Should the “A” in AI stand for “Artificial” or “Alien”?
Artificial Intelligence has been a topic long debated, but as we get closer and closer to the fabled day when we consider computers to be truly “intelligent” the topic has heated up. Sometimes, though, the quest for AI can feel like a Zeno’s Paradox where we will never arrive at the goal because all we can ever do is infinitely half the distance to go.
But is the problem that we don’t have the right “A” in AI? When talking about “Artificial” Intelligence, most people assume that the intelligence that we are artificially trying to create will be completely or at least somewhat recognizable as human intelligence. Human intelligence, however, is based on human perceptions using the organic medium of the brain, not to mention the corporal input systems of our bodies. Although we often conflate our intelligence with how digital mediums works, they are extremely different.
Computer intelligence uses electronic circuits to try and mimic the organic phenomena of intelligence. It’s ability to make decisions or leaps of intuition are not subject to the same aches, dysfunctions, and euphorias we mortals are constantly experiencing.
Maybe simulating human intelligence is a fools errand, doomed to failure. Instead, are we creating a new form of Alien Intelligence, one that may not be recognizably human in its nature?
I have no mouth…
We want to create computer based intelligence in our own image. But this narcissistic human need belays the fact that computers are a completely different medium than organic life. To quote the great media theorist Marshall McLuhan:
All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.
The medium for intelligence might be the brain or the microchip, but how we process data into knowledge, and knowledge into intelligence is directly dependent on the medium being deployed: synapses or circuits.
Although current AI tries to mimic the human condition in as many ways as possible, research is showing that this may be a blind ally. According to an article in New Scientist Magazine, up to 80% of human intelligence is genetic, and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of how our genetic make-up works.
The best we can hope to create is an ersatz human intelligence. It may be faster at certain things that computers are inherently faster at, but that intelligence will be a simulacra, meant to fool us into thinking we are interacting with our fellow life forms, when in fact the intelligence behind the mask will be as alien as any bugged eye monster from science fiction.
Alien Intelligence?
The debate over what intelligence “is” is as old as the definition itself. The basic dictionary definition of intelligence is “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills,” but this simple definition ignores the true goal of AI, which is to not just mimic general intelligence, or even to be as intelligent as a human being, but to be intelligent like a human being.
Again, there is a lot of debate over what human intelligence is, but the idea of some-level of self-awareness seems to be the distinctive factor of our intelligence. Human intelligence can appreciate its own work. This is not something that computers can currently do, and may never be able to do. As BBC DJ Marc Riley Noted, “When was the last time an algorithm welled up when it played the perfect record? Hmmm… let me think…”
This is important to remember, since Artificial Intelligence is being created to make working with intelligent machines easier for humans, not easer for the machines themselves. Many great human minds have predicted dire consequences should we allow AI to get out of control.
The question we face, then, is whether—in our need to anthropomorphize our machines to better use them—we are willing to lose sight of the fact that they are machines, and not living people?
Regardless of the sophistication of the imitation, artificial intelligence will always be alien, whether we recognize it as such or not.
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