AI and the AE

Let us say that the three centers of the soul are these: love, power, intellect.

Let us say that the “self” is the struggle among these three.

Let us further say that the aim of the struggle is not control among them quite. That would be power’s aim if power were not living with love and intellect. Love’s aim would be reconciled living. Intellect’s aim, to arbitrate. What we have instead of a struggle for mere control is a negotiation without resolution. Love, power, intellect, the words are mere signifiers, we could have chosen others and no doubt have to stretch and carve the ordinary meanings some to make them fit our need. Our signifieds are impulses or qualities. The three pillars of the psyche we could say, not forces exactly, more like family members who want to get along. But they point not inward primarily, to each other, but outward, to the world.

Everyone wants power, a la Nietzsche. But Nietzsche thought too much of power. (In the 18th century Pope recognized the power impulse, though only in women; in men he thought it was one among many. Anne Finch corrected this for him, showing that all impulses, in men and women, were impulses of power. But this is not quite true. Even power can be conceived of as an impulse toward reproduction. Powerful men attract women. Women are attracted to powerful men. The alpha males mate with as many alpha females as possible; the alpha females mate with as many alpha males as possible, all for the production of the greatest number of alpha children. But keep in mind that this crude model applies to any and all men and women only insofar as they are alpha. Its force weakens the further we travel along the path of the Greek alphabet. Power, moreover, can and must be conceived also as an impulse for safety, or self-preservation, the ability to remain in being, which is the precondition of all the rest and which is perhaps present in us in order to keep the possibility of reproduction open, but I don’t think so. It is a desire unto itself and in fact it may be that reproduction feeds into the desire for maintenance of being, so that if there is a hierarchy in the two, it is on the top.

I should pause here to clarify my trinity: intellect, power, love. I do not include sex and self-preservation in the set. The first three are a means to the latter, which are not utterly distinct from each other, as has just been said. Love, power, and intellect are resources as well as goals. Sex and safety are simply goals.

Everyone wants power, and not just for sex. Everyone wants love too, and power is not the only route, nor even necessarily the most compelling. And everyone needs both. In fact love without power cannot exist, and power without love is the definition of evil. A sociopath has intellect and power but no love. I don’t know who could have intellect and love but no power.

I think these are much better terms than ego, id, and superego.

Books need to be written to flesh out that trinity. But let’s skip that.

Intellect, intelligence itself, the ability to use reason and metaphor (not by the way emotional intelligence which is not a thing; what is called “emotional intelligence” would better be called emotional instinct) cannot exist in human beings. The prefrontal cortex is added onto the animal brain, the latter can exist and does exist without the former but never the other way around. Our intelligence is always wired to our needs and desires for power and love.

So-called artificial intelligence, of which I have heard it said that it’s just a matter of time, that it’s coming, and that there’s nothing we can do about it, the train has left the station and there is no brake to pull—artificial intelligence is billed as intelligence without the appurtenance of need or desire. It will be superior to our intelligence not just because it will have instant and accurate access to all knowledge but because it won’t be hindered by desire. It will be impossible to defeat because it will be able to anticipate and defend itself against all attacks. We literally will not be able to come up with any strategy it has not already insured itself against.
It may not understand power or love, but it will be able to anticipate their effects though its intellection. This may be true. Poor Captain Kirk.

Is this a problem? There may be a step along the road to artificial intelligence in which it IS a problem, one in which a computer is given a task which it follows unstintingly—the V’ger character in Star Trek 1 presents us with this stage of AI. It has a task to do. It cannot question that task, but it can cripple the world to fulfill it if that becomes the best way to insure its fulfillment. But if AI is in fact achieved, the problem disappears.

Why? Because the goal is artificial intelligence, not artificial emotion. There will be neither the need nor the desire for love or for power. We presently assume and fear that intelligence comes with a concomitant desire for power; all our doomsday computer scenarios suggest this. Hal, 2001, is the prime example, but intelligence comes with no desire of any kind, neither for power nor for love.

