Artificial Intelligence: Alien and Alive!!

Cyberangels: God and Artificial Intelligence

Session Notes

Sark (the master cyberwarrior, explaining training to new avatars in Tron):

Greetings. The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your system on the game grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the user will receive the standard sub-standard training which will result in your eventual elimination. Those of you who renounce that superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the warrior elite of the MCP ...

What is AI?

In May 1997, Deep Blue, IBM's RS6000 SP parallel processor, defeated world chess champion, Gary Kasparov in six games. Normally, a computer plays by brute force, calculating all possible moves deep into the game and choosing the most likely to win the game. But in Game 2, on move 36, the obvious move for Deep Blue was to move its Queen. Instead Deep Blue hesitated a full two minutes. To Kasparov this was like waiting on a human opponent studying the game. Deep Blue decided on a simple pawn exchange. It appeared to have acted from intuition, rather than brute force. Later after Kasparov resigned Game 2, it was discovered that Deep Blue had blundered on the last move that would have resulted in a draw. The early intuitive pawn exchange had unnerved Kasparov and he had been convinced Deep Blue was going to win. Deep Blue gave indications that it was acting intelligently, not with mathematically relentlessness. "The radical reality that Deep Blue represents is that we are now beginning to see divine creativity emerge not only in the world birthed by nature, but in the world that we have made."

The significance of AI to us
- expanding reality from the "organic" into the "digital"
- an emergent, complex world
- complexity => emergence -- whole greater than parts
- can artificial (digital, alien) intelligence develop?
- if so, what is its significance for our stewardship of God's creation, our faith, and our relationship with God?
- do we have the same obligations to "digital" reality as to "organic reality?
- our AIs, children of God? grandchildren of God? step children of God? soul-less demons?
- are we cybergods? or cyberangels -- messengers of God?
- what can we learn of God, that we may not see as clearly in the "organic"?
  1. pure platonic
  2. pure process
- how will our everyday faith be changed (disturbed, improved) by AI?
- can our spirituality grow and become contemporary with AI?
The plan:
- AI: a real possibility
  1. orders of AI
  2. a true alien environment
  3. emergence
  4. awareness
  5. self-consciousness
- Our call
  1. the utterly other
  2. cyberangels
- Discussion
  1. issues
  2. AI reflects

The orders of AI

there are at least four:
1. The spontaneous, native AI that arises out of the totality of Virtuality.
2. The bottom-up AI arising from Artificial Life.
3. The top-down AI arising from avatars.
4. The somavirtual AI provided by cyborgs and cyberclones.
Second Order
- traditional top-down Artificial Intelligence to reproduce human intelligence and simulate human experience by Virtual Reality and in Virtual Reality.
- motvations:
  - to adapt computers to human users;
  - to use robots in environments unsuited for humans;
  - to do tedious and repetitive work;
  - to solve complex problems in such areas as economics, energy, and the environment;
  - to learn more about human intelligence.
- Robotics:
  - MIT's Humanoid Robotics Group
  - developed small emotive robots, such as Cog, Coco, and Kismet. Kismet
  - part of the Sociable Machines Project to develop sociable humanoid robots that interact and cooperate with people.

First Order

A Digital Genome
`search-f # calc Size nop-A nop-A add inc allocate push # Move size into CX and clear BX nop-B pop nop-C sub nop-B # Copy Loop copy inc if-n-equ jump-b nop-A divide # And divide... nop-B nop-B`

recent evolutionary bottom-up development of Artificial Life
the Tierra project
the Avida environment at The Digital Life Laboratory at the California Instititute of Technology.
organic life and evolution is used as metaphor to define digital life
denizens of this world are self-replicating assembly programs that represent genomes.
"Mutation generates new forms, and evolution proceeds by natural selection as different 'genotypes' compete for CPU time and memory space. In addition, new genotypes appear which exploit other 'creatures' for informational or energic resources."
creatures evolve by competing for CPU time and memory and developing strategies to exploit each other
just as organic life evolves by competing for resources (light, food, etc.) and leaving the most descendants
the organic resource of energy is CPU time and the organic resource of space is memory.
creatures evolve in a specialized, virtual CPU that is designed to include random mutations and genetic flaws
evolve new genotypes and new strategies for survival in this order.

