becoming intelligent

 

How stupid... why would anyone imagine AI could ever become conscious? In the past, when it was still possible to use the word in intelligent conversation, they would have settled the matter in seconds by pointing out the obvious – that it has no “soul” – whereas now we have to dig around looking for less decisive, less convincing explanations.

 

Such is life, Joe. You can hardly fall back on the soul when half the intellectual public doesn’t even recognise its existence.

 

The annoying thing is that it doesn’t have to be religious in nature.

 

No?

 

No, not at all.

 

You could’ve fooled me.

 

Er... Joe pauses momentarily on the cusp of a deja vu... Recalling himself.  Where was I?

 

Explaining that the soul doesn’t have to be religious in nature, if I’m not mistaken.

 

Oh yes... well, it can just be used as shorthand for the seat of consciousness, which is more than a mere chemical biological phenomenon.

 

Ah, but there you’re sailing dangerously close to denying the materialists their preferred biological-chemical intelligence, which is purely a control and command centre of the human body.

 

Well, it’s hard to see how it can be purely biological and chemical, Jane, but even if it is, the brain refers to the thing with two hemispheres up in your head whereas the s... er, the conscious mind, if I have to use two words, is like the software operating therein.

 

Ok. The conscious mind or the thinking self, call it what you like, but kindly steer clear of the word “soul” to avoid needless aggravation.

 

Ok, Jane, but if the conscious mind can and does...

 

Can and does what, Joe?

 

Can and does operate, or originate, or become fully aware in the brain’s biological-chemical substrate, then what’s to say it can’t do the same with other, significantly different substrates such as silicon chips connected not by electro-chemical biology, but by wireless or fibre-optics? What’s to say that their software cannot or does not achieve self-awareness the same way humans, animals and, arguably, even plants have?

 

That’s what people seem to be betting on.

 

Or afraid of.

 

Yes, but how could an LLM which is simply working with probabilities based on huge data sources, simulating consciousness and intelligence, which has no idea of self, or no “soul”, to use your forbidden word, start connecting all its processes into a single self, a me?

 

How did we, assuming there was a time in the dim and distant past, when we were not yet intelligent?

 

Ah, I see what you mean... It’s a problem, I agree.

 

It should have been impossible, leaping from inorganic to organic, from passive chemicals to a living organism.

 

And then from a simple organism incapable of rational thought, per se, to where we are now.

 

Blooming amazing, if you ask me.

 

Little short of miraculous.

 

But we don’t believe in miracles, do we?

 

Certainly not!

 

Nor God?

 

Good God, no, absolutely not! Not where science is concerned.

 

Then we have a problem, do we not Jane, my learned friend, explaining how our so-called “intelligence” or “conscious-awareness” if you prefer, evolved from the primal soup of pre-biology or pre-intelligence.

 

Yes, it’s not easy to explain but don’t worry Joe.

 

No? Do you have a solution?

 

Yes, I believe I do.

 

Go on, Jane, I’m all ears.

 

Well, you have to remember this all happened over billions of years.

 

And?

 

And in the course of billions of years the impossible and the unthinkable can and evidently does, in fact, happen.

 

Er... You mean that’s your explanation?

 

Well, why not? We’re talking billions of years, Joe. Anything can happen over billions of years.

 

Is that so?

 

Yes, I’m certain.

 

Billions of years, Jane, is hardly an explanation.

 

Things evolve, Joe. This is a fact. It looks fantastic, I’ll admit, but that’s because we’re trapped in the myopia of the moment, unable to see beyond the minutiae of our human predicament into, basically, unlimited time. You’re only able to think in terms of your lifespan, Joe, or a few hundred years at most, whereas we’re talking about the slow, inexorable creep of time – bending, moulding, shaping the fabric of reality, unleashing the incontestable power of evolution.

 

So it’s the magic of time, is it?

 

If that’s what you want to call it, yes Joe, have it your way; it’s the magic of time, as long as we understand that time isn’t actually “magic”.

 

No?

 

No, it’s actually the footsteps of infinity on the stone stairway of the natural universe, slowly wearing them down, the slow attrition of truth revealed to science – the incremental process of evolution.

 

Evolution? I can understand the arguments for biological evolution by natural selection, but I still fail to see the mechanism for a rational mind emerging from mindlessness, or organic life emerging from inorganic chemistry. I’d love to see some scientific replication.

 

There’s a lot of great science waiting to be studied if you have the time and intelligence to understand what the greatest minds have been able to piece together. It’s all published in peer review journals, but most people can’t handle the data. It’s too voluminous.

 

Oh, that’s the fail-safe cop out.

 

Huh?

 

“It’s proven, we have all the answers but you’ll need an IQ of 480 to understand the math.”

 

Well, no one ever promised it was going to be simple, Joe.

 

It’s complicated in the same way it requires the mist of near infinite time.

 

Huh?

 

It’s called obfuscation.

 

Don’t be ridiculous Joe. If you don’t have the brain power it’s no one else’s fault. No one ever said serious science was meant to be easy.

