Artificial Intelligence and The Confusion of Our Age – Patheos (blog)

Elon Musk is saying outlandish things again. Several months ago, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that chances are we are all living in a simulation. Thankfully, other writers have contested this in a kinder manner than I would have (the words I have for Musks theory aresomething along the lines of utter nonsense and logically self-defeating, but I digress).

Well, now Musk thinks that humans must merge with machines, or else become defunct from the threat of advanced artificial intelligence. I guess he no longer thinks we live in a computer simulation. Why worry about humans becoming defunct if we are all brains in a vat?

Having millions of dollars does not mean that one can construct logically coherent chains of thought.

All that aside, I have several major issues with Musks assessment.

On an argumentative level Musks claims seem to paint artificial intelligence as some sort monster we have no control over. He talks about the threat of A.I. while ignoring that humans are the ones who create and control it, thus ignoring that we could easily stop working on it as it currently stands (as this Skynet-esque threat) if we are really so concerned about it displacing people.

Further, claims like Musks ignore the reality that no matter how advanced A.I. becomes, it is still artificial and reliant on programming put into it by human minds that are ontologically distinct from mere neurological matter and functions.

But really, the underlying presupposition of Musks confused plea for the merger of humans and machines is the biggest problem here. It implicitly assumes that humans are mere technology to be exploited for profit and material success. In this view humans are not persons, with an ultimate goal of flourishing, but mere biological machinery that need to be upgraded to a biomechanical level. When ones ultimate meaning has no transcendent anchor or reference point (e.g. God as the transcendent Source and Ground of reality), humans will inevitably be reduced down to mere technology. The bloodbath that is secularized 20th century bears stark witness to this.

Of course, Musk and those like him fundamentally misunderstand that mind is quite distinct from brain. True, the mental and the neurological are inextricably related. But to think that consciousness is derived or secreted from neurological matter is a fundamental confusion of categories, the product of an age that has forgotten to think deeply about the nature of reality and what persons not just human beings, but human persons really and truly are.

Artificial intelligence, no matter how complex, is not the same as human consciousness:

Computational models of the mind would make sense if what a computer actually does could be characterized as an elementary version of what the mind does, or at least as something remotely like thinking. In fact, though, there is not even a useful analogy to be drawn here. A computer does not even really compute. We compute, using it as a tool. We can set a program in motion to calculate the square root of pi, but the stream of digits that will appear on the screen will have mathematical content only because of our intentions, and because wenot the computerare running algorithms. The computer, in itself, as an object or a series of physical events, does not contain or produce any symbols at all; its operations are not determined by any semantic content but only by binary sequences that mean nothing in themselves. The visible figures that appear on the computers screen are only the electronic traces of sets of binary correlates, and they serve as symbols only when we represent them as such, and assign them intelligible significances. The computer could just as well be programmed so that it would respond to the request for the square root of pi with the result Rupert Bear; nor would it be wrong to do so, because an ensemble of merely material components and purely physical events can be neither wrong nor right about anythingin fact, it cannot be about anything at all. Software no more thinks than a minute hand knows the time or the printed word pelican knows what a pelican is.

David Bentley Hart The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss p. 219