WHY AI? Making God : Metaphysics, Science and Technology.
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.
Despite its presentation and history as highly technical project, the desire to create an Artificial Super Intelligence has metaphysics enfolded within it. Metaphysics is derived from the Greek meaning meta- ‘beyond’, physics, the physical. It is the examination and study of the fundamental nature of reality, including being or existence, time and space, cause and effect, identity. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle called metaphysics the ‘first philosophy’ as it was concerned primarily with A priori knowledge. A priori knowledge is independent from any experience, examples are things like mathematics, and deduction from pure reason. Science is concerned mainly with A posteriori knowledge. A posteriori knowledge consists of empirical facts that can’t be deduced by reason alone. Science is A posteriori as it’s based on measuring, observation, experimentation. However a scientific experiment requires a hypothesis, often arrived at through A priori knowledge, which itself defines what is worth observing. The experiment, the observation also requires apparatus, a system of categorisation and measurement, and a particular observer. This means that scientific investigations and trajectories are often motivated by ontological questions. Ontology is the study of being, an investigation of what types of entities exist, how they are grouped into categories, and how they are related to one another on the most fundamental level. It is a type of A prioi knowledge contained within metaphysics. In turn Metaphysics is contained within any human intellectual enterprise that includes amongst its aims the pursuit of truth, from art to religion, to spirituality. Science also has metaphysics contained within it.
Science is conceived of as something that grants us access to the truth, reveals the real. Technology is deliberately positioned as applied science, something based on the truths discovered through current scientific method. This makes technology appear as the true path of human development ‘following the science’. The mixing up of ‘science and technology’ is is a very useful myth for technologists and engineers, as it can justify actions in the economic, social and cultural realms, by referring to the ‘higher truth’ of science. How this ‘higher truth’ of science itself emerged is the result of particular social and cultural conditions that took place in Europe leading to the enlightenment, which led to modernity.
The modern idea of progress itself is a result of the Christian belief in perfection. This was clearly expressed by the founding fathers of modern science in the 17th century. Philosopher and Clergyman Joseph Glanville believed that Adam, the first man, was blessed with superhuman sight and that “his natural optics . . she’d him much of Coelestial magnificence and bravery without Gallileos tube”. Before the expulsion from the garden of Eden it was believed that immortal man could inspect the universe without the requirement of technological prothesis such as telescopes. Francis Bacon, known as the father of empiricism, postulated that through science we could reclaim this state of perfection, and remove the ‘original sin’. Bacon also believed that the earth was approaching an apocalyptic moment, judgement day would be upon us; man would enter heaven by becoming perfect through scientific progress. In the new testament book of revelations only the pious and good get to escape the apocalypse and enter the perfect utopia of ‘New Jerusalem’. As modernity developed the idea of earthly progress through reason, then Bacon believed that technology and science would enable humanity to build a ‘New Jerusalem’ right here on earth, perfecting ourselves and our societies.
This idea has carried through the centuries. In 1932, Lewis Mumford, the American theorist and sociologist wrote the remarkable book Technics and Civilisation. He noted how industrialisation and mechanisation had become “the religion of the machine”, promising to deliver the path to a better life and society, with the necessity of invention and innovation as it’s dogma. Mumford notes how “If science presented an ultimate reality, then the machine was . . . the true embodiment of everything that was excellent”. This ‘religion of technology’ is something that transcends politics, with those across the political spectrum subscribe to it’s dogma — promising people a better, happier and fulfilled life through technology.
Nature as imperfect
Many researchers attempting to create Artificial Super Intelligence, see humans as imperfect, flawed subjects. Nick Bostrom is a philosopher and founder of the future of humanity institute at Oxford University. He has thought deeply about and is concerned with the development of AI and it’s implications for the future of human society and life itself. He explored these ideas in the book ‘Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies’ (2014). However in this book Bostrum echoes Bacons distrust and suspicion of nature as fundamentally flawed, something to be improved on when he states: “Nature might be a great experimentalist, but one who would never pass muster with an ethics review board — contravening the Helsinki Declaration and every norm of moral decency, left, right, and centre”. This elides the fact that current technological practices have bought about the annihilation of multiple species, environmental degradation and death — equally it is unlikely that as well as nature, technology as a whole would ‘pass muster’ with Bostrums imagined ‘ethics review board’. Despite this litany of technological failures, the view persists amongst technologists and engineers that nature is imperfect, full of technical faults, and needs to be fixed. They believe humans have evolved with inherent errors, and developing AI is seen as a chance to create something ‘better’. The most advanced machine of our age is AI, for AI engineers ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) is an improvement on nature, its perfection. This position, that we now know all there is to know about nature, can now write if off as flawed and ‘old fashioned’ and invent something ‘better’, is a staggering act of hubris.
