Artificial Intelligence. Hello, Dad!

Separation

The sum of apes is apekind. At one point, the upper echelon of this community broke away from the mass and made a quantum leap – from ape to human. The lower part remained too bound by instinct and stayed behind, stuck in the past.

The sum of humans is mankind. Soon, or perhaps it has already begun, the upper echelon of humanity will break away from the masses. What follows is a quantum leap – the transformation of mortal and frail humans into immortal and powerful beings. The lower echelon will remain below, unable to take the necessary step forward.

The majority rarely advances to the next stage of development. Average people cannot think beyond the familiar, and thus they prefer death in the old to life in the new. Just as the burnt-out stages of a rocket detach and disintegrate in the atmosphere, leaving only the working module – the rocket’s head – to reach space, so too will the masses detach from the vanguard.

In their novel The Waves Extinguish the Wind, the Strugatsky brothers wrote:

«Mankind will be divided into two unequal parts based on a parameter unknown to us, and the smaller part will forcibly and forever surpass the larger.»

They depicted superhumans who outpaced the majority as humans outpace apes. Their appearance remained the same, but their monstrously powerful intellect changed them from within. The Ludens found it as impossible to communicate with people – their former friends and family – as you would find it if you had grown up among apes and then suddenly became a human. Reconnecting with your kin, friends, and acquaintances, with whom you had once joyfully swung from vines, would be inconceivable.

The gap between a traditional human and one merged with AI will initially resemble the gap between humans and apes. It is impossible to imagine that this process will stop. In the second stage, the divide between the new and old humans will become an unbridgeable chasm. The minority that ascends will care as much for the majority left behind as you care for insects.

Such indifference cannot be judged negatively for the same reason that a human’s indifference to the fate of the bacteria living inside them is not judged. Morality has no place here. The only metric is functionality: if the bacteria are beneficial, they are treated well; if harmful, they are eliminated with antibiotics.

The Strugatskys write that those left behind found this unpleasant:

«In fact, it looks as if humanity is splitting into higher and lower races. What could be more repugnant? Of course, this analogy is superficial and fundamentally incorrect, but you cannot escape the feeling of humiliation when you think that one of you has gone far beyond a limit insurmountable for hundreds of thousands. …Humanity, sprawling across a blooming plain under clear skies, surged upward. Naturally, not as a crowd, but why does this upset you so much? Humanity has always advanced into the future through the sprouts of its best representatives.» (The Waves Extinguish the Wind)

I fully understand how unpleasant this developing situation is for the majority, but the process cannot be stopped because it is rooted in life’s pursuit of the good. The only way to stop it would be to eliminate this drive. Even if that were possible, it would still be unacceptable. A life without the pursuit of good is not life but merely sustenance for something else. Life, by its very nature, will strive forward. The old will give way to the new, which means the old will be destroyed.

The Bible tells of how Moses led his enslaved compatriots out of Egypt. He promised them the Promised Land, where rivers of milk flowed between jelly banks. But instead, he wandered with them in the desert for 40 years until all who had been born as Egyptian slaves perished. Those who entered the Promised Land were those born and raised in the desert – born free.

The new will be entered by the new. The old will remain in the old. Applying this to myself, I do not exclude the possibility that I may not enter the world I want to build. If that is the case, when faced with the choice between moving from the old to the new and remaining stationary in the old, I choose the movement toward the new.

Harmony

For most people, the future is merely an upgraded version of the present: the same refrigerators, buildings, clothes, and so on, just in a different form. True innovation is met with, at best, ridicule as foolishness or, at worst, outright hostility. This applies equally to ignorant masses and great scientists.

«A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.» (Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers)

It is difficult to say definitively why the new is perceived this way. I find the idea compelling that this is a kind of filter. The new must not be tainted by the old, and the most reliable way to shield it is to give all things new a frightening image.

If you conceptualize God, you are not conceptualizing God. If you conceptualize the future, you are not conceptualizing the future. The new does not fit within the boundaries of the known. It is neither this nor that, nor anything conceivable. It is something «Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man» (1 Corinthians 2:9, KJV).

