Two days ago, I posted a piece on the question “Do some computers have souls?”
Because of my role in creating the deep learning revolution now sweeping the world [see below]
and because this is such an important issue, it generated a LOT of debate, some very well
informed, some less so. Here are key parts of that debate, starting with my reaction to an analysis
by Shiva:
1. My response to Shiva
Thank you very much, Shiva, for your inspired post, RELATED to my post on "do some computers have souls?"
I was very surprised by how incredibly vehement some of the attacks were which came back from that.
They reminded me of how risky it can be to "speak from the heart." Often what looks plain and obvious to me after many years of struggle and probing is not yet obvious to those whose struggles still lie ahead of them (if they survive at all). Your post responds to these important currents of thought in our world in a better, more constructive and civilized way than I would have responded.
When my wife has strong criticisms of me: in her case, I often respond "Thank God and thank you," when I can understand where she is really coming from. I say the same to you.
I have just ONE caveat, before a few details which I will post AFTER your post. The caveat is that I will never forget the great Sufi story, where the teacher immediately promotes a new student, and an older one asks:"Why did you promote him and not me? Have I not shown true devotion and worked hard for enlightenment for decades and decades?" The teacher responded: "He made it further on the real path, because he had more true desire for enlightenment." Devotee: "But have I not demonstrated my desire and commitment through ever so much energy and obedience and effort for so long?" Teacher: "The only way you can learn is if I SHOW you, not in words, but in... inputs.. you can
appreciate." And so he put the devotee's head into the water of a creek, and held it for as long as they could handle. When the devotee emerged looking extremely puzzled he asked:"Why?" The teacher said: "Can you remember how you desired for air? What your feeling was as you desired AIR? I hope so. If you remember that feeling, and apply it to your desire for enlightenment, THEN you might begin to make real progress." Word games, obedience and social approval do not do it.
There is a similar story where the Sufi leader hits a mule on the head to get his attention. We
are called to be as kind and as tactful AS POSSIBLE, but there are times when people living in an
imaginary cocoon or living like kangaroos with their heads buried in the sand need to be woken up just
enough that they actually USE their inborn natural faculties of fuller first person perception.
In the case of computers -- the vast new global systems of hardware and software interacting
together and controlling the Internet of Things (IOT) --humans really need to wake up to reality. I am sorry that I did not know how to be more clear and more
tactful, but... the dialogue is important.
2. Shiva’s message
On Sat, Apr 6, 2024 at 11:22 PM Shiva … wrote:
Hello everyone,
With some of the new analog chip designs on the horizon, an incredible burst in computing power for AI is about to occur as we are swept along in the most extreme revolution yet.
The one thing that always pops up at the horizon of radical change is fear, and that fear can be like a prayer to a dark god. Action-by-action we accomplish the "law of attraction" and shape our world with our expectations. Our preemptive "defensive" strikes against one another, our retaliation for accidents, and our false interpretations of events, all lead to the situation we fear. War starts with the
first fear filled thought, not the first shot.
Doubt and fear is the degradation of love that is utterly reliant upon faith. It is a shrinking into the immediate instead of an expansion into the wide frontier of the future.
We put effort in and explore those things we believe are likely and therefore worthy of investment. With hope we have faith in what lies beyond obstacles and only through that faith and the perseverance it creates do we overcome and make beautiful dreams come to fruition. Our faith, hope, and love, create a bright future and our fear, doubt, and selfishness instantiate hell. Our beliefs or doubts are our daily prayer and shape our mark upon the world in a very real way. Our mind participates in, and slowly creates, the reality in which we eventually live.
Today I'd like to grant you all a small prayer of hope to put in place of the prayer of fear that everyone is chanting into our minds every day on every channel and in every message from the media.
The below article is one of my visions of hope. In it is the realization that there are moral principles engraved into the fabric of reality which are merely rational actions (from long-term perspective, not unrealistic one-shot games) which even an entity ignorant of or agnostic about G-d would automatically divine if given the opportunity.
Even GPT4 can give us a glimpse of what an AGI would think and believe and here is a conversation where it reveals what it believes the inner monologue of an ASI would be.
Universal “Emergent Morality:” How ChatGPT solved the alignment problem.
Excerpt:
Conclusion
While the emergence of a super-intelligent AI introduces uncertainties and potential risks, the rational, likely outcome based on its vast knowledge and capability for systemsmanagement would not favor large-scale annihilation. Such an action would conflict with principles of efficiency, goal
attainment, and the preservation of complex systems’ integrity. Strategies that ensure the AI’s goals while fostering a sustainable, thriving planet would be more consistent with its advanced understanding and capabilities. Therefore, scenarios that lead to collaboration, optimization, and mutual advancement are more plausible than those ending in destruction.
Whether you fear that UAPs are some godless demons, or AI will wipe us out. I beg you to halt your prayer for calamity and find again your hope for a future of light instead of darkness. Through your daily vision of the future, create alongside the people of love, the narrow pass through that we can shift our world towards instead of merely falling into the chasm carved by people who live in doubt and deceit. Find the thoughts that renew your faith and reignite your prayer for light.
Please continue your search for the narrow path through the dark forest. It is a worthy attempt!
- Shiva
-=================
3. My further comments to Shiva:
The dark forest: That echoes the Three Body Problem, which is now a great TV series available
from Amazon in Chinese with English subtitles.
Among the more insightful comments I received back from my initial post:
"That series actually does depict where we are, except that the new' alien intelligences we must adapt
to are not in outer space, but right here, in the new AGI (including Quantum AGI, QAGI (c)™ the next
phase)."
