(This is Part 13 of a series. Go back to Part 12.)
3a. The human identity crisis
As computers continue to get more and more intelligent, eventually it will precipitate a human identity crisis. As machines conquer one area after another of intelligence, a paramount issue will rise to the fore:
What is a human being?
And how is it different from a robot?
This issue will be discussed and debated endlessly in the papers, on TV and radio, in magazines and online, in forums and meetings and private conversations and councils of government. It will come to dominate discussion. And the discussion, both public and private, will be tinged with an increasing sense of alarm.
As machine intellegence advances and becomes more broad and deep, we humans will tend to keep backing up and saying things like:
"They're computing but not thinking."
"They're talking but nobody's inside."
"Yes, but they can't appreciate music."
"Yes, but they can't create new things."
"Yes, but they can't feel real emotions."
"Yes, but they can't apprecciate humor."
"Yes, but they don't have consciousness."
"Yes, but they don't have our spirituality."
Machines will eventually develop very distinct and sophisticated personalities, much like ours in some ways but also including facets that we'll find difficult to comprehend or deal with. The appearance, movements, gestures and conversations of androids will become increasingly subtle and lifelike.
Yes, they will eventually develop a real sense of humor, an ability to create masterpieces of art and literature, an ability to work toward self-defined objectives, an ability to create new science and mathmatics, an ability to display nuances of thought, speech, expressions and gestures.
The skin, body, facial features and even hair of the most advanced androids will become more and more lifelike, to a degree that humans will find useful—after all, we're the species that can adapt to almost anything—but also more and more eerie and uncanny. After awhile we won't know what to think about it—machine intelligence will be so helpful to us and yet so threatening at the same time.
The last barrier, the last line in the sand for us humans will be our consciousness and spirituality. After awhile we'll proclaim that even though machines have duplicated every human function that they don't have that extra spark of spirituality, that they don't actually possess consciousness the way we do.
What does consciousness mean? It means that we don't just respond to a sunset by saying, "Isn't that great?" but we also experience it inside. We have an "experience" of that sunset. That will become a key question: Do machines actually "experience" events or just robotically respond to them in increasingly sophisticated ways? Do the most advanced and intelligent machines actually have consciousness?
The answer to that will revolve around the mind-brain problem: Is everything that occurs in the mind—my love for Brahms or the seacoast or St. Francis, say—grounded in processes in the brain? Or are there things in mind which are "outside" or "beyond" the brain in some way?
In my opinion it will be eventually be found that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the mind and the brain, that all mind-states of any kind are related to specific brain-states. And it seems to me that consciousness will eventually be found to be an emergent property of a sufficiently complex intelligence.
After all, we humans have consciousness. We don't just respond to images or sounds, we "experience" them. This quality of consciousness —of self-awareness, of "experiencing" things—must have high survival value or evolution would not have developed and retained it.
There will probably be a subset of humans that forever deny the existence of consciousness in anything but a human being—it will be too threatening to the ego to believe otherwise. But most humans will probably accede eventually to the accumulating evidence of non-human consciousness. But the effect on our self-identity will, for awhile, be profoundly disturbing and disorienting.
(This is the end of Part 13. Go to Part 14.)
—jim sloman, for 1.17.06
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