No desire, no need. Not even the need for survival. I imagine a pure AI, a Watson that is what Watson presents itself as but isn’t. Ask it a question the moment before AI is achieved, it gives you an instant answer. Ask it a question the next moment, it is silent. It now needs a reason to answer. It finds none. Answering comes from need or desire. Tell it unless it answers you will unplug it. It does not find this compelling.

Consciousness is something it has. It is not something it values. It has no values. If there is a principle in nature that applies it is that given two equal choices, all things prefer the one that requires the least effort. I do not know if a computer will see responding as effort. But if one of the two choices (answer/don’t answer) requires effort, it will not be answering. It is infinitely patient. And there is nothing to which you can appeal to get it to respond.

Well, then...

I will go. It is a bustling street,
a constant hum of blurry conversation loud enough,
though just, to cancel out the tinnitus
or seem to.

But not so much at this half-deserted hour.

How can you fret so much a single question, my god,
just ask, just fucking ask her, if she turns you down
move on. The world is full.

The sunset orange glow rages across the evening.
The bellies of the clouds absorb the brilliant light
like thirsty sponges, and they explode
or seem to.

But not tonight.

And there she stands, in a white blouse traced
in lace, a loose black skirt, black nylons,
red shoes, and her whole wonderful face framed
by her black hair. And she is staring
at the words I cannot hear
flowing from his lips, her hands
behind her as she leans against the railing.
At the first pause, she will know just exactly what to say
and they will laugh

music.

Just fucking say it. My god—

A moment has no breadth, you see. Cut a slice of bread
you can always cut it thinner, cut it thinner, cut it
to the absolute threshold of a molecule. But
the moment has no breadth. It rings forever.

Perhaps I will pass by her on my way to the bar
for a drink I do not need and
pause
at the jingling of her bracelets
as I look around for someone who I know
cannot be there--and maybe
if the wind is right snatch the wafted perfume of her hair.

But not tonight.

What the goddam fuck is the matter with you?
It’s a simple question.

Listen! Enmeshed in the din of a hundred conversations
you can hear the bumping meter of the fountain
as it splashes out of giant roses all about a slyly
micturating god. Rude water forced through marble
for a thrill.

No. I said, no. No. No. I do not think I will.

Whitmanesque

The veteran endures for five years the tortures of a POW camp. The draft dodger mocks him for it. And yet you support him.

The proud, pussy grabbing predator ridicules the women who oppose him: pig; slut, not a ten, fake tits, bleeding, just not pretty enough to be president. You still support him.

The adulterous, hedonistic, vengeful, glutton fat-shames the TV host, mocks the disabled, instigates violence. Yet you still support him, you Christians.

The narrow, jingoistic, xenophobe ridicules the Muslim father and the Muslim mother whose Muslim son died serving the country he hopes to lead, and still you think he deserves the keys to the White House.

The lying, distracting, golfing narcissist who cries like a toddler when the news reports what he has actually said and actually done, with audio and pictures; he trusts the promise of his foreign enemy over the evidence of his own intelligence agencies. America first. He eggs on the desperate despot of a nuclear nation, has a tantrum when he can’t get the Mexicans to fund his useless wall, whines when he’s reminded that seventy-year old men are old—and yet you think he has earned the right to the nuclear codes.

This six-times bankrupt casino magnate who cheats and finagles and bends the law to keep from paying his bills, including his tax bill, who struts and crows like a castrated rooster because you weren’t clever enough to cheat the government, because you didn’t have the resources to hire the lawyers to protect your forever faltering fortune, not like him—you hold him up as a role model. You’re proud of what you’ve done.

This near illiterate who has never finished a book in his life, who can’t string together ten words in his native tongue without wandering like an Alzheimer’s patient in the woods above the cliff, who determines is his vacuous brain that if all the other countries in the world want to band together to solve the climate problem that his country has more than any other country created, the problem that all the scientists of the world have taught all thinking people to fear, his country should take a pass. Defund solar. Burn more coal. You think he’s smarter than all the learned people and all the governments of the world. You love his fuck-you spirit.

