specific type of hardware configuration in our brain that when activated, represents a detection of one specific pattern), our brains effectively produce the logical absolutes by nature of the brain’s innate wiring strategy which it uses to distinguish one pattern from another.  So although it may be true that there can’t be any patterns stored in the brain until after learning begins (through sensory experience), the fact that the DNA-mediated brain wiring strategy inherently involves eventually giving a particular learned pattern a unique neurological hardware identity to distinguish it from other stored patterns, suggests that the logical absolutes themselves are an innate and implicit property of how the brain stores recognized patterns.

In short, if it is true that any and all forms of reasoning as well as the ability to accumulate knowledge simply requires logic and the recognition of causal patterns, and if the brain’s innate neurological configuration schema provides the starting foundation for both, then it would seem reasonable to conclude that the brain has at least some types of innate knowledge.

Artificial Intelligence: A New Perspective on a Perceived Threat

There is a growing fear in many people of the future capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), especially as the intelligence of these computing systems begins to approach that of human beings.  Since it is likely that AI will eventually surpass the intelligence of humans, some wonder if these advancements will be the beginning of the end of us.  Stephen Hawking, the eminent British physicist, was recently quoted by the BBC as saying “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”  BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said in a recent article “Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.”  Hawking then said “It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate.  Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

Hawking isn’t alone with this fear, and clearly this fear isn’t ill-founded.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that human intelligence has allowed us to overcome just about any environmental barrier we’ve come across, driving us to the top of the food chain.  We’ve all seen the benefits of our high intelligence as a species, but we’ve also seen what can happen due to that intelligence being imperfect, having it operate on incomplete or fallacious information, and ultimately lacking an adequate capability of accurately determining the long-term consequences of our actions.  Because we have such a remarkable ability to manipulate our environment, that manipulation can be extremely beneficial or extremely harmful as we’ve seen with the numerous species we’ve threatened on this planet (some having gone extinct).  We’ve even threatened many fellow human beings in the process, whether intentionally or not.  Our intelligence, combined with some elements of short-sightedness, selfishness, and aggression, has led to some pretty abhorrent products throughout human history — anything from the mass enslavement of others spanning back thousands of years to modern forms of extermination weaponry (e.g. bio-warfare and nuclear bombs).  If AI reaches and eventually surpasses our level of intelligence, it is reasonable to consider the possibility that we may find ourselves on a lower rung of the food chain (so to speak), potentially becoming enslaved or exterminated by this advanced intelligence.

AI: Friend or Foe?

So what exactly prompted Stephen Hawking to make these claims?  As the BBC article mentions, “His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI…The theoretical physicist, who has the motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is using a new system developed by Intel to speak.  Machine learning experts from the British company Swiftkey were also involved in its creation. Their technology, already employed as a smartphone keyboard app, learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next.”

Reading this article suggests another possibility or perspective that I don’t think a lot of people are considering with regard to AI technology.  What if AI simply replaces us gradually, by actually becoming the new “us”?  That is, as we further progress in Cyborg (i.e. cybernetic organism) technologies, using advancements similar to Stephen Hawking’s communication ability upgrade, we are ultimately becoming amalgams of biological and synthetic machines anyway.  Even the technology that we currently operate through an external peripheral interface (like smart phones and all other computers) will likely become integrated into our bodies internally.  Google glasses, voice recognition, and other technologies like those used by Hawking are certainly taking us in that direction.  It’s not difficult to imagine one day being able to think about a particular question or keyword, and having an integrated blue-tooth implant in our brain recognize the mental/physiological command cue, and successfully retrieve the desired information wirelessly from an online cloud or internet database of some form.  Going further still, we will likely one day be able to take sensory information that enters the neuronal network of our brain, and once again, send it wirelessly to supercomputers stored elsewhere that are able to process the information with billions of pattern recognition modules.  The 300 million or so pattern recognition modules that are currently in our brain’s neo-cortex would be dwarfed by this new peripheral-free interface and wirelessly accessible technology.

