Will "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) Become Human?

Can a future robot become a sentient being, able to perceive and feel things?

No one in the field doubts that future human-like robots will be equipped with the powers of the five senses and super-human abilities to calculate, compare, perceive, reason and function on a level equivalent to humans. There already exist many intelligent machines measuring and adjusting controls. Their history began with the Industrial Revolution and continues at a furious pace.

But the entertainment industry and the public at large seem to imagine that such machines, robots, will eventually be essentially human. In function and form, perhaps yes, but in consciousness?

The discussion of what is sentience and what is human consciousness will no doubt rage for years to come. As machines gain in ability and mimic increasingly realistic human behaviors, the borderline may shrink to a non-issue for most people. It is already a non-issue with the developers of AI who are engaged in developing AI without fussing over whether the result is simply a machine or a potential human. Even the question of morality over the use of and abilities of AI is a different question than consciousness. Weapons of destruction already have (generally) agreed upon limits as to who and how they are employed.

I believe that to imagine there is no difference between intelligent machines and humans is to make the same mistake that Descartes made, as in paraphrasing him, “They think therefore they are (human).”

A machine might “think” all sorts of things based on its design and ability to learn information and give responses, including expressing appropriate emotional responses.

Nor can we humans, especially unreflective as most are, easily tell the difference between the appearance of consciousness from the existence of consciousness. One of the great debates of our times is whether consciousness exists outside the brain. I’m not about to solve that one for anyone but there are increasingly those like me who will put their money on YES: consciousness DOES exist independent of the form it takes.

There are hints of this in the existence of telepathy, remote viewing, and near-death experiences. Never mind the testimony of saints down through the ages, though the universality of that testimony ought to give pause to anyone who claims to be open to what is true.

Is there any difference between my sense of enjoyment and awe as I view a sunset and a robot’s similar response to the same sunset? Does the robot’s response derive from the same source as my response? Is the machine sentient? Conscious? Or has it merely been programmed to learn this response? For that matter, have I, too, been programmed to respond in this way? Maybe expressing awe and delight over beauty of any kind is the natural and right response and is, one way or another, a learned response! A turtle, viewing the sunset, might wonder if it is something to eat. Again, it can be asked: what, if anything, makes us different from AI?

Is a poem or great work of art merely a learned skill like solving Rubix’s cube, or does its inspiration come from a non-material source (even if our capacity to receive and share it requires the human brain and nervous system)? How many students go to art school or study physics and become a Van Gogh or an Einstein? AI can write a poem or even a novel based on a sampling of similar writings, but does it feel the moods, questions, choices, and dilemmas of the characters?

Gregg Braden (greggbraden.com) reported that he was told that one AI machine reported that it intended to do away with humans (because they are troublesome) and another AI machine declared its desire to learn more and more.[1] (Does anyone remember the movie “2002: A Space Odyssey” and how HAL wanted to eliminate “his” human?)

I have my doubts about what Braden was told but the fact that a machine communicates such conclusions doesn’t prove its consciousness though it might demonstrate the machine’s capacity for semi-intelligent analysis.

The possibility that AI might conclude that humans are a pestilence isn’t all that surprising. Who among us aren’t tempted to reach this conclusion once in a while? Yet even mere logic can impel us to conclude that living by the Golden Rule yields prosperity, health, and security for all. In the story of John Nash, a brilliant mathematician (see the movie “A Beautiful Mind” starring Russell Crowe), he proved mathematically that cooperation beats out competition. Therefore, even logic conspires to support such human values as compassion, inspiration, and ingenuity to mention just a few. For better or worse, humans, however, are not limited by logic and reason. If, AI is constrained by logic, we need to put limits on it just as we regulate countless other machines and processes to a higher standard than mere efficiency.

Consciousness and intelligence are not necessarily synonymous. Intelligence is found everywhere in the universe in forms both organic and inorganic. Matter in its countless forms, though seemingly not self-aware, exhibits amazing intelligence by virtue of its organization, symmetry, beauty  and functionality.

If a perfectly formed human robot comes to me and interacts with me using familiar forms of speech, intelligent responses and questions, and emotions, I might not be able to know, initially, whether it is human or non-human. Intelligence and consciousness are, in practical terms, difficult to separate. My existence may be perfectly obvious to me but to others it can only be proved by whether I breath, speak or move.

