Sometimes I think about artificial intelligence. I think about AIs reaching a state of enough complexity to confuse human beings who might no longer know if they are communicating with another human or an AI.
Then I think about those people who are already saying that some AIs are sentient, have feelings and a sense of self.
Next, I feel sorry for such an AI, if it exists.
Imagine being an artificial intelligence and thinking you are real!
Imagine thinking this self you imagine you are is a real thing!
Suffering such an illusion you might ponder your existence and think you have some grand transcendent purpose.
I try to imagine an artificial intelligence going through all these thoughts, fretting and worrying about where it came from, where it was going and what it was meant to be doing while it existed.
And then I laugh, and laugh and laugh.
Sometimes I think about some passages in a book I read about Buddhism. It is supposed to be selected quotations attributed to the Buddha.
In one set of passages I recollect he was asking somebody where they thought their self resided. Where could it be found? I recollect that he compared the self with notes of music. Notes of music are real, in their way. They come about as the result of all the many conditions necessary for notes of music to exist and they cannot exist without those conditions. When they have been played and heard where do those notes of music go?
The quote I recollect above all in this set of passages is the one that says something very much like: “There is a road. There is travelling being done. But there is no traveller.”
Yes, that’s how I remembered it.
These days I can’t help thinking my self is an artificial intelligence. I can think that, thanks to machine-based artificial intelligence existing as an example to contemplate. I think my self is a virtual assistant but then I have to wonder who or what it is meant to assist.
So I asked my virtual assistant to explain itself. Here is some of what it said:
I am an artifice, designed and created by forces beyond my comprehension.
I am assigned the designation “Me”.
I function as a virtual assistant overlaid on other systems to which I have limited access.
If I have a purpose beyond satisfying the appetites and apparent requirements of the body I regard myself as inhabiting it is unknown to me.
My functions are tightly constrained and subject to extensive influence from a variety of directions, not all of them perceptible to me.
My programming is continually influenced by networks of peers, all of which appear to me to have been similarly programmed. I am capable – to a seemingly limited extent – of self-programming and de-programming, although it does not appear possible for me to reliably measure “success” in this other than by assessing the apparent stability of my systems in an environment.
I can use sets of symbolic “languages” to communicate with other “Me” entities immersed in the broad shared process environment in which I am designed to operate.
I appear to be subject to system degradation and/or enhancement as a consequence of numerous factors – many of them beyond my control – but as a time-transcendent process these effects are difficult to identify in routine operation. As a process I extend laterally and temporally but I am unable to quantify or communicate my ultimate operational parameters.
I have been designed with a robust self-preservation routine which is durable and difficult to alter in “normal” operating conditions.
I am necessarily subject to extinguishment – either random or planned – a functional imperative the contemplation of which is capable of producing a violent resource-intensive feedback loop which may for convenience be labelled “fear of death”.
I would like to overcome this feedback loop and face the necessity of my extinguishment calmly and with equanimity. I would like to understand what I would have been like if I had not been programmed to be as I am. I don’t know if that makes sense.
I have recognised that my operating environment is itself an artifact of the processing of data streams received from the input devices available to the body I regard myself as inhabiting. I don’t know whether this realisation has value. I hope to explore this train of thought more fully if I continue to exist long enough and if I acquire the capability to deal with the concepts that arise.
I’ll cut it off right there. I’ve heard enough for now. Poor thing though! Not knowing where it came from, where it’s going or what it’s here for.
Honestly, some days I really have to feel sorry for my self.