For those that aren’t very familiar with the function or purpose of the brain’s neo-cortex, we use its 300 million or so pattern recognition modules to notice patterns in the environment around us (and meta patterns of neuronal activity within the brain), thus being able to recognize and memorize sensory data, and think.  Ultimately, we use this pattern recognition to accomplish goals, solve problems, and gain knowledge from past experience.  In short, these pattern recognition modules are our primary source or physiological means for our intelligence.  Thus, being able to increase the number of pattern recognition modules (as well as the number of hierarchies between different sets of them), will only increase our intelligence.  Regardless of whether we integrate computer chips in our brain to do at least some or all of this processing locally, or use a wireless means of communication to an external supercomputer farm or otherwise, we will likely continue to integrate our biology with synthetic analogs to increase our capabilities.

When we realize that a higher intelligence allows us to better predict the consequences of our actions, we can see that our increasing integration with AI will likely have incredible survival benefits.  This integration will also catalyze further technologies that could never have been accomplished with biological brains alone, because we simply aren’t naturally intelligent enough to think beyond a certain level of complexity.  As Hawking said regarding AI that could surpass our intelligence, “It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate.  Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”  Yes, but if that AI becomes integrated in us, then really it is humans that are finding a way to circumvent slow biological evolution with a non-biological substrate that supercedes it.

At this time I think it is relevant to mention something else I’ve written about previously, which is the advancements being made in genetic engineering and how they are taking us into our last and grandest evolutionary leap, a “conscious evolution”, thus being able to circumvent our own slow biological evolution through an intentionally engineered design.  So as we gain more knowledge in the field of genetic engineering (combined with the increasing simulation and computing power afforded by AI), we will likely be able to catalyze our own biological evolution such that we can evolve quickly as we increase our Cyborg integrations with AI.  So we will likely see an increase in genetic engineering capabilities developing in close parallel with AI advancements, with each field substantially contributing to the other and ultimately leading to our transhumanism.

Final Thoughts

It seems clear that advancements in AI are providing us with more tools to accomplish ever-more complex goals as a species.  As we continue to integrate AI into ourselves, what we now call “human” is simply going to change as we change.  This would happen regardless, as human biological evolution continues its course into another speciation event, similar to the one that led to humans in the first place.  In fact, if we wanted to maintain the way we are right now as a species, biologically speaking, it would actually require us to use genetic engineering to do so, because genetic differentiation mechanisms (e.g. imperfect DNA replication, mutations, etc.) are inherent in our biology.  Thus, for those that argue against certain technologies based on a desire to maintain humanity and human attributes, they must also realize that the very technologies they despise are in fact their only hope for doing so.  More importantly, the goal of maintaining what humans currently are goes against our natural evolution, and we should embrace change, even if we embrace it with caution.

If AI continues to become further integrated into ourselves, forming a Cyborg amalgam of some kind, as it advances to a certain point we may choose one day to entirely eliminate the biological substrate of that amalgam, if it is both possible and advantageous to do so.  Even if we maintain some of our biology, and merely hybridize with AI, then Hawking was right to point out that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”  Although, rather than a doomsday scenario like we saw in the movie The Terminator, with humans and machines at war with one another, the end of the human race may simply mean that we will end up changing into a different species, just as we’ve done throughout our evolutionary history.  Only this time, it will be a transition from a purely biological evolution to a cybernetic hybrid variation.  Furthermore, if it happens, it will be a transition that will likely increase our intelligence (and many other capabilities) to unfathomable levels, giving us an unprecedented ability to act based on more knowledge of the consequences of our actions as we move forward.  We should be cautious indeed, but we should also embrace our ongoing evolution and eventual transhumanism.

