The Internet of Beings versus the Internet of Things
With the rapid rise of breakthrough technologies such as Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things it seems that not only are we racing towards the future ever more quickly but that the future is also racing towards us, effectively doubling the pace of its arrival.
With some justification many are sounding the alarm, asking that we pause to consider the ethical, cultural and philosophical dimensions of these advances as opposed to blindly running towards them without questioning how they may positively or negatively affect society and even, perhaps, our very human nature. The latest addition to this rising chorus of concern is an open letter from Stephen Hawkins, Elon Musk and others asking the industry to approach artificial intelligence with caution and to focus it on maximising social benefit. The ongoing debate around ‘data surveillance’ following the Snowden revelations highlights that at best we are at a crossroad. Will the Internet and its associated innovations usher in a more democratic, humanistic and meritocratic era or will it simply accelerate the coming of a more totalitarian, inevitable dystopia? Arguably never before in human history have the stakes been higher yet ironically never before have every day citizens had as much power to determine which of those roads we go down. Citizen empowerment may appear subdued but the truth is that it has never been greater or more precarious to the status quo. Change is afoot and very few organisations, systems or social constructs will survive the coming decade without dramatic overhaul and transformation. Seventy percent of the Fortune 1000 companies listed in 2004 for example, no longer exist.
Gartner’s recently published, highly respected Hype Cycle calls out Digital Humanism, the idea of ‘people as the central focus in the manifestation of digital businesses and digital workplaces, achieving things previously impossible’ as the key technology trend of 2015.
With such sea changes in motion the time seems ripe to explore the idea of a new type of Internet, an Internet of connected things that enables people to connect with themselves, other beings and their environment in a more human-centric and ecologically holistic way, achieving things previously unimaginable; an Internet of Beings.
To understand the need for such an Internet we must first look at the concepts of intelligence and reasoning. At a high level it is safe to say that there are two kinds of intelligence that we know of currently: biological intelligence, intelligence exhibited by living beings and artificial intelligence, intelligence exhibited by machines. To understand the difference between each it is helpful to look at two primary but different types of reasoning, deductive and inductive reasoning.
Deductive reasoning is direct and calls for very unambiguous and absolute logic. A classic example is as follows:
All men are mortal,
Socrates is a man,
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
Deductive reasoning is the foundation of modern science and is known as the empirical or scientific method.
Inductive reasoning on the other hand is much less absolute and is more inferred than direct. An example of inductive logic is as follows:
All biological life forms that we know of depend on liquid water to exist. It is therefore likely that any new biological life form that we may discover will depend on liquid water to exist.
Unlike deductive reasoning inductive arguments are not absolute and allow for the possibility of their conclusions to be false even if their premises are true. They lead to strong and weak inferences as opposed to true and false conclusions. From these inferences lateral, imaginative leaps can be made which can be useful and lead to general theories on how things work, which can then be empirically proven or disproven using deductive reasoning. A great example of this is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin used inductive reasoning to come up with the theory itself. Science then used deductive reasoning to generate testable hypothesis to evaluate and eventually prove his theory. Survival of the most fit for purpose is in itself inductive reasoning par excellence, deductively verified with empirical evidence.
Some argue that deductive reasoning is male and inductive female. Deductive reasoning is more of a left-brain activity closely associated with action, syllogistic thinking, logic, precise mathematics and language. Inductive reasoning however is more right brain, associated with intuition, philosophy, creativity, image processing and feeling. Emotional intelligence for example is much more inductive than deductive.
It is also safe to say that nature as a whole, in managing our planet’s eco system and the mechanics of our physical beings employs more of an inductive logic than a deductive one. As living beings, humans are definitely capable of sophisticated deductive reasoning and nature is also clearly deductive but the complexities of the variables involved in managing life call for a more flexible, variable and less absolute logical framework which inductive reasoning accords hence why biological intelligence seems to have more of an inductive operating bias than a deductive one. Inductive reasoning also allows a lot of complex information to be processed rapidly to lead to conclusions without the need for absolute truths. “Is the movement over there by the trees a potential predator and do I stay and fight or flee?” is the type of inductive reasoning that animals deploy on a regular basis as a means of survival.
Machines on the other hand work best with deductive logic. Computers are built on silicon transistor systems that at their most basic level are mechanisms for answering and responding to yes/no queries. With programing we can combine these queries in sophisticated ways and add richer logic pathways such as and/or choices but at the most basic level computers are simply responding to yes/no queries. This is the essence of deductive logic and as such is why artificial intelligence at its fundamental level is based on syllogistic, deductive reasoning. That said computers are increasingly able to solve deductive queries more effectively and efficiently than humans. It’s simply a matter of having the right rules and processing power. Hence why computers are great at complex mathematics and games like chess. Where computers struggle however is when inductive thinking is required. Fuzzy logic and the like try to address this but at the end of the day they still take a deductive approach to problem solving only they add variable ranges and probability triggers to imitate a kind of inductive reasoning.
It is for this reason that machines are unable to carry out tasks that require high levels of emotional intelligence as documented in “The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization”, which concludes that jobs requiring creativity and emotional intelligence are less likely to be replaced by automation as it is difficult to use machines to make decisions that require these distinctly human traits.
So in short machines are better are deductive, syllogistic reasoning than people and people are better at inductive, creative reasoning than machines. The primary reason for this is that people can feel. Not simply sense but feel. Emotions triggered by a song, film, photograph or painting are examples of such feelings. A computer cannot, at least currently, feel such things. It can be taught to register them, simulate them and perhaps even be conscious of and imitate them but not feel them. Consciousness however, is not the same as feeling. Even with current advances and the perhaps inevitable, advent of conscious machines it is hard to imagine computers transcending consciousness to being able to feel.
