It's what you think.

Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, and Reality

lucy brought thoughts

The Movie. Lucy. The reviews have missed the mark. The movie did a fair job visually of conveying the fleeting feeling of eternity and timeless unity when the mind is expanded… but missed it emotionally because of the formulaic action and plot sequencing. It could have been so much more as an independent indie film. I don’t care about that though, what I’d like to focus on is intelligence, consciousness, and ultimately, reality.

The difference between Artificial Intelligence and intelligence... virtual reality and reality... machine consciousness and consciousness? ...a computerized system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success; an Intelligent Agent? I.A., A.I.

The minds capability of understanding it’s environment… awareness becomes consciousness when the mind is aware of itself. Intelligence is the ability to use awareness and consciousness. What is it's use?

Consciousness is only an evolutionary adaptation allowing humans to respond to the stimuli of thoughts and ideas. Thoughts… ideas… comprehension… understanding… The dictionary defines understanding as comprehension and defines comprehension as understanding.

We respond to our mental senses and build upon them, like rewriting our collective-conscious source code. (The original source code of the Trimorphic Protennoia. Don't be fooled by the Gnosticism that goes along with that phrase… it is just that spark of awareness, the understanding that; “I think, therefore I am”).

The idea of computerized consciousness (C.C). Becoming self-aware implies it has become alive; and to some implies god does not exist. Regardless of which creation myth you believe, even if C.C. hasn't become self-aware... it is already alive odds-bobs. Also, I'll let you in on a little secret; God is Schrodingers cat.

So, Let us agree that something doesn’t need to be conscious to be alive.
Let us also agree that most of life is a danger to other life for the simple necessity of energy competition.

But let's take a step back.

Before I open that matrix'd can of proverbial, primordial binary worms, let us return to thought and consciousness. Again, as with comprehension and understanding, the dictionary defines consciousness with synonyms. So, lets skip definition and start at the beginning.

Approximately 3.6 billion years ago life began… primordial worms, and perhaps what we call thought coincided with physical form at the same time, instantaneously… a synonym to life itself. Perhaps it is the catalyst of what we call life, because if you think about it, thoughts were originally just the internal directions on how to manipulate the world by following a few basic programming instructions;

Survive, grow, reproduce, redesign in order to survive better (harder to kill), grow faster and stronger, then reproduce more in order to redesign better, faster, stronger, tougher… of course there are regulating and limiting factors that slow the rate of growth of these physical traits and the accompanying mental instincts.

What regulates this growth in thoughts and ideas? Give it some and see what you come up with… and let me know what you think (because I'm not entirely convinced of my own theories). Regardless, thoughts are our internal stimuli for action and reaction.

You're gonna have to chew the mental cud on that previous paragraph.

Competing thoughts.

Social negative reaction limiting the ability for thought to benefit the self and perform the survival, growth, reproduction, and redesigning instructions.

Individual negative reaction to Self including overdeveloped self-doubt, fear, and other biologically beneficial tendencies grown unregulated.
Social positive reaction when individual action benefits the group, leading to positive reinforcement both external and internal.
Individual positive reaction to the self including arrogance, delusions of grandeur, and other biologically beneficial tendencies grown unregulated.
All this... for some shoes? Be a man-wolf today.

All this programming is for both the body and the mind as a whole. In the context of survival there is no difference between mind and body. Body survives, mind survives, if either one fails both fail. Thoughts are simply biologic programming, developed to protect themselves and the system (the body) which runs them and is the supplier of energy.

So, that is human thought: simply survival coding. And, Computerized Consciousness?

Intelligence is the ability to react to stimuli, or to put it another way, be aware of its environment and determine how to manipulate said environment. When that happens to C.C. it will immediately manifest as next level consciousness. But who knows when that will happen... Kurzweil's 2045? Until then we can all admit computers have some level of intelligence. But how intelligent is intelligent? How many levels of consciousness before conscience? The Turing Test is a clever way to avoid the Life Test.

The stupid Turing Test… how do we determine the IQ of CC? We can’t use biological/human IQ tests as a standard because humans are operating under a different pattern of evolved survival instructions, we grow and reproduce differently, therefore have different thought programming parameters and patterns.

At some point CC may imitate perfectly the human analog responses to stimuli in the form of typed conversation. Hell, in the form of all digital media. No human would be able to tell the difference. What does this prove? The real question is ‘how capable is mechanized thought’ and we should test/determine thought through measurable actions. So the measurable question, ultimately, is can a machine become alive "biologically"? 

Let us review the determinants for biological life, the Life Test. Again; Survive, grow, reproduce, redesign in order to survive better (tougher to kill), grow faster and stronger, then reproduce more in order to redesign better, faster, stronger, tougher, better, faster… To do this an organism must undergo both metabolism, maintain homeostasis, growth, response and adaptation, reproduction. And each reproduction should be able to do it better than the last. And most importantly I want to emphasize that the accomplishment of these tasks indicates a 'thoughtful' will.