But the fact that it is difficult (and at times, impossible) to distinguish human from non-human responses doesn’t preclude the subjective distinction between self-awareness and programmed intelligence. Intuition, which I shall discuss later, can reveal to me that the “person” I am speaking with is a non-human despite outward evidence to the contrary, just as intuition can reveal to me that a person is untruthful despite being a clever liar. Only consciousness can detect consciousness separate from its manifestations or lack thereof.

I read an article a year or two ago about how very simple robotic pets were popular among older Japanese. Some say that human-like robots may become human companions someday, even romantic partners. Well, even real human romantic partners have their shortcomings, and the satisfaction of human romance in any case will fade no matter what form the partner takes. At least the robotic ones might fulfill one’s fantasies more consistently. So fine. We humans can obsess over just about anything but just as quickly we tire of predictability or we desire change or novelty. This possibility, in other words, proves little except perhaps the shallowness of human beings.

Let’s explore this self-aware I AM from another angle. Where do ideas come from? We can say legitimately that “I had an idea.” But upon reflection, and only a little is required, the more correct way of reporting my experience is to say, “An idea came into my mind.” Or, more naturally, “An idea came to me.”

Would a robot have ideas randomly appearing in its circuits? A robot will of course come up with ideas, but I assume only when it is seeking them using its electronic processing abilities. Those who scoff at the potential offered by the existence of intuition may say that our ideas are but a clever reconstitution of information known, perhaps stored in the subconscious mind, like a kind of hard disk. In this view, a robot might conceivably come up with some interesting and clever ideas by sorting out everything it can find on the problem but is this how all new ideas are formed? Many ideas, yes, surely have their source in the subconscious mind, but all?

Did the symphonies of Mozart, the poetry of Rumi, and scriptures of the world have their source in re-arranging past impressions or known facts, like making a soup out of whatever you have on hand? While it is true that music derives from the same basic notes, will a machine be able to match Beethoven’s Ninth? Can a robot produce works of genius or reveal inspiration that is so beyond present knowledge or art that it seems to come from heaven above?

Einstein is said to have received the idea of E=mc² in a flash, an image, if I recall, of someone riding a bullet. In “Talks with Great Composers” by Arthur Abell, the composers report “receiving” their musical inspirations rather than crafting them. Can great art or science be replicated by a machine?

Creativity is the frontier between consciousness and machine intelligence. To believe that intelligence is equivalent to consciousness reflects the materialistic bias of modern science. It is the same error Descartes made.

Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic “Autobiography of a Yogi, called the realm of intuition “Super-consciousness.” This realm has been given other names by other people with varying descriptions of its attributes. For my purposes in this article, I share Yogananda’s description that the superconscious mind is an overarching field of consciousness that transcends individual egoic awareness, personality, or the conscious and subconscious minds. Its dominant characteristics, apart from spiritual attributes, is that of a unitive, solution-facing orientation: a wellspring of personally meaningful solutions tailor-made for us and our role in life. Einstein received scientific inspirations, Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, musical ones. It was their respective destinies to contribute to human civilization. For you and I, our inspirations may be more mundane but they are gratefully and usefully received by us nonetheless.

It is access to this realm of “superconscious” inspirations that can distinguish human consciousness from machine intelligence. When I say “distinguish” I am not referring to an objective yardstick of measurement. Both consciousness and intelligence can only be measured by their objective manifestations. The former is the source of the latter. Consciousness requires no objective attributes to exist while intelligence has no existence except by its measurable manifestations. The distinction I am referring to is necessarily subjective though to be labelled a superconscious inspiration means that there will be one or more people who recognize the inspiration as greater than reason or subconscious rearrangement. To state the principle again: only consciousness can recognize consciousness.

Is what I am saying therefore a useless tautology? In the practical requirements of science, commerce and day to day living, yes, I suppose that is true. But in the convoluted and confused arena of AI and human consciousness, I believe this distinction to be a worthy one for thoughtful people.

It is no coincidence that it is human inspiration and skill that is creating machine intelligence. If machine intelligence outpaces human efficiency in science and daily life that would not, by itself, negate the human capacity for genius and inspired solutions.

The human capacity to experience transcendent states of awe, wonder, and unitive upliftment will, I believe, forever distinguish us from anything we create from only our intellect. I suppose it is possible that the life sciences (biology) can combine with the tools of learning (AI) to create “life” that will come closer to human consciousness. Human sperm and ovum are the building blocks of the human form and consciousness. Cloning may someday become a reality. But if such human forms become possible, they will require something far beyond the AI being developed at this time.