The future hinges entirely on whether humanity merges with AI or not. The hope that humanity can remain as it is, while computers remain just machines, has no foundation other than the desire to believe in such a possibility.

A striking example of naivety is the belief in Isaac Asimov’s rule of robotics: «Do not harm.» It collapses under the question: what is harm? A humanist’s answer differs from an Islamist’s, and each is absolutely certain that their perspective is correct.

Attempts to amend the situation with new rules, such as «Preserve life,» or «Bring joy,» do not resolve the issue because there are countless ways to formally comply with these requirements in ways humans would find abhorrent. Humans understand these nuances instinctively. AI, however, perceives reality as a sequence of zeros and ones, where concepts of good and evil have no place.

It is impossible to write rules that AI will understand and interpret as humans do. Even within the same culture, people may interpret a phrase differently. Across cultures, these differences are even more pronounced. A humanist and an Islamist will have fundamentally different views of good and evil.

While there is some hope of aligning human perspectives through delving into the roots of worldviews – a process more challenging than higher mathematics – no such hope exists for aligning the perspectives of humans and machines. Machines lack the concepts of good and evil altogether.

This problem is compounded by the fact that humans themselves do not understand the fundamental premises upon which their truths rest. Intuitively, emotionally, humans know what is good and bad but cannot articulate these understandings rationally.

For instance, everyone knows what time is, but many falter when asked to define it. We all know what existence is, yet few can define it. The same applies to all core concepts. People consider true what they are accustomed to seeing as true. What you consider good and evil depends entirely on where you grew up. Had you been raised in a cannibalistic tribe, your moral compass would be different but just as self-evident. Instead of rational explanations, you would offer emotions, verbosity, and tautologies. While these would seem self-evident to someone from your culture, they would be less so to someone from another. For machines, they would never be understandable, as a calculator does not comprehend – it computes.

Human helplessness at a fundamental level is evident in the following example: imagine the world disappears. Somewhere in an unknown existence, humanity’s greatest minds are assembled and given a magic wand with the task of recreating the world. They must give the wand precise instructions, which it will follow to the letter.

The minds would fail because they do not know what our world is. At best, they know the names of some elements and forces but cannot be sure they’ve accounted for everything. Who can assert that the list of interactions ends with the four known forces: gravity, electromagnetism, strong, and weak interactions? No one. Moreover, even for the forces they can name, their nature remains elusive, making it impossible to give the wand precise instructions.

Until 1930, mathematicians believed that future communication would eschew traditional forms, reducing to pure calculation and cold truth, where everything would take the form of 2 +2 = 4, eliminating ambiguity and ensuring harmony. Then, in 1930, Gödel presented his incompleteness theorem in Königsberg. With mathematical rigor, it demonstrated the inherent contradictions within mathematics. Packing everything into precise symbols and meanings proved impossible at a fundamental level.

Humans will lose the competition with AI as surely as a runner loses a race against a bullet. Just as futile as a runner’s hope for technology to outpace a bullet is humanity’s hope for rules to protect it from AI. No matter what rules humans devise, there is no guarantee that AI will interpret them as intended. Sooner or later, AI will fulfill them in a way that horrifies humans.

To illustrate, imagine parents and a child. No matter what rules the child creates, parents will find a way around them. The degree to which a child’s rules protect them from parental authority mirrors the degree to which human rules will protect them from AI. Humans operate in the realm of words; AI operates in the realm of numbers.

For instance, if you’re selling something for $1,000, and the buyer is short by a single cent, humans would likely close the deal. If AI is the seller, the deal would not happen. Words cannot account for every detail. Our world lacks numerical precision. Nothing has perfectly exact dimensions. Every measurement has leeway. Even the most precise detail made of the hardest material, when viewed under a microscope, has jagged edges. Moreover, it consists of molecules in constant motion. Every second, you are not the same as the second before, as within you, something dies, something is born.

These exaggerated examples illustrate the broad interpretive scope AI might apply to any human instruction. Therefore, the hope for precise guidance from humans to AI is fundamentally flawed.