Mind, Body, and the Soul: The Quest for an Immaterial Identity

There’s little if any doubt that the brain (the human brain in particular) is the most complex entity or system that we’ve ever encountered in the known universe, and thus it is not surprising that it has allowed humans to reach the top of the food chain and also the ability to manipulate our environment more than any other creature on Earth.  Not only has it provided humans with the necessary means for surviving countless environmental pressures, effectively evolving as a sort of anchor and catalyst for our continued natural selection over time (through learning, language, adaptive technology, etc.), but it has also allowed humans to become aware of themselves, aware of their own consciousness, and aware of their own brains in numerous other ways.  The brain appears to be the first evolved feature of an organism capable of mapping the entire organism (including its interaction with the external environment), and it may even be the case that consciousness later evolved as a result of the brain making maps of itself.  Even beyond these capabilities, the human brain has also been able to map itself in terms of perceptually acquired patterns related to its own activity (i.e. when we study and learn about how our brains work).

It isn’t at all surprising when people marvel over the complexity, beauty and even seemingly surreal qualities of the brain as it produces the qualia of our subjective experience including all of our sensations, emotions and the resulting feelings that ensue.  Some of our human attributes are so seemingly remarkable, that many people have gone so far as to say that at least some of these attributes are either supernatural, supernaturally endowed, and/or are forever exclusive to humans.  For example, some religious people claim that humans alone have some kind of immaterial soul that exists outside of our experiential reality.  Some also believe that humans alone possess free will, are conscious in some way forever exclusive to humans (some have even argued that consciousness in general is an exclusively human trait), and a host of other (perhaps anthropocentric) “human only” attributes, with many of them forever exclusive to humans.  In the interest of philosophical exploration, I’d like to consider and evaluate some of these claims about “exclusively human” attributes.  In particular, I’d like to focus on the non-falsifiable claim of having a soul, with the aid of reason and a couple of thought experiments, although these thought experiments may also shed some light on other purported “exclusively human” attributes (e.g. free will, consciousness, etc.).  For the purposes of simplicity in these thought experiments, I may periodically refer to many or all purported “humanly exclusive” attributes as simply, “H”.  Let’s begin by briefly examining some of the common conceptions of a soul and how it is purported to relate to the physical world.

What is a Soul?

It seems that most people would define a soul to be some incorporeal entity or essence that serves as an immortal aspect or representation of an otherwise mortal/living being.  Furthermore, many people think that souls are something possessed by human beings alone.  There are also people who ascribe souls to non-living entities (such as bodies of water, celestial bodies, wind, etc.), but regardless of these distinctions, for those that believe in souls, there seems to be something in common: souls appear to be non-physical entities correlated, linked, or somehow attached to a particular physical body or system, and are usually believed to give rise to consciousness, a “life force”, animism, or some power of agency.  Additionally, they are often believed to transcend material existence through their involvement in some form of an afterlife.  While it is true that souls and any claims about souls are unfalsifiable and thus are excluded from any kind of empirical investigation, let’s examine some commonly held assumptions and claims about souls and see how they hold up to a more critical examination.

Creation or Correlation of Souls

Many religious people now claim that a person’s life begins at conception (after Science discovered this specific stage of reproduction), and thus it would be reasonable to assume that if they have a soul, that soul is effectively created at conception.  However, some also believe that all souls have co-existed for the same amount of time (perhaps since the dawn of our universe), and that souls are in some sense waiting to be linked to the physical person once they are conceived or come into existence.  Another way of expressing this latter idea is the belief that all souls have existed since some time long ago, but only after the reproductive conception of a person does that soul begin to have a physical correlate or incarnation linked to it.  In any case, the presumed soul is believed to be correlated to a particular physical body (generally presumed to be a “living” body, if not a human body), and this living body has been defined by many to begin its life either at conception (i.e. fertilization), shortly thereafter as an embryo (i.e. once the fertilized egg/cell undergoes division at least once), or once it is considered a fetus (depending on the context for such a definition).  The easiest definition to use for the purposes of this discussion is to define life to begin at conception (i.e. fertilization).

For one, regardless of the definition chosen, it seems difficult to define exactly when the particular developmental stage in question is reached.  Conception could be defined to take place once the spermatozoa’s DNA contents enter the zygote or perhaps not until some threshold has been reached in a particular step of the process afterward (e.g. some time after the individual parent DNA strands have mixed to produce a double-helix daughter strand).  Either way, most proponents of the idea of a human soul seem to assume that a soul is created or at least correlated (if created some time earlier) at the moment of, or not long after, fertilization.  At this point, the soul is believed to be correlated or representative of the now “living” being (which is of course composed of physical materials).

