Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas
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[4] utin tiial ntelliene eonin it uin ests enain . atton aious antooenti allaies ae oled te deeloent o atiial intelliene as a oadl ased and idel undestood set o tenoloies. lan uins aous iitation ae as an inen- ious tout eeient ut also ie o in te thresholds of machine cognition according to its aaent siilait to a alse no o eela uan intelliene. o disao tat aile selee- tion is oee easie tan oosin altenatie oles o uan saiene indust and aen alon more heterogeneous spectrums. As various forms of machine intelligence become increasingly infrastruc- tual te iliations o tis diult ae eoolitial as ell as ilosoial. In Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intellligence and Its Traumas, edited by Matteo Pasquinelli, neurg: meson ress I: Alleys of Your Mind [One philosopher] asserted that he knew the whole secret . [H]e surveyed the two celestial strangers from top to toe, and maintained to their faces that their persons, their worlds, their suns, and their stars, were created solely for the use of man. At this assertion our two travelers let themselves fall against each other, seized with a ft of . inextinguishable laughter. — Voltaire, Micromegas: A Philosophical History (1752) Articial intelligence AI is aing a moment it cognoscenti from teen aing to lon Mus recently eiging in Positions are split as to whether AI ill sae us or ill destroy us ome argue tat AI can neer eist ile ot- ers insist that it is inevitable. In many cases, however, these polemics may be missing the real point as to what living and thinking with synthetic intelligence ery dierent from our on actually means In sort a mature AI is not an intelligence for us nor is its intelligence necessarily umanlie or our on sanity and safety e sould not as AI to retend to e uman To do so is self-defeating, unethical and perhaps even dangerous. Te little oy root in teen ielergs A.I. Artifcial Intelligence ants to be a real boy with all his little metal heart, whereas Skynet in the Terminator moies reresents te oosite end of te sectrum and is set on ensuring human extinction. Despite all the Copernican traumas that moder- nity as rougt some forms of umanism and teir comanion gures of umanity still resume teir erc in te center of te cosmic court I argue tat e sould aandon te conceit tat a true articial intelligence arriing at sentience or sapience, must care deeply about humanity—us specifcally—as the focus of its knowing and desire. Perhaps the real nightmare, even worse tan te one in ic te ig Macine ants to ill you is te one in ic it sees you as irrelevant, or not even as a discrete thing to know. Worse than being seen as an enemy is not being seen at all. Perhaps it is that what we really fear aout AI It is not surrising tat e ould rst tin of AI in terms of at e under- stand intelligence to be, namely human intelligence. This anthropocentric fallacy is a reasonable point of departure but not a reasonable conclusion. n aing see is comments to at http://www.bbc.com/news/technol- ogy and also lon Muss million donation to uture of ife Institute to reent AI from ecoming eil in te ords of ired magaine ee http://www.wired. comelonmusaisafety ararased from ratton uting Articial Intelligence Te idea of dening AI in relation to its aility to ass as a uman is as old as AI researc itself In Alan Turing ulised omuting Macinery and Intelligence,” a paper in which he described what we now call the Turing Test and ic e referred to as te imitation game Turing Tere are dierent ersions of te test all of ic are reealing aout y our aroac to te culture and etics of AI is at it is for good and ad or the most familiar version, a human interrogator asks questions to two hidden contestants, one a human and the other a computer. Turing suggests that if the interrogator usually cannot tell which is which, and if the computer can successfully pass as human, then can we not conclude, for practical purposes, tat te comuter is intelligent More eole no Turings foundational text than have actually read it. This is unfortunate because the text is marve- lous strange and surrising Turing proposes his test as a variation on a popular parlor game in which two idden contestants a oman layer A and a man layer try to conince a third that he or she is a woman by their written responses to leading ques- tions. To win, one of the players must convincingly be who they really are, whereas the other must try to pass as another gender. Turing describes his on ariation as one ere a comuter taes te lace of layer A and so a literal reading ould suggest tat in is ersion te comuter is not ust re- tending to be a human, but pretending to be a woman. It must pass as a