All is Measurable
Another example of the Christian religious imperative leading to scientific methodology, comes from the middle ages. Back then monks had to keep ‘canonical hours’ praying up to 9 times over a 24 hour period, at regular intervals, throughout the daylight and nighttime hours. To ensure correct observation of these hours, in 14th century in Europe, the mechanical clock was invented. The mechanical clock enabled the ordering of life outside of natural cycles or biological needs. The machine allowed the monks to become closer to god, more pious, providing a more accurate connection to the heavenly realm. A ‘higher’ more abstract, spiritual aspect beyond the everyday became more accessible; the perfection of heaven grew closer with use of a mechanical device. Lewis Mumford notes that
“the clock, moreover, is a piece of power-machinery whose “product” is seconds and minutes: by its essential nature it disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences”.
By the 17th century, in 1687, Isaac Newton’s The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was published. It demonstrated how it was possible to explain and predict the movement of all bodies in the universe. Physics itself has has since shown the universe to be far more complex than Newton’s equations suggest, having developed the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics; which are currently unreconcilable into a single universal ‘theory of everything’ to describe reality. But Newtons lasting legacy was that he described how the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. Since then repeated attempts over the centuries to reduce biology, economics and psychology to neat mathematical equations have discovered that these realms of human activity are far more complex. But back in the 17th century Newtons work led many to an understanding of maths as that which provides universal objective truth.
Mechanical Philosophy and Metaphysics: The God-shaped hole
The mathematical discoveries of Newton’s were a key part of the development in the Seventeenth Century of the thesis of mechanical philosophy by the virtuosi in Europe. Descartes, Gassini, Boyle, and others devised a conception of nature as a complex machine, with God as the ‘cosmic clockmaker’. Concerned more with ‘how’ than ‘why’ the task of the natural philosopher was to describe and explore the mechanics of the universe. Science was concerned with mechanics, leaving the metaphysical to God.
The conception of man as the pinnacle of God’s creation was maintained, nature was created by God to serve man. There was faith in an underlying natural order to the universe. The natural philosophers believed that it is only our restricted human understanding that prevents us from seeing and understanding the universe as God does. This is why we don’t yet understand everything, but with more scientific research, by reducing these restrictions we would reveal the underlying universal truth.
This idea of a restricted human understanding caused by a biological and physical limitation in our intellect is a motivational aspect for the creation of ASI , as it enables us to see what we can’t comprehend due to our limitations. The belief is that a higher truth can be discovered by an entity that can gather, absorb and process vast amounts of data in omnipotent god-like ways beyond human capacity and understanding. AI researchers believe that maths still provides an objective and true route to describing and achieving human level and beyond general intelligence. This super-intelligent entity, could, with enough data, ultimately create a model of the universe, which could help us to understand it.
Computation is developed from mathematics and is the method through which AI operates. For the ancient Greeks the universe was the cosmos — meaning order. Aristotle believed that the universe has an inherent telos, goal or aim, which caused it to lead to intelligence. Computation is the creation of complex ordered systems, and their increased complexity is seen by some technologists as part of the Aristotelian telos of the cosmos. For these researchers as advanced complex computation approaches the complexity of the universe, it will inevitably lead to ASI, in the same way that for Aristotle the complex ordered universe led to human intelligence. Technology is seen as having an inherent teleology, leading to ASI.
Artificial Super Intelligence takes the place that God occupied for the 17th century mechanical philosophers, but it is a god we could communicate with, chat to who could provide answers to our questions. This is the expressed purpose of chat GPT — an AI that can provide answers to all our questions, which is why it’s release caused such a stir, as it appeared to be more knowledgable than any one person could be, and people hoped it would reveal the hidden truth of our world.
Religious hope in salvation through God, has become enfolded in technology and now leads towards the aim of creating a god-like ASI. With many of the worlds problems, such as climate change, which is caused by our current variety of technological development, hope is placed in the invention or development of new technologies to solve the problems bought about by existing technology. The creation of a god-like Artificial Super Intelligence, that could think up new technologies and solutions to our global problems like climate change, poverty, and others that we can and can’t conceive of, comes to be seen as the ultimate answer.