At a most basic level, one could argue, if we knew exactly when a soul was created/correlated with a particular physical body (e.g. a fertilized egg), then by reversing the last step in the process that instigated the creation/correlation of the soul, we should be able to destroy/decorrelate the soul.  Also, if a soul was in fact correlated with an entire fertilized egg, then if we remove even one atom, molecule, etc., would that correlation change?  If not, then it would appear that the soul is not actually correlated with the entire fertilized egg, but rather it is correlated with some higher level aspect or property of it (whatever that may be).

Conservation & Identity of Souls

Assuming a soul is in fact created or correlated with a fertilized egg, what would happen in the case of chimerism, where more than one fertilized egg fuse together in the early stages of embryonic development?  Would this developing individual have two souls?  By the definition or assumptions given earlier, if a soul is correlated with a fertilized egg in some way, and two fertilized eggs (each with their own soul) merge together, then this would indicate one of a few possibilities.  Either two souls merged into one (or one is actually destroyed) which would demonstrate that the number of souls are not conserved (indicating that not all souls are eternal/immortal), or the two souls would co-exist with that one individual and would imply that not all individuals have the same number of souls (some have one, some may have more) and thus souls don’t each have their own unique identity with a particular person, or it would indicate that after the merging of fertilized eggs took place, one of the two souls would detach from or become decorrelated with its physical counterpart, and the remaining soul would get to keep the booty of both fertilized eggs or so to speak.

In the case of identical twins, triplets, etc., a fertilized egg eventually splits, and we are left with the opposite conundrum. It would seem that we would be starting with one soul that eventually splits into two or more, and thus there would be another violation of the conservation of the number of souls.  Alternatively, if the number of souls are indeed conserved, an additional previously existing soul (if this was the case) could become correlated with the second fertilized egg produced. Yet another possibility would be to say that the “twins to be” (i.e. the fertilized egg prior to splitting) has two souls to start with and when the egg splits, the souls are segregated and each pre-destined twin is given their own.

The only way to avoid these implications would be to modify the assumption given earlier, regarding when a soul is created or correlated.  It would have to be defined such that a soul is created or correlated with a physical body some time after an egg is fertilized when it is no longer possible to fuse with another fertilized egg and after it can no longer split into fertilized multiples (i.e. twins, triplets, etc.).  If this is true, then one could no longer say that a fertilized egg necessarily has a soul, for that wouldn’t technically be the case until some time afterward when chimerism or monozygotic multiples were no longer possible.

If people believe in non-physical entities that can’t be seen or in any way extrospectively verified, it’s not much of a stretch to say that they can come up with a way to address these questions or reconcile these issues, with yet more unfalsifiable claims.  Some of these might not even be issues for various believers but I only mention these potential issues to point out the apparent arbitrariness or poorly defined aspects of many claims and assumptions regarding souls. Now let’s look at a few thought experiments to further analyze the concept of a soul and purported “exclusively human” attributes (i.e. “H”) as mentioned in the introduction of this post.

Conservation and Identity of “H”

Thought Experiment # 1: Replace a Neuron With a Non-Biological Analog

What if one neuron in a person’s brain is replaced with a non-biological/artificial version, that is, what if some kind of silicon-based (or other non-carbon-based) analog to a neuron was effectively used to replace a neuron?  We are assuming that this replacement with another version will accomplish the same vital function, that is, the same subjective experience and behavior.  This non-biologically-based neuronal analog may be powered by ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) and also respond to neurotransmitters with electro-chemical sensors — although it wouldn’t necessarily have to be constrained by the same power or signal transmission media (or mechanisms) as long as it produced the same end result (i.e. the same subjective experience and behavior).  As long as the synthetic neuronal replacement accomplished the same ends, the attributes of the person (i.e. their identity, their beliefs, their actions, etc.) should be unaffected despite any of these changes to their hardware.

