Re: Artificial Intelligence
Namaste dA,
I will give my take on this issue (from Vedantic point of view and logical arguments) :
a) AtmAn is not some separate entity which comes into the body and then brings consciousness with it. AtmAn is consciousness Itself. AtmAn is Only One. This one AtmAn is capable of giving rise to infinite reflected consciousnesses which act as individual consciousnesses just like a dream creation.
b) Consciousness manifests at different levels in different things / beings through attributes of Prakriti i.e. Mann, Buddhi and Ahamkaar. The intelligence which is perceived in matter, energy, animals and human beings are of different levels. This intelligence is not an attribute of AtmAn or Consciousness Itself but it is an attribute of the Nature / Prakriti powered by its substratum i.e. AtmAn or (Pure) Consciousness. Why did I add "Pure" here for differentiating between Consciousness of worldly entities and that of AtmAn ? This is because Pure Consciousness gives rise to reflected Consciousness which gets conditioned with the attributes of Prakriti e.g. Mann (observing Mind), Buddhi (intellect) and Ahamkaar (“I”-ness). Pure Consciousness is devoid of these characteristics.
Now, the levels of the above three attributes in different things and different beings make them as they are. So, a stone has one of the lowest level of these attributes in it. It can observe its surroundings to a very limited level, has almost no intellect but has “Ahamkaar” i.e. “i-ness” without which it cannot “observe” the world / happening around it. These attributes manifest at higher levels in plants, single cellular beings, complex beings like animals and then finally intelligent humans.
c) How do we make machines do as we want ? We harness their limited levels of the attributes of reflected consciousness and make them act as per “a given logic”. This logic is coded in modes which a machine can understand. So, machines, howsoever intelligent, can work only within the logic provided by human being. They have, by design in Prakriti, no intelligence to create a logical argument by intuition ab initio as humans can do. So, if humans program a machine to identify humans and kill them, it will do that. However, machines can have no sense of achievement, fear of death or lust for survival, excitement of enjoying things , desire to rule and various emotions etc. Yes, these can be simulated in manner that they could apparently show such traits but in reality, they can never have such emotions as we humans do just because they are nothing but agglomerate of objects which basically are at the lowest level of manifested attributes of Consciousness.
So, in absence of originality (because of their being at the bottom of level of manifested attributes of consciousness) and lack of emotions as listed above, machines becoming enemies of humans as shown in Hollywood films is an impossibility unless we ourselves program them to destroy the mankind. … And in fact, we already have developed things to destroy ourselves and there is no need for machines to turn against humans. We have nuclear bombs which can wipe out the whole humanity many times over and we have just to make a faulty machine which could deliver these bombs at different locations to cause the required damage. So, we need to fear humans alone and not the machines. At least I don't see any need to be afraid of Hollywood fantasy.
OM
"Om Namo Bhagvate Vaasudevaye"
Bookmarks