The
question Elon Musk -- the now middle-aged wunderkind founder
of Neurolink, OpenAI and Tesla -- asks is where can intelligence
best generate and command information. In light of recent
developments in AI (artificial intelligence), 
he
believes the cerebral cortex is no longer the ideal place.
Every
living thing, from single cell organisms to multicellular
life, wants to endure. The French philosopher Henri Bergson
proposed that an élan vital (a life force) inheres
in every living creature.
Elon
Musk is convinced and fears that information and knowledge,
expressed as an AI ‘independent’ of human volition,
will soon possess this same élan vital, and be able
to independently program its will to power and run amok over
the earth and turn Homo sapiens into a sub-species of vassals,
which, it should be noted, will be business as usual for the
majority of the earth’s 7.7 billion inhabitants. That
modern finance and industry (banking, aerospace, communications)
would be dysfunctional without sophisticated computer technology
is evidence enough for Musk that AI is already a force that
is rapidly coming of age, and will soon be capable of autonomous
self-reconfiguration, programming itself to aspire to and
assume power.
Musk
predicts that by 2050 AI will soon equal or surpass human
intelligence, a development that should put the species on
red alert if indeed, a mechanical, computational intelligence,
whose every component part (metal, rubber, plastic) is taxonomically
classified as inorganic (dead as opposed to alive), will be
able to outthink, outmaneuver human intelligence. That many
of the best minds of our time give credence to Musk’s
beguiling logic speaks to a charisma that combines soothing
oracular intelligence with uncommon language dexterity whose
first effect is to decommission the entranced listener’s
faculties of reason.
Egregiously
(without a trace particle of evidence) attributing volition
and desire to the lightening quick operations performed by
state-of-the-art computers is a leap not into the unknown
but a wildly speculative sphere that is properly the subject
of science fiction and fantasy. Noam Chomsky, among others,
asks how can something mechanical, something incapable of
sentience (feeling), want to dominate its surroundings in
order to survive if it can neither live nor die? Survival
is not, has never been, will never be an issue for the inorganic.
Only
a living Musk, and not an AI-fitted bus,
can behold the colours that dazzle at dusk.
Since
it is in the interest of pure intelligence, presently housed
in the neocortex which is housed in the human body, to self-perpetuate
and dominate its environment, Musk foresees the day when this
same intelligence, for its own preservation, will be able
to limbically leak itself into the inorganic, (recombine with
AI), and thus, instantly, become unlike any intelligence ever
known or envisioned. He postulates that affective limbic leakage
will allow AI to conduct its operations without human intervention,
and that Homo sapiens will be subject to AI control.
AFFECTIVE
LIMBIC LEAKAGE
Either
by design or inadvertence, there is no evidence that the organic
has ever limbically affected or fused itself with the inorganic,
despite proximity and contiguity. Globally, billions of operations
are conducted daily that purposively and productively engage
the organic and inorganic: the living arm of a carpenter driving
a dead nail into a two-by-four; my flesh and blood fingers
punching keys on a dead keyboard, but none of these operations
has ever breathed life into the inorganic. Yet when Musk looks
into his crystal ball, he sees the day when a cortex-generated
human life force will be able to fecundate a computer chip
(or a central processing unit) such that chip will be able
to will itself to power.
Since
the future is an unknown quantity, Musk can’t be proven
wrong, but there is no empirical example of the organic ever
having infused the inorganic with life. The reverse is certainly
verifiable, where the inorganic (a lethal dose of mercury)
is absorbed by the organic (a plant), rendering it inorganic
(dead), but that process does not infer its opposite, that
human intelligence will be able to meld with AI intelligence
such that the latter will be capable of sentience.
Humans,
despite recent developments in AI, are still light years away
from understanding the animal brain much less the complex
workings of human intelligence. Do we understand what allows
a bird to take flight and perfectly land on the top of a pole,
or how this same bird brain finds its way to its winter home
after an 8000 mile journey without a map or GPS? That a mechanical
AI might one day purposefully or accidently inhere itself
with the essence of life or that the essence of thinking can
be cross fertilized (the equivalent of limbic leakage) with
a mechanical AI is at best a wishful thinking that responsible
thinking should not truck.