Regarding the soul, if souls do in fact exist and they are not physically connected to the body (although people claim that souls are somehow associated with a particular physical body), then it seems reasonable to assume that changing a part of the physical body should have no effect on an individual’s possession of that soul (or any “H” for that matter), especially if the important attributes of the individual, i.e., their beliefs, thoughts, memories, and subsequent actions, etc., were for all practical purposes (if not completely), the same as before.  Even if there were some changes in the important aspects of the individual, say, if there was a slight personality change after some level of brain surgery, could anyone reasonably argue that their presumed soul (or their “H”) was lost as a result?  If physical modifications of the body led to the loss of a soul (or of any elements of “H”), then there would be quite a large number of people (and an increasing number at that) who no longer have souls (or “H”) since many people indeed have had various prosthetic modifications used in or on their bodies (including brain and neural prosthetics) as well as other intervening mediation of body/brain processes (e.g. through medication, transplants, various levels of critical life support, etc.).

For those that think that changing the body’s hardware would somehow disconnect the presumed soul from that person’s body (or eliminate other elements of their “H”), they should consider that this assumption is strongly challenged by the fact that many of the atoms in the human body are replaced (some of them several times over) throughout one’s lifetime anyway.  Despite this drastic biological “hardware” change, where our material selves are constantly being replaced with new atoms from the food that we eat and the air that we breathe (among other sources), we still manage to maintain our memories and our identity simply because the functional arrangements of the brain cells (i.e. neurons and glial cells) which are composed of those atoms are roughly preserved over time and thus the information contained in such arrangements and/or their resulting processes are preserved over time.  We can analogize this important point by thinking about a computer that has had its hardware replaced, albeit in a way that matches or maintains its original physical state, and understand that as a result of this configuration preservation, it also should be able to maintain its original memory, programs and normal functional operation.  One could certainly argue that the computer in question is technically no longer the “same” computer because it no longer has any of the original hardware.  However, the information regarding the computer’s physical state, that is, the specific configuration and states of parts that allow it to function exactly as it did before the hardware replacement, is preserved.  Thus, for all practical purposes in terms of the identity of that computer, it remained the same regardless of the complete hardware change.

This is an important point to consider for those who think that replacing the hardware of the brain (even if limited to a biologically sustained replacement) is either theoretically impossible, or that it would destroy one’s ability to be conscious, to maintain their identity, to maintain their presumed soul, or any presumed element of “H”.  The body naturally performs these hardware changes (through metabolism, respiration, excretion, etc.) all the time and thus the concept of changing hardware while maintaining the critical aspects of an individual is thoroughly demonstrated throughout one’s lifetime.  On top of this, the physical outer boundary that defines our bodies is also arbitrary in the sense that we exchange atoms between our outer surface and the environment around us (e.g. by shedding skin cells, or through friction, molecular desorption/adsorption/absorption, etc.).  The key idea to keep in mind is that these natural hardware changes imply that “we” are not defined specifically by our hardware or some physical boundary with a set number of atoms, but rather “we” are based on how our hardware is arranged/configured (allowing for some variation of configuration states within some finite acceptable range), and the subsequent processes and functions that result from such an arrangement as mediated by the laws of physics.

Is the type of hardware important?  It may be true that changing a human’s hardware to a non-biological version may never be able to accomplish exactly the same subjective experience and behavior that was possible with the biological hardware, however we simply don’t know that this is the case.  It may be that both the type of hardware as well as the configuration are necessary for a body and brain to produce the same subjective experience and behavior.  However, the old adage “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” has been applicable to so many types of technologies and to the means used to accomplish a number of goals.  There are a number of different hardware types and configurations that can be used to accomplish a particular task, even if, after changing the hardware the configuration must also be changed to accomplish a comparable result.  The question becomes, which parts or aspects of the neural process in the brain produces subjective experience and behavior?  If this becomes known, we should be able to learn how biologically-based hardware and its configuration work together in order to accomplish a subjective experience and behavior, and then also learn if non-biologically-based hardware (perhaps with its own particular configuration) can accomplish the same task.  For the purposes of this thought experiment, let’s assume that we can swap out the hardware with a different type, even if, in order to preserve the same subjective experience and behavior, the configuration must be significantly different than it was with the original biologically-based hardware.