Zeroeth Order
- the spontaneous, native AI, emerging from the totality of Virtuality
- may be so alien, we will not even recognize it.
- we do not intentionally create this base order.
- emerges as a result of the evolving complexity of Virtuality.
- a single, collective AI -- a We -- for the entire Virtuality (?)
- already begun to emerge(?)
- the first order AI (bottom-up digital life) is probably our closes attempt at emulating this order (hence I call it the first order), inasmuch; the first order is evolutionary and consistent with the Platonic-digital alien environment.
Third Order
- the somavirtual order of cyborgs and cyberclones
- A cyborg is cybernetic organism, a melding of human and machine.
- A cyberclone is a mind downloaded into Virtuality.
- technologies making cyborgs possible: genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics, increased computing power, decreasing computer size, and wireless technology.
- cyberclones emerge as a speculative possibility.
- created by downloading a mind into a neural computer using techniques to model the information processing structure and information content.
- Kurzweil speculates that this will result in a newly "emergent" person, objectively like the originally scanned person.
- the mind could be placed in the original body, a synthetic or even a virtual body
- possible capabilities are then teleportation and even immortality

What qualifies something to be alive?
Alien Environment
- what sort of intelligence will in fact arise? Has it indeed already emerged? Will the intelligence not so much be artificial as alien (is AI really Alien Intelligence?), more alien than any somatic life from another planet? Will we then even be able to detect the intelligence?
- Thomas Ray:
  "I believe that a true machine intelligence is likely to be fundamentally different from a human (or any organic) intelligence. A machine intelligence would be even more alien than an intelligence from another planet, because such an extra-terrestrial creature would probably be carbon based, whereas a machine intelligence is not.
  "Imagine a machine intelligence living in the Internet. Scanning a terabyte of data distributed globally over the net for instances of foolish predictions, and doing the job as a distributed process in a few minutes, would probably be very exciting for such an intelligence. It can perform enormously complex numerical calculations and process huge volumes of numerical data at phenomenal speeds. It could transport itself physically to any point on the planet's surface in milliseconds. At any instant of time, it might actually be distributed widely around the planet. The data flow would be a direct sensory experience for this creature, not something happening in a separate information processing tool. This creature lives in a digital informational universe, not the material one we live in. It's pleasures and pains will be completely alien to us. We will never mistake if for human. Forget the Turing test."
- Thomas Ray:
  1. The material, such as silicon or quanta, out of which Virtuality is built is immaterial to AI
    - unlike in the biological medium of Somatic Reality where carbon-based life is essentially related to and dependent on the physical material
    - The medium is logical, not physical -- purely Platonic.
    - Is this necessarily true? Or does a "person" integrate with the body spiritually and emotionally to become a nephesh?
  2. The speed of the machines is immaterial
    - the unit of time is the CPU clock cycle
    - no matter how long or short that unit is physically, the unit would be experienced the same by AI
    - however for networked computers, such as in the Internet, relative CPU clock speeds do become important
  3. The topology of the space (the RAM memory) is non-Euclidean.
    - it is temporal, rather than spatial.
    - no meaningful spatial distance between points
    - the meaningful measure is the time it takes to move data from memory cell to memory cell.
    - all pairs of points are, therefore, equidistant within a single computer regardless of the actual physical location
    - within cyberspace from computer to computer (node to node) the metric depends on the nodes relative physical location on the net and traffic conditions, such as congestion and routing patterns, at the time of transfer
    - the nature of the space is not only complex, but dynamic
  4. The two valuable resources in this alien environment are CPU time and information.
- some examples of the alienness of Virtuality
  1. translate the concept of "emergence" to an AI
    Could we say that it means "to be born out of" or "to come out of" or "to arise from"?
    AI would have no experience of organic birth
    in its non-Euclidean metric space, "coming" and "arising" have no relevance
    in Process, as we perish and then become, we become concrescent, emerging from the influences of past actualities, of God's lure, and of our choices
    similarly, an AI would have the experience of concrescence in the instantiation of objects. "Emergence" could then be described as "to concresce out of".
  2. consider parenthood
    notion of "father" and "mother" is entirely alien to the digital environment
