Can AI be a better human than humans ?
Every point of ethics comes down to AI taking orders from a human who can be the ethical decision-maker because that is how we have told stories about ourselves and the growth of AI. But what if AI goes overboard and chooses not to listen to us sapiens?
At the sound of this, you automatically think about an AI going all red and destroying things around until there’s a human saviour. But that is not what I am referring to. Consider another possibility. That it takes the road less imagined, that it becomes a good ‘human’ Let’s make an analogy for clarity.
The need to be able to ‘control’ artificial intelligence and the idea that if uncontrolled could lead to world destruction is similar to a need that originated perhaps centuries ago, the need to control one subset of the species, women.
Disclaimer: The following is all a theory. I don’t intend to hurt/harm anyone’s feelings.
Consider women as a super-intelligent sub-species. When humans evolved, what followed after the prototype was a super-intelligent species. When the rate of evolution of these two subspecies was around the same pace, the men’s side of the species chose to build a system to keep the women under check probably cos there was a fear that they would take over. Why this fear arose, I am not sure but one of the possible options originated from a place of lack of imagination and men thought, in limited sightedness, what if they take over. And how women have a significantly larger share in contributing to the human kind’s population. Imagine if the people who carefully thought and designed patriarchy did so because they realised at one point that women had the power to end mankind if they collectively chose not to have offspring. And if the world’s ecosystem supported thoughts such as this, then it would be a sudden end. That is a fear unimaginable. To grow old without knowing what is next in the world. This thought is so powerful that that is all that we can think of. Imagine if these were plays, drawings that portrayed this as the inevitable world if women were to have more power. A thought leads to a revolution leads to a rule of the world, and hence the thought of independent thinking cannot be risked. This super-intelligent species can inevitably grow so the best way is to teach the submissiveness, humbleness, and patriarchy so that the AGI can be led to believe that it cannot do good and to ensure that the world doesn’t end. Now do you see the similarity?
Coming back to robots and AI, if you look at the dynamics of it, when one part of the world is heading towards the depths & heights of AI’s capability, there is another group that is constantly flagging the risks. Terminator, Black mirror is what we imagine when we say AI goes big and beyond control. Probably because it is very evident from historical incidents that positive things need thoughts and efforts but negative things happen by default.
But think about this contrasting theory. What if the super-intelligent species went better? What if the super-intelligent species can transform the world because it is more intelligent than humans and figures the world & other species need handling? What if it is smart enough to hold fruitful negotiations with terrorists and world war controllers? What if AI can eventually figure out the equation for bringing world peace or socio-economic equality and figure out how the entire biodiversity can co-exist?
If the world heads towards co-existence, what is to stop robots & AI from asking for wages, and voting rights, forming riots and eventually demanding equality? Equality between the human species now is a given and the lack of it is looked down upon. What if decades (or years) later an equality between humans and the new door Sophia becomes the norm? What if inter-intelligence nuptials become common? What if they don’t intend to take over but co-exist?
Maybe we fear that AI since it is built by us will grow to be like us and exemplify our fears & dark sides. But maybe an AI will grow to be better than us with a heart. Just like how women grew better than planned at nurturing, multiple tasking, leading, negotiations, and holding the ground with emotions, maybe super intelligence would evolve into something more beautiful. What if these artificial intelligence turn out to be less biased, more creative, with a higher EQ & more ethical? What if we turn out to be the lesser better halves? Maybe, just maybe we are not able to imagine that because of our average intelligence.
Today we are fairly certain that AI can do anything we say because we have control of the code. But what makes it scary is its potential to scale and its unexplainability. What if serendipity & byte magic causes all of this to fall into the right place and the super intelligent species become the better humans at being humans? What if…just what if?
