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.