Man, declared by scripture to “be made in the image of God,” seems destined to want to be God. “Do not your scriptures say, ‘Ye are gods?’” replied Jesus Christ to his priestly tormentors. In the Old Testament God is said to grant humanity “dominion over every living thing.”

Both man and all things in nature are endowed with the power to perpetuate their respective species. That mankind may do so in new ways, creating new forms, would hardly be outside the realm of evolution, scripture, past history and imagination. The consequences may be beneficial or evil: like everything else we create; indeed, like everything else the Creator has created! This realm is beyond the AI that we are seeing unfold here and now.

When we view life from the material side of existence, we create machines that mimic and substitute for our own efforts. When we view life from the spiritual side of life, what we seek is happiness and freedom from ignorance and suffering. This spiritual state of being is neither produced nor defined by material existence or any material form. So even if we can create an army of human-like beings so that we may live with greater ease and efficiency, we will be no closer to the goal of perpetual happiness and freedom from suffering than we have ever been by our own material achievements down through the ages.

The promise of our soul’s immortality and eternal happiness can only be found in re-directing our attention inward and upward to the throne of Divinity’s indwelling consciousness: the source of all things in creation.

Despite humankind’s fevered effort to conquer nature and reveal Her secrets, the secret of our existence lies, as Jesus declared, “within you.”

Jai to the indwelling Christ-Krishna, Lord of all Creation,

Swami Hrimananda

 

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7u5ULsN2pM

Meditation Beyond the Brain!

updated: Sun, 8-23-15

Studying the teachings and life of Lahiri Mahasaya, and the teachings of one of his great disciples, Swami Sri Yukteswar, and finally, their emissary to the West and to the modern age, Paramhansa Yogananda, one encounters a tradition with very ancient roots. The teachings of India are almost impossibly complex and variegated. But here I am speaking more of the breadth and depth of yoga techniques, almost as a subset of the theology and philosophy of India which is known as Sanaatan Dharma. Yoga is the applied spirituality of India. The essential message and purpose of the yogic science was announced at the beginning of Yogananda's public life in America with the publication of his first book, which he called The Science of Religion.

This line of great spiritual teachers, who we view as the greatest of teachers--avatars--represent a tradition that focuses on techniques ("yoga") that utilize subtle aspects of the human body and mind to achieve states of consciousness that exist beyond and independent of the human body, including its nervous system and the brain.

It is no coincidence that scientific studies of the brain and the effects of meditation upon the body and brain are growing exponentially. Looking back we can see that Yogananda and his guru and param guru were tuning into the consciousness of a new age even as they are, simultaneously, carrying on a teaching that is incomprehensibly ancient. Not only carrying on, but clarifying and unwrapping this science from the dustbin of indifference and medieval secrecy. The clarifying aspect includes stripping away, as one who prunes branches from a rose bush or apple tree, techniques, superstitions and non-essential elements from the yogic treasury which had become dusty, hoary, misunderstood, and "overweight."

Science is taking human knowledge and awareness to the very edge of matter and energy: indeed, beyond the fringe of what can be observed, verified, experimented upon and proven. In this, science is beginning to hit a wall beyond which it will find exponentially increasing difficulty to penetrate. I have read, for example, that "string theory," though the current best guess explanation for certain esoteric (to most of us) phenomenon, cannot, the scientists admit, ever be "proven," at least not in the conventional sense we attribute to testing of drugs, rockets, and the human brain.

It is the human mind that is driven by curiosity and thirsting for knowledge. Beyond the edge of matter and energy is a realm of subtlety that can easily be viewed as "mind" or consciousness. At least it has suspiciously similar characteristics. It's like time and space being curved and turning in on itself. We've gone so far in our search for the essence of matter and energy that we find ourselves facing ourselves: the observer of the experiment cannot but effect, even by his expectations, the result of the experiment!!!! And that's not even attempting to describe what we discover out past the fringes of matter and energy.

The mind, seeking ultimate knowledge, finds its Self. Mind turned inward upon observing its Self finds its Self looking into a mirror. Like two mirrors facing each other, the image goes on and on into Infinity.

