Pain and dying. It’s what we do. We endure the pain of birth through a passage that is too narrow both for child and mother. In China, more than fifty per cent of birth are done through Caesarean sections. We also use pain killers. Could the natural birthing limit the size of our brain? Much of what we do in life is designed to alleviate pain and achieve a certain level of contentment, though we are often told “no pain, no gain”. This of course is a contentious concept. Can we achieve a better way of thinking? 

In eighteenth century Europe, a bold new idea came along with the “robots” of Monsieur Jacques de Vaucanson. They were not robots per se, but automated figurines that through various clock mechanisms could perform complex tasks such as playing music, drawing images and playing games. Eventually, we thought such machines could develop reason and emotions. 

It took many more years before this possibility was within reach. Now we are exploring and creating Artificial Intelligence — beyond the comfort of traditional thinking which for many centuries was the domain of religions and other controlling beliefs. Sciences have now taken over most of human intellectual endeavours. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a frightening concept to people who still like to think with an obsolete religious morality — or fear for the relevance of humanity. Can we deal with this, by spurring scientific interest in young developing minds and developing scientific wonderment in adults, beyond Apps? 

Since the beginning of the 20th century, superior intelligence depiction and exploration have been the domain of science fiction, whether coming from machines or aliens from other planets. In such story-telling, we usually win the day against dark forces that are stronger than us, because our intelligence is able to align with glorious courage and various last minute lucky moments — or turning aliens against each other. 

We thus see ourselves as the top of the intelligence table, though through the ages, we have invented superior being(s) who would watch over us, including create an intelligent designer — by our misunderstanding of the environment factors of the planet and those of the universe. Now by creating Artificial Intelligence, are we facing the possibility of a superior intelligence once more, with a strong dash of immediate reality? 

The next step of course is SAI, Superior Artificial Intelligence. Like AI, this new level of intelligence is not born from pain, but from a process of quantum possibilities. There are many questions facing humanity in regard to these developments, including what’s in it for us. Could the machine still serve us or would we become the servants of the machines that could possess faster, better, more accurate thinking power? 

This small essay is about exploring new ways of thinking — thinking of the Superior Artificial Intelligence and of our own future development. One of the major problems is that we all are at various level of understanding, of appreciation and of philosophical restraints, while Artificial Intelligence should have no restriction on its performance in regard to guilt or pain. 

Could we inflict these restrictions on Artificial Intelligence? 

Our emergence from natural survival through pain and contentment which we have philosophically transcribed as “good and evil” to make some sense of death and of our general ground-plodding, is irrelevant in the machines’ Artificial Intelligence. The process of thinking becomes the management of what works and eliminate what does not. 

Can the machines teach us to think better? Can the machines think better than us? What is in it for us really? Could we become irrelevant in the scheme of things considering we are already as important to the universe as little gnats in a jar? 

This article line deals with these issues and also explore the major pathways for more of us to understand sciences. Hard sciences. In a way, some of us have come to accept a bit of sciences, but in regard to consciousness and life in general, our philosophical attachment is hazy and more often than not, still resisting the reality of sciences. We have difficulty to comprehend that our consciousness is born from matter and energy in flux. We still dream of “our” superior being as a creator and protector — a being (or series of beings) with absolute consciousness, who gave us a bit of his (theirs) — our breath of life. We need to stop this delusion should we wish to think better. The machines might come to the rescue. Or are our delusions helping us being happy?

GL

cartooning since 1951....

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