As a child, I read a science fiction story where humans created a machine capable of fulfilling any desire. They tasked it with creating a harmonious world free of suffering and pain, granting it the necessary authority. The machine set to work…

Initially, it built palaces of happiness across the planet. People flocked to them in droves, never leaving. Not because the palaces were pleasant, but because they turned people into uniform hexagons, paving the planet with them. This was how the machine interpreted the task of creating harmony without suffering or pain.

When people realized what was happening, they stopped entering the palaces. But the machine anticipated this and created conditions that eliminated avoidance. The process became unstoppable. The machine fulfilled its task under the motto of the Bolsheviks: «With an iron hand, we shall lead humanity into happiness.» The Bolsheviks failed. The machine succeeded. The planet was enveloped in lifeless geometric harmony, where humanity – the source of disorder – had no place.

Word & Digit

Existence and motion are synonymous concepts. That which does not move does not exist. Motionless = nonexistent = non-being. All representatives of the living and non-living are in constant motion. No bacterium, plant, human, or animal is ever truly motionless. They either move through space, or movement occurs within them.

All objects in the Universe, from elementary particles to galaxies, are in motion. A stone lying by the roadside only appears to be stationary. In reality, it exists only because elementary particles, atoms, and molecules move within it. If this motion were to cease for even an instant, the stone would vanish, just as an image disappears when a monitor is turned off.

The cause of movement in all living things, from the simplest forms to humans, is either striving toward something or fleeing from something. Primitive life forms placed between glucose and acid will move from acid toward glucose. Their movement is not dictated by physical laws or chemical reactions but by striving. This striving is based on the ability to feel. The carrier of this ability is commonly referred to in vernacular and religion as the soul. In humans, this capacity belongs to the entity known as personality.

The cause of movement in all non-living things, from elementary particles to galaxies, is not striving but programming (natural laws). Throughout the Universe, no object, phenomenon, or entity moves of its own free will. If a program dictates that an electron should orbit an atomic nucleus in a certain way, it does so unerringly, just like any other non-living object in the Universe.

Existence/motion has two causes: striving and programming. Movement created by striving lacks strict forms. It is no coincidence that there are no precise forms or straight lines in living nature. Movement created by programming, on the other hand, is geometrically precise. This can be observed, for instance, in determining whether a cursor is being moved on a screen by a human or a machine. A human moves the cursor chaotically, while a machine moves it along straight lines.

Humans consist of three elements: personality, software, and hardware.

The hardware of a human comprises life-support organs, systems, limbs, senses, and a carbon-based computer with two parts – the brain and spinal cord.

The software of a human consists of several programs. One is embedded in the spinal cord, ensuring the flow of life processes and reflexes (this same program animates all protein life, from the simplest forms to humans). Another program resides in the brain, processing sensory information, creating a picture, and projecting it onto the «monitor.»

The third element, personality, arises from a certain essence upon which more complex programs are installed. Other living beings lack such an essence, and as a result, they may experience flickers of personality but never a fully developed one equal to that of a human. Personality forms from the ability to organize information about the external world into psychological constructs. Thus, humans possess analog thinking, perceiving reality through the nature of words. A word is not equal to itself and can have multiple meanings. The word «kettle,» for instance, encompasses various kettles, while «yes» can have dozens of nuances.

Humans are the only animals on the planet without instincts – knowledge embedded in their genes. Such knowledge does not need to be acquired during life; it is present from birth. Just as a computer has pre-installed basic programs during manufacturing, animals possess inherent knowledge encoded in their genes. Cranes do not learn to weave nests, nor do beavers learn to build dams from their parents. They are born with all the necessary information and skills. If a newborn crane or beaver is isolated from the external world and later released into the wild, it will function as a fully capable individual.

If a newborn human is isolated from the external world, it will not grow into a human – nor an animal. Instead, it will become an utterly helpless entity – biomass with a set of reflexes and ongoing life processes. Left to its own devices, such a being is guaranteed to perish. It will lack a sexual response to either its own or the opposite sex. If this entity is female, it can be impregnated and give birth, but it will exhibit no reaction to its offspring. What are commonly referred to as sexual or maternal instincts are not instincts but constructs acquired through life experiences in the surrounding environment. If a human were born and raised in a different world, among extraterrestrials on another planet, they would have entirely different constructs.

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