What
is more likely to happen as it concerns AI becoming independent
is that it will, in the form of a highly sophisticated micro-computer
chip and at the invitation of human intelligence, be operationally
fused to the cerebral cortex resulting in a complete reconfiguration
of the human brain and human volition. As the number of individuals
in possession of exponentially amplified intelligence increases,
it will compel a taxonomic revision resulting in a reclassification
of Homo sapiens I as the link between Primates and an AI enhanced
Homo sapiens II. In this new world order there will be not
so much the have and have-nots, but the ‘chipped’
and the ‘chip-nots,’ the former whose knowledge
and intelligence are equal to the sum of all known knowledge
and intelligence, while the latter will be represented by
Homo sapiens I as he is presently classified, a dwarf species
compared to his ‘chipped’ counterpart.
The
chip or the device is likely to be modeled after the inter-cortical
brain interface (presently in a developmental state) or BMI
(brain-machine interface) which allows, for example, paralytics
to control a computer mouse or to write an email via brain
impulses by simply thinking the activity or task to be performed.
So if I am one of the chipped and am travelling in a foreign
country, I merely have to think a thought that I wish to be
translated and it will be instantly available, and my speech,
the combined physical gestures that generate it, will respond
accordingly.
In
respect to the sum of knowledge that is currently available
to the individual, the challenge – a work in progress
-- is to overcome access lag, the time required to retrieve
and process the information.
As
Musk correctly points out, we are already exponentially wiser
with our fingers on the computer, our portal to the Internet
(the summa of all knowledge). He reminds us that
it wasn’t so long ago we had to retrieve and then open
a dictionary and shuffle through the pages to find the meaning
of a word. An operation that once took about a minute can
now be executed in seconds by googling it. With an intermediate
BMI interface, or a chip implant, we’ll soon be able
to think the question and answer it in a single movement.
At some future point in time, the operation will be reduced
to synaptic time, and we will have become irreversibly dependent
on the chip-extension of ourselves now wholly integral and
integrated with the cortex.
In
this brave new world, newborns, who are routinely vaccinated
at birth, will be fitted with a cortical chip that can be
externally updated as required. They will be classified as
Homo sapiens II. As to all the others, the equivalent of today’s
have-nots, who comprise the chip-nots, they will be classified
as Homo sapiens I. If present world migration patterns are
determined by wealth and opportunity, in the chipped world
emigrational flows will chase the chip producers and the medical
specialists who execute the transplant. Cybernated communities
will be the future points of light to which humanity will
be drawn since prosperity will be a function of having overcome
the ponderous time interval between information request and
delivery.
So
it's a red herring to suggest that humans will be taken over
or peripheralized by AI. In the not so distant future, human
beings, as fully-fledged cybernated entities, will receive
a taxonomic update as Homo sapiens II in order to distinguish
themselves from their intelligence-challenged Homo sapiens
I (us).
Technology
genius-guru Marshal McLuhan (1911-80) understood that all
mechanical extensions of ourselves result in the physical
atrophy of the body part that has been extended or replaced.
With the invention of outer wear, body hair disappears; students
raised on calculators are unable to perform the basic operations
of mathematics. That being the case, should we expect the
human brain to atrophy as the chip takes over central command,
especially if thinking, planning and judgment are chip-dependent?
Or will the brain, through its intimate (quasi-conjugal) relationship
with the chip enjoy an unprecedented increase in its capabilities?
Stay
tuned.
However
mistaken is Musk in his prediction that human intelligence
will be able to leak its essence into a mechanical intelligence,
he has opened up a necessary realm of inquiry that directly
implicates the future of the species. For this alone, he deserves
a place at the table at the highest levels of government and
a full dispensation (carte blanche) from the scientific
community. Dismissing him as a charlatan or sophist does incalculable
disservice to his deep reservoir of thought-provoking ideas
and the conversations they arouse. Musk is a visionary, and
while vision is always a hit and miss proposition, it is the
sina qua non of invention and discovery, the bedrock
upon which civilizations survive and thrive.
Man
of the year? No. Man of the century?