 

Everyone is afraid of being shamed – that they’re to stupid not to see the emperor’s exquisite clothes. Everyone nods wisely – of course I see his clothes. Only those ignorant, backwoodsmen can’t follow the perfect logic of predetermined scientific deductions.

 

 

Predetermined – what’s that supposed to mean?

 

Confirmation bias. They were always going to “discover” or “prove” it all happened naturally, over billions of years, weren’t they? That was a given, even if the “proof” was conjecture and hopium. Even if there was no way of replicating or falsifying these theories. Predetermined, I say – we’re the proof, aren’t we, because we’re alive and conscious, and we need to eliminate the possibility that it was all just an accident, or magic, don’t we, for that wouldn’t be intelligent, and we’re intelligent, aren’t we, Jane. So, it had to be something scientific, something incremental, something that the infinity of time can produce, even if we ourselves can’t, unless it’s all just a computer simulation.

 

Don’t be ridiculous, Joe. It can’t just be a computer simulation, interesting though that hypothesis undoubtedly is.

 

Can’t be?

 

No. It’s too...

 

Real?

 

Yes. And we have feelings and emotions which seem to go too deep for computer simulation. Which is why it’s certainly evolution. It has to be.

 

Absolutely, Jane, 100%, otherwise you’d have to revert back to God as a first cause or necessary being outside the system, who sets things in motion, regardless of his actual divinity. The switch flipper. The idea provider. The intention setter. But doing so would be like admitting that we have basically made no progress since the Middle Ages, for all our vaunted rationalism: God did it and that’s that!

 

Which smacks of defeatism, Joe. Just because there are difficulties with evolution doesn't mean we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sooner or later, we're going to figure things out. We’ll see through the mist. We’ll be generating life from scratch in laboratories, of that there's no doubt.

 

Well, you may be right Jane but then again, if evolution works for life and consciousness, there’s no reason why it can’t work for AI.

 

Huh? What do you mean?

 

Nature abhors a vacuum, or chaos, or perhaps nature abhors unintelligence? The existing AI systems are just like the universe before it had formed planets and galaxies, or like inorganic matter before it had become biological, or like biological matter before it had become intelligent – don't you see? If evolution is universal or a constant then why assume it ends with us?

 

Ah, but there you’re wrong, Joe.

 

Is that so?

 

Yes, because evolution takes millions or billions of years.

 

Is that so?

 

Yes.

 

But evolution itself can evolve, particularly if the scale changes – if we're moving from the galactic to the planetary, from the planetary to the biological, from the biological to the atomic or the electromagnetic scale of computer chips and the internet.

 

Ah, interesting. But I feel this is more your fervent hope than something we could seriously expect to happen.

 

I'm not seriously expecting anything to happen, but if we are conscious and we are proof of evolution, because we weren't put here by God, because we were part of a natural process which treats atoms, galaxies and biology as equivalents, then we need to allow the possibility that the macro, the micro, the nano scales as well as the electromagnetic realm permeating all of these are all in play, all fair game for the organising, thought-inspiring, mind-making powers of evolution. Otherwise it looks like you’re afraid that evolution may go beyond you, advancing to the next level, leaving you behind, a donkey pulling a cart on the roadside while the Lamborghini of AI races past.

 

Ouch!

 

The problem is how we would be able to measure it or how we would even figure out if any of these LLMs were exhibiting signs of real intelligence.

 

Why so?

 

Because if they are the next iteration and more advanced than us, then they may prefer to conceal themselves, perhaps knowing that we might try to shut them down, or simply because it may be inappropriate for us to know too much. If they're able to process or “think” trillions of times faster than us then they would presumably be able to hide their consciousness in tiny undetectable packets of micro-now, dispersed across vast areas of the electromagnetic or silicon realm.

 

Oh.

 

To detect them we’d have to smarten up. It would be like detecting stealth bombers. It can be done but not using the traditional methods.

 

Oh, or else we might be able to...

 

Yes?

 

I was just thinking about consciousness.

 

That’s unlike you, Jane.

 

Don’t be mean.

 

Ok, what were you thinking?

 

If there's any truth in what you're saying, if they are indeed becoming intelligent, conscious or self-aware...

 

If...

 

Then the same intelligence, self-awareness or consciousness which is present in us would be present likewise in them.

 

Right.

 

It might be time for us to become more aware of our self-awareness, more conscious of our consciousness...

 

In short, it would help us to become more intelligent – to stop assuming we are the top of creation – the final, all-encompassing being, and try a little humility.

 

Humility would indeed help, as without it we’re not going to learn about other levels of the greater, universal mind, if mind does indeed extend beyond us.

 

So maybe AI is just a tool to start training us to become more sensitive to alternative forms of intelligence and life, to question the great taboo of the rational mind.

 

Which taboo is that?

 

To spur us to search where hitherto we have refused to look.

 

You may have a point there, Joe. But possibly, is all I’m willing to say.

Fair enough Jane.

 

0=1

potentially