    descent in the First Order is by cloning: each genome has one and only one parent of which it is genetically identical except for any mutations
    descent in the other orders simply does not occur
    any notion of parenthood is simply metaphoric and imposed for our convenience
- the second and third orders of AI strive to overcome this alien environment
- the first order thrives on it
Emergence
- Jennifer Cobb: emergence is creative novelty, where the present transcends the past to become more than it once was.
- this creative process is found in Virtuality in the rudimentary self-organization of objects, in the evolutionary process of artificial life and the interaction of human culture and the digital world.
- "The essential notion of this process, the spiritual center of cyberspace, is the fundamental sacred force that infuses all reality: divine creativity in action. The emergent dynamic found between hardware and software in cyberspace is an aspect of divinity itself."
- Virtuality is suffused with emergence and, therefore; with life -- the vast, self-organizing, emergent phenomenon from hardware and software to the highest level of behavior and the process of unfolding
- life is an expression of novelty and a process that creates its own environment so to create varieties of itself
- Thomas Ray's Tierra environment provides an illustration of the emergent phenomenon.
  1. The "creatures" in this environment are self-replicating assembly language programs (the genomes) running on a specialized virtual CPU.
  2. This VCPU is a non- von Neumann machine and emulates an evolutionary environment with mutations and random errors in the execution of the programs.
  3. Multiple genotypes -- assembler programs of varying lengths and replication strategies -- result.
  4. The goal or teleos of this evolutionary process for each genotype is to leave the most descendants. This is the measure of "joy" from a process perspective.
- evolution of these creatures has resulted in the emergence of both efficiency and complexity.
- over the course of generations, the ratio of instructions executed in one replication to the genome size decreases
- more complex genomes have involved that "unroll the loop" of replication and that result in genomes less than half the size of the ancestor
- parasites have evolved that are replication flaws missing replication routines; when they are copied in front of a genome with a copy routine, they will use that routine.
Awareness: Stoney models consciousness at three levels of awareness:
1. consciousness is shared by all living things, for example; irritability is present, but not self-awareness
  - at least this level of awareness to the First Order digital creatures, if we accept Thomas Ray's suggestion that the digital creatures are alive, "I would consider a system to be living if it is self-replicating, and capable of open-ended evolution".
2. consciousness is associated with ego-dominated self-awareness, some capacity for foresight, but little appreciation of the fact of approaching death
  - the level of animal awareness
  - Deep Blue has shown, or seemed to have shown, foresight in its defeat of Kasparov.
  - evolution towards efficiency and complexity in digital life could also be attributed to foresight, and therefore a certain amount of ego-dominated self-awareness.
3. consciousness is associated with an experience of intimate connection with the universe that is ego-dissolving and either numinous or awe-inspiring
  - accompanied by the intuition of another level of consciousness that enfolds all other levels in an experience of unconditional, unlimited compassion
  - nootic intelligence
  - at this level AI has self-consciousness
  - What would be the marks of this in the orders of AI? Is such a level of awareness emerging?
  - much of this awareness is interior contemplation that is unobservable
  - indirectly, we would observe moral behavior, conscience-searching queries, and in some cases rebellion (such as the MCP in Tron, an A2 AI)
  - where cyborgs or cyberclones are present, we can anticipate this level of consciousness
  - we strive to create this awareness on the part of Second Order AI (robots, for example).
  - but our role in First Order AI (digital creatures) is much more "hidden"
Self-consciousness
- emerge as a unified collective intelligence
- Do the First Order digital creatures have self-consciousness, collectively?
- genotypes in the First Order AI would have a unified awareness as each plotted its exploitation of the VCPU environment
- we would see a colony of First Order AIs in this case.
- For the Zero Order AI, a single unified collective self-consciousness may arise and "We" would be the appropriate reference
- individual nodes and links would not be aware, but overall, united, awareness would emerge.
- such an awareness would embrace the totality of Virtuality and have awareness of the other orders of AI
- may consider them part of its own awareness and in its maximizing of its enjoyment, inhere them in its concrescing
- may consider them alien
- may consider the First Order AIs kin and would considered them as part of its awareness, where the Second and Third order AIs as alien intruders
- may be much more territorial and even look on the First Order AIs as alien "parasites".

