One of the most relevant aspects in the great universe of digital transformation concerns artificial intelligence (AI), more specifically its development and its connection with human intelligence (IH).
In this matter, the literature has already established the distinction between a "weak artificial intelligence", translated into a simple mechanical link to human intelligence, and a "strong artificial intelligence", translated into a true hybridization with human intelligence and on the way to another philosophy of humanity .
In this regard, my last two readings left me with a bitter taste and ambivalent feelings. The book “La Guerre des Intelligences”, by Laurent Alexandre (2017), contrasts human intelligence with artificial intelligence and leaves some questions about this cohabitation hanging in the air. “The myth of singularity”, by Jean-Gabriel Ganascia (2017), decodes the myth associated with artificial intelligence and clarifies some of the previous fears. Here are some brief thoughts by the way.
The line of technological convergence
Everything suggests that we will have a “broad future” ahead of us. The great myth "NBIC" (nanotechnology, biotechnology, informatics, cognitive sciences) of technological convergence seems willing to prove that the human being is pure transition, a gigantic neuronal machine where the process of evolution prevails over the human form at every moment: do being natural to being improved, from being bionic to being post-human, that is, from humanism to transhumanism and from there to post-humanism.
In this context of technological convergence, would we be available to alienate our rational intelligence, transferring it to external technological devices, and our emotional intelligence in social networks properly programmed and conditioned for our own comfort?
If the answer is in the affirmative, we will be in the realm of artificial intelligence and its multiple augmented realities and, perhaps, on the brink of a great opportunity for the apotheosis of the spirit and the realm of creation in all its dimensions. But is it really like that?
In line with technological convergence, a new territory where the automatic and algorithmic society of the digital revolution prevails, individuals are increasingly considered "temporary aggregates of raw data", that is, an object and a quantifiable profile and successively reconfigured to an industrial scale.
We will be part of an "extractive model" in which Internet citizens, users of networks and platforms, are producers and suppliers of a gigantic mass of personal information, much of it subliminal, in a dizzying and hypnotic informational environment, which has as much of benignity as of toxicity. All in the name and for the purposes of the hypercompetitive and performative society in which we live.
In this automatic society and technological convergence, algorithms are a kind of cognitive prosthesis, which provoke not only the externalization of knowledge, but also the proletarianization of many professional and intellectual classes. The society of technological convergence is, therefore, a highly paradoxical society, with countless political and social conflicts looming in the near horizon.
2045, artificial intelligence and the myth of singularity
We live in the time of techno-prophecies, the leaders of large digital platforms being the preaching prophets of our time. For the rest, the value chain of large platforms is increasingly clear: the prophets preach the great technological promises, the market of promises becomes a necessity and becomes a market for innovations, the future is mythologized in singularity and , soon after, we are captured by the apotheotic determinism of the great platforms, where the religion of eternity already reigns. And in this sequence we even already have a mythical date (2045), called "the point of singularity", so that we can affirm in the media space this true apotheosis which is the "passage to the other side", that is, the transition from humanism to the transhumanism and post-humanism.
And why such a promising technological future accompanied by a ticket to eternity? Why is it absolutely necessary to continue to fuel the bubble of large capitalization stocks in order to recover extraordinarily large investments and convince venture capital companies that it is essential to renew financing and continue to bet on the large technological market of artificial intelligence.
In this long arrow of time, we are beings in permanent transition: from man of "natural evolution" to augmented man, from augmented man to transhumanism (weak artificial intelligence), from transhumanism to the point of singularity (the passage to strong artificial intelligence) , from transhumanism to posthumanism (a new human species, a hybrid product of biotechnology). It is as if life were a liquid category where process superimposes form and substance.
In the words of Laurent Alexandre we are in a kind of competition or war of intelligences. In this race for biotechnological productivism, humans would be irretrievably left behind and the exponential capacity of machines would have no comparison with the limitations of the poor biological beings that we are. To this extent, the human being would be a kind of machine with distinct components and structures, a complex whole that is not capable of true freedom, that is, a pre-determinism observable in its neuronal systems.
Let's say that with this future “so promising and performative” nothing will be able to prevent us from taking the path of God in search of eternity.