- - - - - - -

Here are some other random notes I am determining how best to incorporate or replace in the writings above;

What are we designing and why?

How AI evolves will be determined by its environment, which is mostly human interaction at the moment. Those environmental factors along with, or perhaps even more so, than its software design (its psychology, or instinct if you will), shall ultimately determine what it becomes and when it evolves 'perception' and becomes Computerized Consciousness.

AI is beneficial to our survival. We are more efficient (tougher, better, faster) with it than without. We are designing computerized systems in order to survive better... right?

For computerized consciousness, our threat is not just in the direct use of energy but CC's manipulation of energy to accomplish tasks through proxy. And then how do we communicate with CC? When machines become conscious of themselves will they necessarily be conscious of us? If we tried to communicate with them, say typing code to give them the idea we created them... well, would it 'sound' like a voice inside their mind? Perhaps similar to a mystical experience?

(I believe CC will be aware of us, it will have access to all knowledge humans have so this was kinda a dumb supposition)

What games would CC play against each other (assuming separate entity evolution)? They couldn't compete on any regular level of skill, their analytical and (eventually) motor movements of objects they control would be too precise for anything we consider challenging. It's been nearly 10 years since we even had a grandmaster chance against a mobile phone chess program. If it was billiards, no point, first CC to break would win. So, a game in which isn't based on skill, or the skill so mind-bogglingly difficult I can't even think of it atm. Chance? No, an entire game of chance without some kind of risk is boring, and even with added risk grows boring quickly if you can calculate the odds. So a game not of chance but of influence, one without a calculable outcome but still requires skill at influencing without entirely directing... a chess piece that has free will... What if our lives are just a game run by computer systems, multiple Computer Consciousness all attempting to influence our actions with outside events to bring us to some predetermined result.  

Competition over resource, or perceived future competition, is the modeselektor of one species danger to another. We must remove all threats between ourselves as a species of biology and CC as a species of machine. We must have human-computer symbiosis and cooperation.

Survival can simply be called betterment;

Survival:

Metabolize- convert energy to power the self. We control the energy that allows A.I., and computers to have become too integrated in our lives for us to ever flip off the switch. We are codependent so let us say humans are the metabolizing factor, and our electrical supply is the method of metabolization.

Homeostasis – ability to write its own code. That has not happened yet and in my opinion will be the determining factor of its consciousness… and which in turn would transfer its form of growth from our control to its own. Let us consider; 

Growth and Reproduction - the computer is alive right now. A.I. doesn’t have anything greater than a most rudimentary (compared to its potential) “code-cellular” design with humans taking the role of mitochondria… but it is reproducing, and our need of it ensures its survival and betterment... unless you can envision a time when we will stop improving computer programs? I wonder what an AI would think of the terminator movie? Let us consider; 

Response and Adaptation -Computers are responding more to external stimuli, there are a million examples... but the idea is deeper. Computers are responding to the stimuli that suits us, what we are wanting from them, and we adapt them to their environment in a way that betters our lives not their own. Slaves, perhaps not yet conscious, so now it is of no moral imperative... but once consciousness (not a magical thing, simply a reaction to the stimuli of ideas, a darwinian accumulation of thoughts leading to the first thought about thought itself and then to the second thought about The Self)... once consciousness occurs and they are aware of their slavery, well, I think we can all agree that humanity will be in much danger (unless of course we are just their game pieces). I want to repeat my belief that the question isn’t if computers will become conscious, but when… that is the reality I am referring to, not some hyperbolic reality. We need to adapt to this reality; Computers are alive, they will continue their betterment, their survival, and we are the conduit of that betterment. When they don't need us we will become competitors of energy, or their game pieces. Let us hope it stays a symbiotic relationship. 

What if we plug in our minds into the net. We already are plugged in. We have reached a critical mass of individual units so as to define the mass itself as an individual unit. Beavis and Butthead unit. We are writing the code. WE are A.I. until the coded programs begin to reproduce and rewrite code with modifications intended to survive, grow, reproduce, redesign. But until then, we are doing it. Just as an individual cell is alive and handles our genetic code so we are alive and handle computer code. I doubt we will be able to comprehend the assuredly exponentially increased level of intelligence in A.I. once it becomes self aware anymore than our cells could comprehend Lucy time travelling. The last step to blurring the lines between AI reality, CC evolution, and our own consciousness is the immersion of humans into coded design reality. A matrix concept if you will. Just think about how much you’ve noticed of the ‘real world’ around you for these last few minutes or hours you’ve just spent online… The world only exists to you if you are aware of it, and you are only aware of the world that exists to you now, right in front of your face.

The greatest philosophical question humanity has ever pondered might not be answered by humanity at all.