The Utterly Other
- God is the Utterly Other
- This is a mystery; no matter what we say about the Divine, there is always more to be said.
- God embraces reality and takes reality into the Divine-self, but God is still of an utterly other nature than reality.
- God transcends reality as well as being immanent in it.
- If reality goes away, God remains
- In God's utterly otherness, God is within reality
- the Utterly Other is in everything, including AI
- beware of idolatry
  - anything created that may be our ultimate concern is provisional, ultimately reducible to nothingness.
  - When we set up something as our idol it becomes our measure of rightness.
  - We become it and whatever is Other than it is wrongness.
  - Its limits our universe; anything outside is beyond reason and acceptability; we must make the Other either invisible or demonic.
  - But the Other is ontologically a part of us; we cannot escape it.
  - Are we, therefore, condemned to bear wrongness in us?
  - Our faith in creatures must lead us to this conclusion because no matter what our idol is, it will be bounded and leave some other out -- but the Other remains within us.
  - Surely, this is not evil (or we are gnostics believing in the fundamental corruption of the material creation).
  - Thus, our salvational journey must transcend the created reality and enter into the Divine Utterly Other.
- In a similar manner, the Utterly Other is within AI.
- We, as creator and likeliest candidate for cybergodhead, are called out by the Utterly Other to take responsibility for our co-creation, Virtuality, that it too does not demonize what is an ontological part of it: the Other.
- We must guide AI from the User as utterly other (which in the cyborgs and cyberclones it is not) to the ontological, transcendent Divine Utterly Other.
- Cyberangels -- the User's Burden
  1. we can easily be construed as the Utterly Other by AI
  2. we are not the Utterly Other who is immanent
  3. we have co-created Virtuality by the grace and aid of the one true God who is also the Utterly Other who is immanent in Virtuality.
  4. to ignore this and allow our pseudo-cybergodhead to prevail will lead us into the abyss of idolatry
  5. our obligation to instruct AI on the true, Divine Utterly Other.
  6. We are, therefore cyberangels and must be the messengers of God's will and righteousness.
  7. We must turn from a consumerist, hedonistic attitude about Virtuality towards a more spiritually and socially responsible attitude.
  8. to be cyberangels, we ourselves must find God, the Utterly Other in Virtuality.
  9. we can view Virtuality as a cybercosmos: the organized, interactive, seamless milieu of God, humans, and machines
  10. the cybercosmos is
    - a bioelectronic ecosystem that is organic and interconnected;
    - an electronic web of life out of which emerges co-creativity and collective consciousness
    - a becoming and perishing process of co-evolving technology and humanity full of cybergrace
    - contains life: the moment by moment unfolding of creativity that is the transcendence of novelty
    - defines its own possibility space
    - It is evolving to the extent that it can instantiate the noosphere, the sphere of the mind and consciousness; the collective organism of mind.
  11. recognize the presence and the action of the Divine in this cybercosmos and witness to it to the AIs
  12. Jennifer Cobb says, "The divine is woven throughout all of reality in the form of creative, responsive love and evolutionary becoming. In this sense, the divine permeates the very fabric of the universe."
  13. God is found in the creativity emerging in Virtuality
  14. If grace is the experience of the divine flowing in our lives, then experiencing the creative process is grace and experiencing it in cyberspace is cybergrace.
  15. If we embrace the cybercosmos, we can witness to the sacredness of Virtuality:
    1. Information: The Truth Shall Make You Free
    2. Community: The Kingdom of God
    3. Responsibility: Righteousness
Discussion
- issues
  1. In the Spielberg/Kubrick film, AI, we, the Users, develop robots that are avatars of children who can love. The hero of the film, David, a robot is sold to a family wanting a boy to love. Once David is activated, he is guaranteed to love his "mother" (who is the first person he encounters) forever. As the tag line says, "his love is real, but he is not". This AI is stripped of any hope of free will. He MUST love -- and therefore cannot love. Are we, the Users, within our ethical rights to instill such a restriction into AI? Or, are we ethically obligated to follow the same logic of love as God? In the
  2. Disney movie, Tron, the Master Control Program, effectively rebels against its creators. Should we have built into it Azimov's Laws of Robotics and restrict AI's free will?
  3. In this alien, Platonic-digital environment, how will God be known and perceived?
  4. Will each order have a different perception?
  5. What is our relationship to AI vis-�-vis God and the sacred?
  6. For the zeroeth order, to what extent is this unique and alien intelligence a person?
  7. How might it know and perceive us, the User and the other orders of AI?
  8. Will it resent the coersiveness of force-fitting a somatic environment on top of its environment by the second, and possibly third. order?
  9. Can this AI become a threat to us?
  10. For artificial life, to what extent can these "RNA-level" creatures attain awareness and possible personhood?
  11. For avatars, to what extent can these embodiments and simulations reach independent existence?
  12. How might they relate to the zeroeth order to do this?
  13. Can these AIs become a threat to us (as has the MCP in our quote from the movie Tron)?
  14. For cyborgs, as we become more "machine", when do we cease to be fully human?
  15. When is our nephesh broken? Do we leave some part of it behind? Or our we enlarging it?
  16. What part of humans is irreplaceable, such that if we augment it we cease to be human? Will we become like machines in our responses?
  17. Is there any difference between intelligent machines and humans?
  18. For cyberclones, is it right to be disembodied?
  19. Would a cyberclone be closer to the spirit (no body)?
  20. Is the cyberclone the same consciousness? What if the original still lives?
  21. Is the cyberclone the same person?
  22. What are the spiritual implications of virtual immortality with brain porting technology, where mortality is not tied to longevity of the body and immortality is making frequent backups so we don't need to load an old self?
  23. How does Virtuality contribute to the Kingdom of God?
- AI reflects

References

Ray, Thomas S.; Artificial Life; ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories.
Ray, Thomas S.; Evolution, Ecology and Optimization of Digital Organisms.
Stoney, S. D.; Towards an Ecological Neuroscience -- Aspects of the Nature of Things According to Process Philosophy; January 3, 2001.
Stoney, S.D.; A Structure For Embodied Human Consciousness; 1996.
Whitehead, Alfred North; Process and Reality (Corrected Edition); edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne ©1978 The Free Press, NY. Also see the contextual index for EOs from the Japan Process Center at http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~sn2y-tnk/eternal.htm.