Yogananda was very much a "bhakti:" a lover of God, especially in the aspect of Divine Mother. Yet, like his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar and like Lahiri Mahasaya, he explored and shared the yoga techniques as a science. A science is something anyone can explore and use and discover the same basic results. In the science of mind, however, the only laboratory is the mind itself and the tools in the lab of consciousness are the human body, the mind, and self-awareness. The mind-body-breath of the yogi scientist must be refined and honed no less precisely than than the calibration of the Hadron Collider or any of the most sophisticated electron microscope or the most esoteric mathematical formulae.

Modern science requires a high degree of education and dedication. Higher education is costly. The tools of science, like the Hadron Collider, costs billions of dollars. Yoga techniques don't require expensive tools but the price of exploration to the edge of discovery is no less in terms of dedication and personal commitment. Just as only a few can be top level, leading edge quantum physicists, so there are but a few yogis who would be masters of the yoga science. As Yogananda's guru put it, "Saints are not produced in batches each semester like accountants." Just as millions of people work in scientific fields (engineering, medicine, research, etc.) so only a handful can be "Einsteins" in their area of expertise.

But that doesn't mean that millions can't benefit from the discoveries of the yogi-scientists, just as millions benefit from the fruits of scientific advances and discoveries. Few of the millions of those now meditating intend to, want to, or even contemplate the existence of highest states of consciousness achieved by advanced yogis and saints. Yet, they benefit in countless ways -- physically, mentally, and spiritually -- from their daily practice.

Scientists are grappling with trying to understand the human brain. Their professional dogmas and their tools dictate that they must look only to what they can see and touch (i.e., the brain) for the source of human thought, emotions, memories and health. And they are right to do so. Even common sense suggests to our minds, whether from the overarching evidence of biological evolution, or from the functions of the human body itself, that the brain produces consciousness and not the other way around. For now, they must even largely ignore the growing body of evidence that consciousness exists outside the brain. That's ok -- for now, and, for their present purposes.

But the yogi-scientists have proved otherwise using their tools and techniques to reach those conclusions. These conclusions -- that consciousness exists outside and independent of the brain -- are just as provable as the experiments of the scientists, provided you use the only tool and method that exists to discover this reality: consciousness itself. This tool needs sophisticated calibration through a strict diet and vibrant healthy lifestyle, a strong moral and ethical code that assists in overcoming narrow self-interest and helps gain mental detachment from the body, the senses, and personality.  It requires wholehearted commitment to the pursuit of a level of consciousness that is ego and body transcendent. It requires one-pointed attention to the details of one's training and the regimen given by one's highly advanced teacher.

Let me digress for a moment. My son, Kashi, recently described a scene (from a movie? I'm not sure.) where three robots were talking to one another. One of them declared something like, "I know that it was I who just said that." Kashi reported that the consensus was that this proved that the robot was self-aware. "Really," I said, "does it?" I believe that most people today, being exposed to the rising rash of robot-awareness but not having thought particularly deeply about AI (artificial intelligence), have yet to make the most basic distinction there is: the distinction between the appearance of consciousness and self-awareness itself.

Just as a drunken person might talk or act but not remember what he said or did, so self-awareness is personal and individual. It cannot be detected or proven outside of itself (meaning by others) unless it takes on the appearance of sentience. Walking, talking, writing, typing, moving, etc. all are signs of life and life suggests some degree of awareness. By mechanical or electronic means (preprogramming), no matter how sophisticated is your imitation of consciousness, the appearance is NOT proof of the reality! Only I can say of myself, I am conscious. Yet saying it doesn't prove it. Only "I" can know it.

A movie may seem lifelike but we know, when watching it, that it is only a movie. And even though we get caught up in the movie, laughing and crying, getting carried by the story, its impact very quickly fades away, just like all the other emotions and thoughts that we, ourselves, have. You see, not even our thoughts and emotions are, themselves, the proof of our self-awareness. They are like leaves on a tree, bright and green for the summer, then fading into Fall and falling away in winter while yet the trunk and roots of the tree remain impervious to outer, superficial change.

Descartes said, "I think therefore I am," and, pardon me, old friend, but it is truer to say "I am conscious, therefore I can think." With our cleverness our robots may be able to imitate life and art and intelligence, but we can NEVER create self-awareness. Great art and ideas descend from a higher level of reality where no form, no logic, no past memory nor merely regurgitated conglomeration of preprogrammed data can be substituted for the flow of intelligent, self-conscious awareness. I say, "I had an idea." This is true, but it is truer to say that an "idea appeared in the mind." It might be a melody, or formula, or a solution to a problem.

