Why AI? Magical Technology - Doing the work of the gods
Our current technological trajectory toward creating an Artificial Super Intelligence is seen by many engineers and entrepreneurs as the next step of ‘evolution’ of life on earth. The engineers involved in creating AI believe there is no other developmental trajectory, yet they express deep fears over its use and deployment.
In this series of articles and essays “Why AI?” I will conduct a cultural archeology, peeling back the layers of history to investigate how engineers are working hard to create ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence), something more powerful and intelligent than humanity, that could potentially destroy us, and why this is seen as desirable, or at least an inevitability.
Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950 the pioneer of digital computing, Alan Turing, in his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. However, this was not a new and unique question, but one people have been asking for millennia. Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus, who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus, weapons and armour used by the Olympians — such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows, Achilles armour. He was a god who created magical technology. He manufactured automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, these included golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers who would never tire, perform their duties well, the ideal servants, slaves. Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body, yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology served, augmented and empowered the gods.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people.
From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of humans to use technology to become like ancient gods, creating a machine of human-level intelligence. However ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a magicians fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata were long used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, they relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking. Over the intervening centuries since Hephaestus created his magical masterpieces of engineering on Olympus, down in the earthly realms technological development has now reached a stage where the long held desire to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to be within the reach of humans. This feat is now attempted, not through mechanics and copying the appearance of nature, but through computation. Computer engineers are now working on AI that can then be used to further develop an ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence).
In the first century Hero of Alexandria also describes in Automata, the first vending machine — which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technics allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but technics. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm. The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology is reflected in the claims by the developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all more power and wealth.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what is inanimate become animate. Ray Kurzweil, the technologist and avowed transhumanist, states that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. Kurzweil explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. Technology as computation is seen as being able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia, to take unthinking matter and manipulate it so it can become endowed with intelligence, through the creation of HLMI (Human Level Machine Intelligence) and beyond that ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence). The power to enable this transubstantiation occur comes from the ‘incantation’ of computer code. The calculations required are enabled by the distributed processing power and computational infrastructure that is now referred to as ‘The Cloud’.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. The material technology of the internet is made invisible; the ‘internet’ is presented as consisting of pure data, information, uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’. Far from being ephemeral clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy, and creates massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world, and data centres are hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Google likes to hide its data centres. This ‘ugly’ physical infrastructure is hidden so as to make our interactions with technology seem more magical ‘frictionless’ and amazing. We now inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computational activity that takes place on, and consists of physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth (some current estimates are that by 2025 AI will use more energy than the entire human workforce). ‘The Cloud’ also serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit the cloud, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. Artificial superintelligence is viewed as something that exists and comes from and within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, superior, more pure, heavenly.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the development and application of these supernatural powers was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. Many of those who develop AI view it as the ultimate engineering challenge of our age; a noble quest to surpass nature, through using human skill - and create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. The final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating more advanced technological marvels.