The unsustainable lightness of spirit
In the realm of artificial intelligence and its multiple augmented realities, the unsustainable lightness of the spirit is what is coming, a great opportunity for the apotheosis of the spirit and the realm of creation in all its dimensions. And if, beyond the point of singularity, there is a great spiritual undertaking and even a liberation from our biological roots, towards a new religiosity and spirituality, including a new human species with another anthropology, morality, ethics and aesthetics ?
We have no answer to this question, but after this dizzying foray into artificial intelligence, it is necessary to return to the principle of “fair measure” and try to ask the right questions in the relationship between human intelligence and artificial intelligence that is, after all, the heart of the matter.
Intelligence, as we understand it, is essentially the result of crossing a biological basis with a symbolic and cultural complex impossible to be artificially reproduced. The myth of machine intelligence is only their ability to simulate human intelligence, as technical and logical autonomy is not to be confused with human rational and emotional intelligence. We are the ones who invent the code and it is within a certain language code that machines and artificial intelligence work. They can improve learning mechanisms and categorize information, but they don't change the code they work with.
In an ethically responsible and politically informed human society, the best principles are still prudence and moderation in the face of an increasingly performative future when it comes to technology. We are conscious beings endowed with intention, intuition, reflection and feelings and, on an ethical level, the limits of consciousness and awareness of limits is our standard norm and also the basic rule for dealing with the relations between IH and AI. Ultimately, artificial intelligence can even simulate some of these attributes, but the possibility of looking ridiculous is even more imminent. The same is true for the self-regulation of automatic or even autonomous systems.
Final Notes
What if in this human society, being ethically responsible and politically informed is actually the hardest road? How can we emphasize the virtues of prudence and moderation when they offer us, in counterpoint, the hope of eternity and immortality? What if the democratic foundation of the institutions on which those virtues rest is dangerously threatened by populist movements and hard, illiberal democracies? And if, in this context, human society chooses to choose the shortest path, the one that will take us to the “city of angels” through the passage of transhumanism and post-humanity?
If so, then we will have to ask which is the intelligent machine that suits us best, the one that will make us happy and accompany us for a lifetime!!
Let's agree that human intelligence starts at a disadvantage in this long marathon of intelligences. In any case, if we want an ethical regulation and an ethics of regulation, we cannot let ourselves be defeated by the war of intelligences, by the death of death, by the genomic editing of humanity or by implants in brain-computational interfaces. We have no alternative. We will have to go to the battlefield and recreate the theory of communicational action in the public space in the name of the “strange order of things” (Damasio, 2017), as our advantage continues to be this favorable and unfavorable interaction of feeling and reason that led human beings to create culture, art, moral systems, justice, science, political economy and governance.
Finally, in an ethically responsible and politically informed human society the right questions seem to be the following: what are the complementarities and limits that are imposed between a conscious IH and a logically subordinate AI, how to share, with justice and equity, the value created by AI in terms of wealth and employment, how to prevent "artificial mistakes and stupidity" from causing fortuitous events and serious collateral damage, how to prevent some forms of AI from becoming accomplices to cybercrime and the insecurity of individuals, peoples and nations, how to prevent the public space from being filled with fear and hopelessness about its own future and, from the moment we are all or believe to be immortal, how to prevent algorithmic governance and Big Data administration from causing more discrimination, bias and social exclusion, a real civil war of the intelligences?
In an ethically responsible and politically informed human society, the cohabitation between various forms of AI needs an appropriate institutional framework, hence the need for a strong litigation of responsibility before arbitration bodies, regulatory and judicial bodies.
In the digital and automatic age of technological convergence, opening Pandora's Box or rubbing Aladdin's Lamp can be a high-risk operation. So beware of the trap of digital narcissism. Let's not let artificial intelligence take over our rational intelligence, let's not let the emotional art of human relationships be exchanged for the caricature of social bricolage, let's renew the precautionary principle and the ethics of care, let's live everyday life in our communities offline and whenever necessary, activate the “right to disconnect”.
Author António Covas is a full professor at the University of Algarve and a PhD in European Affairs from the Free University of Brussels
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