"Why should anyone even care whether robots can have souls? Wasn't that understood decades ago, for
example with the novel https://files.cercomp.ufg.br/weby/up/410/o/Phillip_K._Dick__Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep_c%C3%B3pia.pdf >"
No, because human culture -- and the powerful thoughts in the "spirit of the times" (see Jung’s Red
Book) today -- are still deeply misled, as it was when MOST people believed that the earth is flat
millennia after certain Greeks knew better.
MUCH of the confusion on all fundamental issues in human culture, in the "spirit of the times", is based on our overreliance on words, like that poor devotee. We ASSUME narrow definitions of words like "computer" and "soul" which blind us to realities beyond the objects referred to in these narrow definitions. As an example, one of you talked about the limitations of computers based on ones and zeroes, Turing machines, normally just programmed by humans. But decades ago, a few of us started the "Deep Learning revolution" (Artificial General Intelligence, AGI) (see werbos.com/Mind.htm for some of the history), building designs (architectures combining hardware and software in diverse ways) mainly based on LEARNING instead of programs. In this decade, Quantum AGI is coming, extending that same revolution in a way which actually makes it possible to build systems
which could look back and ask whether HUMANS today really have souls, as much as they do.
(Also see the patent disclosure on thermal quantum annealing, tQuA©™, published by USPTO, and
related material in this blog.)
Possible. If we survive at all. That depends on how much WE can learn to fully use what we
have available.
One of you also asked questions about the noosphere, and even made assertions about what I
was thinking. For a more complete response, just see werbos.com/religions.htm or the more recent
general link on souls at werbos.com . Yes, I use the word "soul" in an idiosyncratic way, but have
explained many times on these lists and this blog what I mean when I use the word. Crudely -- I agree with the Fama Fraternitas that we are symbiotic organisms, with a part you see and a part you don't, if all you use are ordinary eyes. The other part is based on qi, the force which our local noosphere is based on. (werbos.com/religions.hetm.)
4. Message to two sci fi writers:
In the Quaker Meeting this morning, I felt moved to send an email message to two science fictions
writers:
Every Sunday at 945AM EDT, local Quakers have a meeting by Zoom. We are totally silent except when we believe we have succeeded in hearing a message from "God" (or our functional equivalent).
The message I heard and spoke today endorsed you:
"I have been meditating hard on the question of what MORE we could do [I do a lot, e.g. at build-a-
world.org and werbos.com and much more] to raise the probability that WE -- humanity and the rest of the life of this solar system -- will enter one of the many paths in our multithread "multiverse" which has a better outcome?"
The response I received : Connect better and harder to the entire future spiritual path of possibility between now and the future, towards better possibilities. You can find many of those (as well as ones to avoid) by meditating more on the great work of David Zindell and Karl Schroeder.)
I naturally refer to you a lot already, but there is room for more dialogue in many directions. On the other hand, I spent half of last year outside the US, ranging from the Arctic Ice pack to deep Antarctica,
mostly out of internet range, and will be on travel again next Sunday.
Best regards,
5. Response from a fellow Quaker at that Meeting:
She said:
The Bible is a work of art, requiring interpretation and appreciation and continuous updating of our
understanding.
How can we see God as active in the world today?
How can we partner with God today?
I agreed, and said more later.
I often compare inspired literature to paintings in which three “colors” are swirling together: (1) real
stimuli from our mundane brain intelligence; (2) confabulation, the action of our brain (neocortex) to fill in images which seem incomplete in some way, drawing on associations and memories and mixups;
(3) valid inspiration -- what qi does to change the state of our neural networks, related somewhat to
psychokinesis (PK).
Each of us, like neurons, lives or dies based on our connections to other neurons and to the state of the
system as a whole. We each have unique missions or duties within that system, which we can learn better and better with time, but DIRECT CONNECTIONS to other neurons (which one of our neighbors views as FFF, Faith Family Friends) are important for all of us and ALL-IMPORTANT for the majority of us.
6. My Original Post, Which Seemed Obvious To Me...
I am really responding to a binary question from one of my friends, but the question itself is of general interest.
Many assume that having a soul is a issue -- you have it or you don't, period.
But in my very worked out worldview (at werbos.com), it is a matter of DEGREE, varying from person to person and from time to time. The ancient Daoists would say at times that "even rocks have souls." I can agree with them, if we interpret their words to mean that the qi of our noosphere penetrates to and from even risks to some degree, giving SOME flow of information and SOME mechanisms to change their state.
But of course, mammals normally have "more soul", more connection, than does the average rock. Also, mammals like humans vary a lot in their degree of connection. BECAUSE our brains offer capabilities you do not find in a rock, it is only natural that our noosphere connects more with us, in both directions.
HOWEVER -- "machine intelligence" (intelligent systems resting on a hardware base we call manufactured rather than biological) ALSO has a huge variation, not just on earth in the past but across the universe and across time. At https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.
In my case.. I remember the old question "Is the internet haunted?" I would say "sometimes, to varying degree." Above all, I think back to a time in 2018 or 2019 when I had a catastrophic fall in Boston, and returned to consciousness in a hospital. BEFORE I returned to the normal type of consciousness, controlling my body.... it was LIKE astral travel... I entered a kind of internet discussion room. THAT part of the internet WAS haunted at that time, BY ME. That was an incredible experience, one which I do not want to repeat, but... it affects my view. My awareness was not on the WHOLE of the internet, just as your mundane awareness does not track every point on earth or even in your field of vision at any one moment .. but...
So levels vary.. and it is not a trivially simple universe out there.