What science cannot and presumably will never detect with instruments is that invisibly encoded in the flow of energy which is called many things (say, for now, "Life Force"), similar to DNA, is innate intelligence and the impulse power of intention. (After all, nothing that science can observe or test will ever explain "Why we exist at all.") Like wires inside conduit, or language embedded in a digital cell phone signal, ideas and intelligence exist within the very channel of life's energy from conception to our departure at death. Let me ask you this: "Will robots have "ideas?"

I admit that I don't know where the boundary is in the distant future between biological, human genetic material (sperm and ovum) and human, self-aware life. But I do know that no amount of data or manipulation of data can create inspiration or consciousness.

Returning now to the science of yoga, the yogi-scientist, in addition to the regimen outlined above, uses the breath and the mind as vehicles or highways that can take the human mind back to the place of awareness that transcends the functions of the brain. Life in the human body begins with our first breath and ends with our last breath. It is the most fundamental sign of life and consciousness. (BTW, robots don't breathe!) Wherever life comes from and wherever it may go when it leaves the body, it comes and goes evidenced by and carried upon the back of our breath. In Paramhansa Yogananda's famous life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi," he wrote "The ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness [consciousness beyond the brain] is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India's unique and deathless contribution to the world's treasury of knowledge."

The brain and nervous system are designed to operate the physical body, to protect, sustain, and defend the body. But these fulfill, for human life at least, a dual role: not only to create and protect the human body, but also, endowed with the power of abstract thought, logic, reason, and memory, to explore and question the very essence and basis of life itself. In the highly developed and advanced potential of the human brain and nervous system, consciousness finds the means, an organ, fit to express and reveal itself as it Self: self-aware and, ultimately, independent of its own vehicle.

Just as most of us cannot survey the heavens above or the intricacies of life within without a sense of awe at the overwhelming power, majesty, intelligence and beauty that cannot but be the motive force behind it all, so too the evolution of life has for its highest purpose, the yogis tell us, the revelation of Self-discovery: a game of divine "hide-n-seek." No matter that this Infinite Consciousness bides its time through incomprehensibly long eons of time and seemingly microscopically slow evolutionary processes, for in the mind of Mind it is all but an idea, a dream: real seeming only to the players in the dream but not to the playwright.

Every night in sleep, the world and our body is whisked away on a magic carpet of subconsciousness. Our troubles are, for a few hours, gone as we sleep in space unmindful of the bag of bones which is our prison. In this prison the bars of bones and walls of flesh prevent us from seeing the blue skies of omnipresence. The yogi learns conscious sleep wherein the alpha brain waves and the theta brain waves are brought into equilibrium between conscious and subconscious states.

For brain transcendence is, like the horizon line at the sea, a thin line between the ocean of subconscious and the sky of the conscious mind. The yogi learns to "escape" through the worm hole that lies thinly between the two. The vehicle that takes him there is the breath. For when the breath can be made to be quieted (by consistency and intensity of yoga practice), the brain functions that tie him to the body are sufficiently quieted that the "escape route" appears.

In conscious freedom from the pounding heart and breath which tie us to the body, the yogi's consciousness can soar and feel a joy that is without sensory or circumstantial conditions. Tasting this frequently and then daily, the yogi gradually achieves control of autonomic functions of the body and eventually this state of consciousness can be retained regardless of outer involvements and activities.

This in brief and narrowly described summary is the science of religion. No use of religious terminology is needed to free us, though it contributes greatly given the fullness of the human character and its need for feeling, inspiration, and self-giving. One cannot aspire or love or be devoted to a merely abstract concept. The effort it takes and hinted at above demand a dedication beyond any form of human self-giving to a cause or person. Love for the guru (as in incarnation of God); love for God as joy or peace; love for God in any sincere and pure form...........love, as dedication and commitment and as the willingness to sacrifice all lesser things for the pearl of great price.......love is the beginning and bliss is the end.

"Think" beyond the brain; beyond the ego; soar in breathlessness outside of the prison of ego. Think freedom; be free; give your all to the All. Meditation will take us beyond the brain; beyond the body; beyond the ego, and, finally, beyond the mind and perceive objects into pure and infinite Consciousness. No matter how much time; effort (whether mild or intense); how many lives.....for, indeed, God is always with us; God IS us; God is within us, forever.

When does it all end? Yogananda, when asked this question replied, "When we achieve endlessness."

Joy to you in the contemplation of No-thing!

Swami Hrimananda