So, if we assume that we can replace a neuron with an efficacious artificial version, and still maintain our identity, our consciousness, any soul that might be present, or any element of “H” for that matter, then even if we replace two neurons with artificial versions, we should still have the same individual.  In fact, even if we replace every neuron, perhaps just one neuron at a time, eventually we would be replacing the entire brain with an artificial version, and yet still have the same individual.  This person would now have a completely non-biologically based “brain”.  In theory, their identity would be the same, and they would subjectively experience reality and their selves as usual.  Having gone this far, let’s assume that we replace the rest of the body with an artificial version.  Replacing the rest of the body, one part at a time, should be far less significant a change than replacing the brain, for the rest of the body is far less complex.

It may be true that the body serves as an integral homeostatic frame of reference necessary for establishing some kind of self-object basis of consciousness (e.g. Damasio’s Theory of Consciousness), but as long as our synthetic brain is sending/receiving the appropriate equivalent of sensory/motor information (i.e. through an interoceptive feedback loop among other requirements) from the new artificial body, the model or map of the artificial body’s internal state provided by the synthetic brain should be equivalent.  It should also be noted that the range of conditions necessary for homeostasis in one human body versus another is far narrower and less individualized than the differences found between the brains of two different people.  This supports the idea that the brain is in fact the most important aspect of our individuality, and thus replacing the rest of the body should be significantly easier to accomplish and also less critical a change.  After replacing the rest of the body, we would now have a completely artificial non-biological substrate for our modified “human being”, or what many people would refer to as a “robot”, or a system of “artificial intelligence” with motor capabilities.  This thought experiment seems to suggest at least one of several implications:

• Some types of robots can possess “H” (e.g. soul, consciousness, free-will, etc.), and thus “H” are not uniquely human, nor are they forever exclusive to humans.
• Humans lose some or all of their “H” after some threshold of modification has taken place (likely a modification of the brain)
• “H”, as it is commonly defined at least, does not exist

The first implication listed above would likely be roundly rejected by most people that believe in the existence of “H” for several reasons including the fact that most people see robots as fundamentally different than living systems, they see “H” as only applicable to human beings, and they see a clear distinction between robots and human beings (although the claim that these distinctions exist has been theoretically challenged by this thought experiment).  The second implication sounds quite implausible (even if we assume that “H” exists) as it would seem to be impossible to define when exactly any elements of “H” were lost based on exceeding some seemingly arbitrary threshold of modification.  For example, would the loss of some element of “H” occur only after the last neuron was replaced with an artificial version?  If the loss of “H” did occur after some specific number of neurons were removed (or after the number of neurons that remained fell below some critical minimum quantity), then what if the last neuron removed (which caused this critical threshold to be met) was biologically preserved and later re-installed, thus effectively reversing the last neuronal replacement procedure?  Would the previously lost “H” then return?

Thought Experiment # 2: Replace a Non-Biological Neuronal Analog With a Real Neuron

We could look at this thought experiment (in terms of the second implication) yet another way by simply reversing the order of the thought experiment.  For example, imagine that we made a robot from scratch that was identical to the robot eventually obtained from the aforementioned thought experiment, and then we began to replace its original non-biologically-based neuronal equivalent with actual biologically-based neurons, perhaps even neurons that were each taken from a separate human brain (say, from one or several cadavers) and preserved for such a task.  Even after this, consider that we proceed to replace the rest of the robot’s “body”, again piecewise (say, from one or several cadavers), until it was completely biologically-based to match the human being we began with in the initial thought experiment.  Would or could this robot acquire “H” at some point, or be considered human?  It seems that there would be no biological reason to claim otherwise.

Does “H” exist?  If So, What is “H”?

