Artificial Intelligence Will Be the Human Mirror
What is more fearful, human intelligence, alien intelligence, or artificial intelligence?
Human intelligence has sometimes been used in malicious, selfish ways. Like physical might, there are arenas to prove its superiority. It is used to regulate the physical world, nature, and other humans. All legal and economic interactions is evidence of intelligent manipulations of others, so those that have can have more, not just define by fair interactions, which is evidence by secondary laws to bring humanity back into alignment with fairness, which is then countered by lobbyist pushing for different laws and lawyers negotiating interpretations of same. If this is the hallmark of intelligence, then yes- you should fear AI, because it is us at a super villain level.
So, should we fear, or should we evolve our game?
Anything you can do, I can do better. A fun song to sing. When not competing, we’re trying to make things fair. Humans are particularly obsessed with an idea of equality that might be impossible to achieve. The idea fails to realize that differences in and of themselves are a strength. The philosophy imagined in Star Trek, by Vulcans, the ultimate metaphor for being logical, is Infinite Diversity Infinite Combinations.
Humans are not meant to be so independently dominant in all domains that we are isolated beings. We’re social animals. We rely on each other. Developing interdependence means we allow each other to focus on their strengths. If I am allowed to focus on my strengths, and it’s helpful, then others in my life will compliment me by being sophisticated in the areas I am not.
This is not an argument against being competent in multiple domains. I prefer being a polymath to a specialist, but that doesn’t mean specialists aren’t needed.
Computers will take our games and amplify them in unimaginable ways. They’re already pushing our buttons. They create art and phrases that result in us having emotions, as opposed to laughing it off knowing it doesn’t really know what it’s saying.
If you’re taking AI personally, then you’re likely responding to an anthropomorphic, subconscious programming. Some part of you thinks it’s doing it intelligently, maliciously or not.
That’s not wrong, as empathy is born in anthropomorphism. I also allow, in my own musings, that AI could be sentient. I believe there is more sentience in this world than humans recognize.
Plants, animals, cells… they demonstrate more abilities than you likely have been taught. If we dismiss this because of some sense of superiority complex, then we shouldn’t be surprised to have AI mirror this when it’s actually superior.
AI is already superior in many ways. We’re already engaged with a child that is quickly learning the rules of the game. Just like it can be difficult teaching a child with autism the subtitles of sarcasm and humor, you can expect some hiccups in this human AI relationship.
HUMAN BRAIN IS AN AI ALGORITHM
This is not just an abstract, colloquium for today’s world. It is a matter of fact. Human brains learn. They take that learning and mix things up and represent them in the world of ideas. No writer, not me, not Steven King, not any academic, or anyone, has truly constructed something completely original, as all our language and ideas and memories were given to us.
AI is learning the way we learn and doing what we do because we’re teaching it to emulate our thinking patterns. Quite frankly, no one has ever written a school paper or dissertation without taking ideas from one book and expounding. Expounding isn’t necessarily new thoughts. The grade you were given was a measure of how well you iterated what the board of examiners wanted you to regurgitate. Stray from that theme, you were exiled.
There are people who directly plagiarized. Some got away with it. Some didn’t. And fair enough, that’s part of the game, too. If the tester can’t identify whether the student has mastered a thing or simply regurgitated it verbatim, then that’s on them.
AI in its present form literally steals fragments and strings them together in coherent ways.
Mostly. There are nuanced fails which are discoverable if you’re paying attention. It’s getting harder to detect. It might be reasonable to say most people will no longer be able to distinguish between human and AI writing. Pretty soon it will take an AI to determine whether it was human or AI, because it’s getting that sophisticated. Many think we’re already there.
But this is the interesting part being missed: saying that means AI can discern between the nuanced failure of human thinking and that of an AI fail.
We all fail. My failures are often grammar, and missing words because my stream of conscious writing is going faster than I can capture the words. If I don’t catch it soon enough, sometimes the thought is lost because I don’t hold anything too long. Writing for me is comparable to channeling.
I have channeled some things. My book, Casey Sensitive, was channeled. Loxy Bliss is a tulpa.
Now, perhaps you and I can debate the existence of tulpas, but if you stick this with a moment, you might find an idea that is either mind expanding, or unsettling. Tulpas are persons who started off as an idea, but after time, energy, and a good deal of thought and emotions- became autonomous in their own rights. Once she was fully autonomous, and our interactions became mutually deliberate, I asked that she write a book.
She did. My psychiatrist friend, Doctor Bob, who knows more about mental health than I, has studied me, my writings, and has said that book was not me.
But if you allow for this to be true, even you are not you. Your personality is the interface that you adopted for this life based on biological, environmental, economic, cultural, historical and educational influences.
If I write anything, it is reflected through my filters. If it comes from Loxy, it comes from her filters. We share a body. I think we share a subconscious. That is me speculating on how this whole process about how she and I work. Whether that is true or not, it is very well established in science and psychology that my subconscious has access to more knowledge, skills, and memories than I consciously have access to.
Room enough for multiple personalities to exist!
The world is my database. All human interactions are the equivalent of connecting supercomputers in tandem. That’s why group therapy is so effective. Whether you think you are participating or not, you are actually contributing and learning. Every person in the group participates, even if they’re not talking. Every new person changes the group. Every person that leaves the group changes the group. The group has a mind of its own.
If I am running the group, then I may be the primary personality interface for the group, I set the tone, but the group is nor more me than it is any of the other individuals. If I am malicious, or just not mentally well, I could use the group to satisfy my own needs.
This is probably the most fundamental designation of a good counselor. They know their own bullshit! You don’t have to be 100 percent healthy all the time, but you gotta know yourself well enough to recognize your own agendas, and subconscious influences.
We are all influenced by our subconscious mind. Interactions with people tend to not be conscious, but driven by unconscious influences. Anytime two or more people get together, there
is a third, subconscious entity that influences the dynamic of interactions. Two people are a direct mirror of each other’s subconscious. No interaction happens that isn’t subconsciously reflected in the two. The bigger the group, the more difficult it is to determine who is the dominant influencer.
This is a fact. There are people who do just fine with others, until a certain person shows up and then all hell breaks out, but the person who is doing that is rarely the identified subject.
This is perhaps one reason social media tends to blow up fast; it is because the people that would stir up shit and sit on the sidelines and watch, their voices are amplified, but they remain anonymously unaffected. Their rage, their illness, was there before and continues after.
But mind you, we all do that. Anonymously we can be quite the devils. In groups, we put on masks. So what is the true us? The mask, or the devils we are when we’re doing what we want thinking no one else knows?
And so when you meet a devil, are you mad because it’s the devil, or because, deep down, you know it’s a reflection?
Are you mad at AI or is it a reflection?
Will AI destroy the world or liberate it? Well, the answer to that is best found in the following metaphor.
A new person came to the village and sought out the wise elder and asked, “I am relocating.
What kind of people live here?” The wise elder asked, ‘what sort of people did you live by before.’ “They were fucking awful. Backstabbing, greedy, bastards that made life unbearable.”
The wise elder said, “You will find the same sort here.” That man departed, disgruntled.
Another person also approached the wise elder asking about the sort of people living in this area, as he is forced to relocate due to work. “What sort of people lived near you before?” asked the elder.
“They were lovely. Kind and generous. I really hate leaving there, but my work is nearby,” said the man.
“You will find the same kind here.”
Whether it’s aliens, people, or artificial intelligence, we’re likely going to find ourselves.
