Peter Patton is an incredible man who really gets me to think about new subjects and has led me to think about artificial intelligence like I never have before. He introduced several theoretical scenarios to me and let me borrow a book: Minds, Brains and Science by John Searle. In the past few days, I've really been thinking about what all Patton and Searle have said. I have either made some huge breakthroughs, or I'm filled with a lot of hot air. Regardless, I feel I should share my findings.
Before breaking apart some theoretical scenarios, I pose a theory. Souls. Although spiritual in nature, I plan to remain factual in my observations. I believe every human has one, but I've never heard of a good definition for what the soul is, also there doesn't appear to be a valid test for the presence of a soul. Searle talks about the Mind-Body problem in his book, about how a subjective entity such as the human mind is connected to such an objective item as a physical brain. Given his argument, I'd have to say that the mind is the soul, at least, until I hear a better explanation. To me, that wraps the personality, their creativity, and everything that makes you, you, into one package: a Mind-Soul. I have no proof... welcome to philosophy. I brought this up first because its existence offers interesting questions later on, I'm looking to explain it all together, but so far no luck.
A theoretical scenario that Patton first posed to me was (what I'm going to call) "The Augmented Brain." Imagine a lab had a test subject (human) and the subject had a fully working brain. Also, think that the lab had a tiny, tiny device that could replace one neuron in the human brain and efficiently emulate that one neuron. This is only a theory, no place is doing this and no such device exists as best as I can tell. Imagine they could replace one neuron in the working brain, and have the brain continue processing without a problem. One by one, the scientists replace neurons in the human brain, an estimated 50-100 billion (10^11) neurons. If the device was a 100% working neuron emulator and each neuron was replaced without upsetting the balance of the brain, then the lab would have a 100% functional artificial brain when all neurons are finally replaced. Now, if the subject had a soul, which I believe they did before the experiment, would the subject still have that soul after the full conversion? I believe so because of one condition. If the person no longer has a soul, then that means at some point there is a border between has a soul and does not have a soul. This border would be as small as having a brain that's been partially replaced by the neuron devices and the other side of that border would be one neuron difference. In easier terms, there would be a point where replacing one neuron would remove the soul of the subject. Since a soul is a have or have not kind of thing, such that nobody can have half a soul, I believe that there is no moment where one neuron decides the presence of a soul or not. I don't believe that one neuron could carry that kind of weight. Therefore, a fully converted artificial brain would have a soul. Here's the creepy part. In the end of the lab experiment, they would have a 100% functional artificial brain. What if they constructed the artificial brain from scratch instead of systematically replacing neurons in a pre-existing brain... creating this artificial brain from scratch. Let's call this the "Created Brain" and the other one the "Converted Brain." It would be complicated, but let's say they could accurately give the Created Brain a starting state such that it would become a fully functional artificial brain. Given that the Created Brain is a finite state machine, this is possible. Since it's crafted by hand, it does not retain it's soul from an existing brain, so does that mean it does not have a soul even though it's functionally identical to the converted brain? Did the lab scientists give this brain a soul when they gave the Created Brain an initial state? This one's a stretch, but did the lab scientists influence the hand of God to creating a soul for this hand-crafted brain and could other aspects of God be influenced? Dare I say it... are we Gods? I don't buy into those last questions, but the questions still must be asked.
I've taken an artificial intelligence class, and a definition of artificial intelligence was that "we achieve intelligent looking results through an alternate process." Think of an airplane. When inventors first decided they wanted to fly, they looked at a bird and tried to imitate the flapping motion to achieve flight. We know how this story ends: instead of a flapping machine, we create the fixed-wing airplane (a different process) to achieve flight (the output). The airplane is artificial because it achieves the desired result through an alternate process. Now imagine either a Created or a Converted Brain, as described in the previous paragraph. Is it artificial intelligence? I would say no. The reason being is that we emulate the exact same process instead of defining an alternate process. It's not artificial intelligence, it is augmented intelligence. Intelligence achieved through the same process, receiving the same output, but the hardware is different. Such that augmented reality is not a completely different reality, but that it is an enhanced reality and retains its original features.
By fully emulating the human brain in an augmented brain, all features of a human brain are available in the augmented brain. Memory, forgetfulness, creativity, perhaps even good and evil intentions. The morals and ethics of creating a mind like this are... well, different for each individual, but it's a heavy topic to be sure. Personally it scares me to think about it because an augmented brain is implemented with circuitry and electricity. Neither of which age. Also, if a brain can be initialized with thoughts, it can be updated with new thoughts or existing thoughts can be edited or removed. Sort of like a firmware update.
Ideas could be argued as artifacts of the mind, in turn, they exist in the mind, not the brain. In a Created Brain, or some other implementation of Augmented Intelligence, we initialize the brain with a mind. This means that we can grant the brain with initial ideas. I believe that ideas eventually become knowledge. By granting this brain initial ideas, we can embed knowledge. When we can accurately instill knowledge, I believe we can create augmented intelligence specialized to do anything. These ideas that we instill when initializing the brain are sort of like lines of code... Although the brain is inherently as adaptive as a normal human, the brain can be pre-determined to like doing something, to want something, to understand without being taught, and retain the ability to learn and adapt. These should not be deemed as hard-coded facts because the brain adapts and can edit it's own knowledge, an inherent feature of the human brain.
If you've followed me this far, then I'm really going to stretch your mind with this thought. In addition to souls, I argue that we have self-awareness. Many would agree. If the soul is carried over to a Converted Brain (or created in a Created Brain), then so is self-awareness. If we do not plant ideas in an augmented brain, the brain's first questions would probably be "Who/What am I?" Imagine the lab did not tell their subject they were converting his brain. Would he be self aware if he is not aware of his true, augmented self? If he is no longer self aware, then are we even self aware to begin with? Do we understand ourselves enough to claim to be self aware?
Artificial Intelligence, Misc, Philosophy
artificial intelligence, philosophy, augmentation, conversion, creation, soul, self aware