she. ter ersions ad it tat layer could e eiter a man or a oman It mat- ters quite a lot if only one player is faking, or if both are, or if neither are. Now that we give the computer a seat, it may pretend to be a woman along with a man pretending to be a woman, both trying to trick the interrogator into guring out ic is a man and ic is a oman r eras te comuter pretends to be a man pretending to be a woman, along with a man pretending to be a woman, or even a computer pretending to be a woman pretending to e a man retending to e a oman In te real orld of course e ae all of the above. The problem with faking, however, does not end there: the issue is not so simle As dramatied in The Imitation Game te recent lm iogray of Turing directed by Morten Tyldum, the mathematician himself also had to ass in is case as a straigt man in a society tat criminalied omo- sexuality. Upon discovery that he was not what he appeared to be, he was forced to undergo orric medical treatments non as cemical castra- tion. Ultimately the physical and emotional pain was too great and he com- mitted suicide. The episode was a grotesque tribute to a man whose recent contriution to defeating itlers military as still a state secret Turing as only recently given posthumous pardon, but the tens of thousands of other ritis men sentenced under similar las ae not ne notes te sour ironic ee also te discussion of Turings loe letter generator in ing . Alleys of Your Mind corresondence eteen asing an AI to ass te test in order to ualify as intelligent to ass as a uman intelligence it Turings on need to ide is omoseuality and to ass as a straigt man Te demands of ot lus are unnecessary and profoundly unfair. ould comle AI arrie it ill not e umanlie unless e insist tat it pretend to be so, because, one assumes, the idea that intelligence could be both real and inhuman at the same time is morally and psychologically intoler- able. Instead of nurturing this bigotry, we would do better to allow that in our universe “thinking” is much more diverse, even alien, than our own particular case Te real ilosoical lessons of AI ill ae less to do it umans teaching machines how to think than with machines teaching humans a fuller and truer range of what thinking can be. eonin te nuan Tat areciation sould account for to related ut dierent understand- ings irst one ould recognie tat intelligence and noledge is alays distributed among multiple positions and forms of life, both similar and dis- similar to one another. This is not to say that “nothing is true and everything is permitted” rather that no single neuro-anatomical disposition has a privileged monooly on o to tin intelligently iter tere is no suc ting as gen- eral intelligence rater only situated genres of limited intelligence in ic case te uman is among a ariety of tese or tere is suc a ting as general intelligence but that its very generality—its accomplishments of generic astractionare agnostic as to at sort of entity migt mediate tem iter way, human sapience is special but not unique. This appreciation would see AI as a regular enomenon not so unlie oter ays tat uman intelligence is located among oter modalities of intelligence suc as nonuman animal cognition econd our areciation of te ider continuum ould also recognie tat te otential adent of articial general intelligence AI is also noel as yet unexplained, and will demand encounters between humans and mechanically situated intelligence tat are unrecedented or tis AI is igly irregular ot of tese are true and it may only e tat understanding one is o e can really accomplish the other. That is, it may only be confronting what is genuinely new about non-carbon based intelligences possessing such ability and autonomy tat e ill e ale to fully recognie te continuum of intel- ligences with which ours has always been embedded. Put simply, it may be tat one indirect outcome of te ilosoical discussion aout AI is a ider areciation of nonuman animal cognition and suectiity In some discourses tis conunction is domesticated under te sign of an all too pat “posthumanism,” or a transcendentally anthropocentric uting Articial Intelligence transumanism ariations of te former ae muc to oer regardless and ersions of te latter sould as ell ut roaly do not in te end At issue ere is more te limiting contetualiation of dominant forms of humanism, tan a relinuisment of at te uman and inuman is and can be within tat eanded continuum ea egarestani retains tis oint in is essay Te aor of te Inuman insisting tat te easy oersimlied nomination of forms of thought and experience that fall outside of various contingent norms, moral or mechanical, as “nonhuman” is to discard at the outset the integral mutability of the human as a philosophical and engineering program.