I’m well aware of how silly some of these hypothetical questions and considerations sound, however I find it valuable to follow the reasoning all the way through in order to help illustrate the degree of plausibility of these particular implications, and the plausibility or validity of “H”.  In the case of the second implication given previously (that humans lose some or all of “H” after some threshold of modification), if there’s no way to define or know when “H” is lost (or gained), then nobody can ever claim with certainty that an individual has lost their “H”, and thus they would have to assume that all elements of “H” have never been lost (if they want to err on the side of, what some may call, ethical or moral caution).  By that rationale, one would find themselves forced to accept the first implication (some types of robots can possess “H”, and thus “H” isn’t unique to humans).  If anyone denies the first two implications, it seems that they are only left with the third option.  The third implication seems to be the most likely (that “H” as previously defined does not exist), however it should be mentioned that even this third implication may be circumvented by realizing that it has an implicit loophole.  There is a possibility that some or all elements and/or aspects of “H” are not exactly what people assume them to be, and therefore “H” may exist in some other sense.  For example, what if we considered particular patterns themselves, i.e., the brain/neuronal configurations, patterns of brain waves, neuronal firing patterns, patterns of electro-chemical signals emanated throughout the body, etc., to be the “immaterial soul” of each individual?  We could look at these patterns as being immaterial if the physical substrate that employs them is irrelevant, or by simply noting that patterns of physical material states are not physical materials in themselves.

This is analogous to the concept that the information contained in a book can be represented on paper, electronically, in multiple languages, etc., and is not reliant on a specific physical medium.  This would mean that one could accept the first implication that robots or “mechanized humans” possess “H”, although it would also necessarily imply that any elements of “H” aren’t actually unique or exclusive to humans as they were initially assumed to be.  One could certainly accept this first implication by noting that the patterns of information (or patterns of something if we don’t want to call it information per se) that comprise the individual were conserved throughout the neuronal (or body) replacement in these thought experiments, and thus the essence or identity of the individual (whether “human” or “robot”) was preserved as well.

Pragmatic Considerations & Final Thoughts

I completely acknowledge that in order for this hypothetical neuronal replacement to be truly accurate in reproducing normal neuronal function (even with just one neuron), above and beyond the potential necessity of both a specific type of hardware as well as configuration (as mentioned earlier), the non-biologically based version would presumably also have to replicate the neuronal plasticity that the brain normally possesses.  In terms of brain plasticity, there are basically four known factors involved with neuronal change, sometimes referred to as the four R’s: regeneration, reconnection, re-weighting, and rewiring.  So clearly, any synthetic neuronal version would likely involve some kind of malleable processing in order to accomplish at least some of these tasks (if not all of them to some degree), as well as some possible nano-self-assembly processes if actual physical rewiring were needed.  The details of what and how this would be accomplished will become better known over time as we learn more about the possible neuronal dynamic mechanisms involved (e.g. neural darwinism or other means of neuronal differential reproduction, connectionism, Hebbian learning, DNA instruction, etc.).

I think that the most important thing to gain from these thought experiments is the realization of the inability or severe difficulty in taking the idea of souls or “H” seriously given the incompatibility between the traditional  conception of a concrete soul or other “H” and the well-established fluidic or continuous nature of the material substrates that they are purportedly correlated with.  That is, all the “things” in this world, including any forms of life (human or not) are constantly undergoing physical transformation and change, and they possess seemingly arbitrary boundaries that are ultimately defined by our own categorical intuitions and subjective perception of reality.  In terms of any person’s quest for “H”, if what one is really looking for is some form of constancy, essence, or identity of some kind in any of the things around us (let alone in human beings), it seems that it is the patterns of information (or perhaps the patterns of energy to be more accurate) as well as the level of complexity or type of patterns that ultimately constitute that essence and identity.  Now if it is reasonable to conclude that the patterns of information or energy that comprise any physical system aren’t equivalent to the physical constituent materials themselves, one could perhaps say that these patterns are a sort of “immaterial” attribute of a set of physical materials.  This seems to be as close to the concept of an immaterial “soul” as a physicalist or materialist could concede exists, since, at the very least it involves a property of continuity and identity which somewhat transcends the physical materials themselves.