Originally published at: https://integrallife.com/brave-new-future/
These days, discourse about intelligent robots—thinking machines—is as widespread as discourse about zombies. Both have been the subjects of recent bestsellers, which are the basis of two forthcoming films. Popular culture’s depiction of humankind under attack by either the undead or by the never alive (autonomous machines) suggests widespread anxiety about and fascination with technical developments that may generate a future out of human control (as if the future ever were under our control!)
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The goal, as a human, is to achieve levels of awareness that cannot be replicated by AI. I believe that I myself am already there. I’m not worried at all that AI will ever be able to “wake up” to a significant level.
This is why I get a bit discouraged by what I judge to be a prioritization of th ILC on “Growing Up” - what I call “Thinking Up Stuff” and very little on Waking Up and even less on Cleaning Up.
Yes, AI will be able to out think us and even create endless models and map of everything. I don’t doubt an AI would have been able to think Up AQAL, and will probably come up with a better model at some point.
But here’s the thing - when you turn the power of the computer off, it will not increase in awareness as happens with the human mind. Near Death Experiences when the brain dies for a time, deep hallucinogenic states when the intellect stops for hours, and deep meditative states where the practitioner stops the mind for a second or for hours - all produce experiences of increased awareness and consciousness in the human being. Often these people approach a nondual understanding or other awareness.
If you try to replicate that with a computer you’ll just get a computer that’s turned off lol.
On the other side, yes 99% of humanity live at a level of existence that they could be replaced by current technology.
The younger generation have coined these people “NPC’s” because they act in a limited format, as if they only have a few hundred lines of dialogue and are unable to operate beyond those limits. There’s even a genre that calls them “glitched” for example, when they are tweaking.
In youtube do a search for “Oblivion NPC” to get a sampling.
Sometimes the NPCs of computer games are programmed to be much more interesting than rl NPCs. Some game NPCs have thousands of lines of unique dialoge while many rl NPCs have less than 500 lol
So while AI could already replace 99%of humans at the level of awareness they currently are, AI will never be able to achieve the existence of a fully actualized Human
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