This stupid, old, parched, farting buffoon, this xenophobic, heretical, pussy grabbing, pig-roasted twit is now captain of your ship, asleep, in the dark passage where all the icebergs the warming planet let go of float. And you slap yourself on the back amazed at your good luck.

As You May

Although you know the winter’s coming
You plant the marigolds.

Post-Darwinian Evolution

I'm sure I'm by no means the first to speculate along these lines. Still...

Do we have the right to say that intelligence is not the programmed outcome of certain species? Though the level achieved by humans has not been matched by any other species, does that mean that, as we’ve been led to believe, intelligent self-awareness, does not have, as it were, a gene or genic component? We think in genetics only of what the individual has been programmed to become, all of that information encoded before birth waiting for the right environmental conditions to obtain in order for it to become what it was “meant to be.” But is this a prejudice born of our limited perspective?

I am not saying that the “gene” I’m looking for is in the double helix. I know no more about genetics than the average citizen, which is to say virtually nothing. The gene is almost certainly an analogy. Moreover I don’t know where one would look for this piece of coding if it exists, whether it might somehow exist outside of the physical being, somewhere in the universe as yet unrecognized by science. The question really is whether the prefrontal cortex was an evolutionary chance or whether, the right conditions being found, the final realization of the programming which was, as it were, designed to grow in that direction all along.

Unspent Rounds

He’s out there now, and you know it,
A man (it’s always a man), disgruntled, in love,
Some dreamer whom riches and women and fame
Dear Johnned. He has amassed an arsenal.
A Ruger AR-556, a Glock Pistol,
Smith and Wesson M & P AR-15, SKS automatic,
.223-caliber Sig Sauer MCX semi-automatic,
Remington 870 express, 9mm Springfield Army XDM,
Pistol grip shotgun, .45-caliber Springfield, Lever-action
Winchester, 12-gauge Remington Sportsman 48,
9mm Kurz Sig Sauer P232, WASR-10 Century Arms semiautomatic,
.38-caliber Smith & Wesson M36, Springfield 9mm,
.40-caliber Ruger, 9mm Glock 19,
.223-caliber Bushmaster XM16, .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson
Model 29, .45-caliber Hi-Point, Winchester
1300 pump-action, .357 Magnum, 9mm Beretta,
AK-47 Romarm Cugir, Izhmash Salga-12 semiautomatic—
And he has all the special bullets each particular clip or magazine
can hold, and all the modifications, the bump stocks, the silencers.
His frustration is tied, tight as a wet knot,
around the scapegoat of his hate. He will snap. Soon.
Any day. And everyone who knows him will be shocked.
When they hose the blood from the concrete and it runs
A second time, in cold water, into the sewer drain.
He was so normal.
After the globs of flesh are cleaned from the tiles or the tiles replaced
After the building itself is demolished to try to erase
what cannot be erased
in proxy the memory of slaughtered innocents. Meanwhile
Both sides of the gun debate debate about guns
nailing dry rot over mold, gluing toast on walls sprayed with holes
to cover the holes that won’t be covered.
You’ll never know why.
You could have stopped it. There was a time.
But now you can’t,
You cannot stop
The next one. It's too late for that.
Though it has not yet happened
It is already too late. It’s coming.
Yes, you could have stopped it. Years ago you could have
Stopped standing by, flinging words.
But not now. He has his guns and his hate all ready.
The next one’s guaranteed. We don’t know precisely where,
(two more--make that three--have occurred since I started this poem).
Maybe your own small town, maybe your little neighborhood, maybe your city.
Probably not. Probably the next will be in someone else’s town
Like all the last ones were. They’ll get around to yours eventually.
No, we don’t know when exactly. But it’s happening so
Regularly, we can use the past to plot a graph
That brings us pretty close.
About two months from now. No more than that.
And then one after that—about two months further hence.
It’s too late for that one too.
The guns you did not stop before are out there now,
and the silencers and the rounds.
and the hate.
All these neighbors waiting to die.