Feeling on the other hand does not necessarily require high levels of intelligence. Most advanced animals have feelings. Certainly all mammals do. A super computer even if it does become conscious is unlikely however to be able to truly love. Yet conversely we have no doubt whatsoever that our pets for example love us devotedly. We do not have to teach them to do this nor do we have to prove it, they simply do and we simply feel it. Feeling in some contexts is a more sophisticated way of processing complex information quickly than thinking. That’s not to underplay the importance of thinking whose power is evident with the achievements of modern man but intuition and feeling have perhaps been as key to our success as has been our ability to think. This led Einstein for one to famously conclude that imagination is more important than knowledge.
Emotions are in effect information and feelings are information processing systems that we have not for the time being at least, been able to find artificial ways to replicate. To trigger and measure emotions yes but not replicate or artificially process them in the way that a feeling being does. That is in part because feelings are based more on inductive than deductive reasoning. Feelings are organic and are rooted in our biological heritage, residing deeply within our genetic programming. It is probable that feelings have gone hand in hand with the survival of life on our planet but it also fair to say that feelings in modern man’s world serve many higher purposes beyond simple survival in the basic evolutionary sense. The critical point here however is that feelings connect us with the rest of the biological world. Feelings connect us with other living creatures and other living beings.
It is our ability to think and feel that makes us human and we cannot be human without doing both. Our ability to think and act on complex, intelligent thoughts is what separates us from the animal kingdom but it is our ability to feel that re-connects us with it.
As ecology and technology invariably continue to converge ever more rapidly the importance of our connection with our biological ecosystem will become increasingly important. And as we start to connect the things and devices of our world to the Internet creating a super network of interconnected things, the need to emotionally connect with our ecological network will become ever more clear and present. Yes the ecological crisis of our planet threatens our very survival but until we feel this threat as opposed to merely think it very little will change. This put simply is human nature. Never underestimate the power of feeling. Which brings us to the crux of the issue.
As we connect our world of devices, artifacts and things into a network with intelligence, massive data sets and utility through Big Data, AI and the Internet of Things we must remember the one golden rule: Things must serve beings and not the other way round. Things and their network of connected things must serve the primary ecosystem, our interconnected network of organic living beings. Or to put it more simply, the Internet of Things must serve the Internet of Beings. As we connect our world and the things within it, it is critical that we connect them with a framework that is centered on the being and not the thing. If beings start to exist to serve things as opposed to things existing to serve beings then we will be in really big trouble and on the road to almost certain doom.
Furthermore as we connect our world we must remember to correctly distinguish between things and beings lest we fall into the equally dangerous trap of treating each other like things as opposed to beings. This is what really lies at the heart of the argument ‘if you are not paying for the service then you are the product being sold.’ The person as the product is the omega point of the person as a thing thesis. That said the human being as a thing is not a new idea. In fact we have been fighting this mindset for the last five centuries at least. We do not immediately recognize it as such because the idea went under a different name historically. To put it bluntly the human being as a product to be bought and sold is the mindset of one seeking to enslave` and all that can come from that approach to categorising people is enslavement.
In a recent discussion between Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media and the activist science fiction author Cory Doctorow on the Internet of Things, Doctorow raised an interesting point. He said that people often talk about the rise of cold, calculated machines threatening to take over the world, but that he didn’t really see the threat from machines. What he did see however were corporations taking on the roles of these cold, inhuman entities trying to enslave mankind. There is perhaps more than a little truth to this.
Corporations, following a similar path to technology, are currently going through an evolution to become better connected and networked entities, that is to become enterprise 2.0 or social enterprises. The next evolutionary step will be for businesses to become conscious. Invariably with the advances in artificial intelligence that organisations like IBM, Google and Facebook are making today it’s not unreasonable to conceive that if machines do achieve any meaningful level of consciousness that enterprise 3.0 companies could also be conscious entities in a very real and tangible way.
Which is why it is so important that we begin the work now of helping things, like corporations become more like beings, feeling and emotionally engaging with society and our living biological ecosystem harmoniously. The Internet of Beings is a framework with which we can begin such programming and teaching. With such a model we could start to make things function a bit more like beings if in no other way than by simply being more sensitive to the needs of beings and our bio ecosystem as a whole and prioritising the primary ecosystem’s ability to survive and thrive. And if we place such an idea at the foundation and core of our connected world of things and devices then perhaps one day something magical will happen and a machine may learn to feel.
Maybe true synchronicity lies not in machines becoming conscious but in a confluence of the highest levels of feeling and sensitivity with the pinacle of logical and deductive thinking, essentially converging our artificial and biological intelligence systems into a new complimentary whole. From this a new, connected hyper humanity could perhaps emerge as the most plausible and inevitable evolutionary leap for our species.
Which brings us to the trillion-dollar question: If a machine can become conscious and also learn to feel does it stop being a machine or thing and become a being? Logic would suggest yes. A thing that can think consciously and feel must be acknowledged and treated as a being. Such a being would by default earn the right to be welcomed in fellowship to our community of beings. Any alternative conclusion would ironically be inhuman. Furthermore if artificial intelligence and machine consciousness were predicated on the rule of the primacy of beings and our organic ecosystem then we would have much less to fear from conscious, feeling, mechanical beings.
