On Machines: The Purgatory of Coexistence and Becoming (Final Exam)

1. A future coexistence with technologies, including artificial intelligences, can indeed be both good and bad, like heaven and like hell. This is because, with these great technological advancements comes increased capacity for both good and evil.  Imagine a society in which human psychiatrists and psychologists are replaced with intelligent robotic machines that reply, “I understand” in response to someone’s outpouring of misery and hardships. This was the fear of and this is how a long term future with AI can be hell. On the contrary, imagine a world in which artificial intelligence will be so efficient, that humans really do begin to become the best versions of themselves. This would create a world that is like heaven.

I tend to side with Brian Christian’s idea of a long term future with artificial intelligence that might be comparable to purgatory. While I don’t have personal belief in purgatory, I can visualize how our society will suffer before getting better. Suffering will inherently occur because this level of advancement for artificial intelligence will be against someone else’s will. As artificial intelligence machines become more human like, that group might suffer when the political issue of rights arise.  Suffering will happen not necessarily because artificial intelligence is bad, but because artificial intelligence will likely be so good and so efficient that it could diminish human opportunities. One modern example is the new Amazon operations of drone delivery. Such a development will continue to advance and therefore replace the jobs of many humans. In one sense, this is very negative in a world, in which unemployment is a problem. In another sense, this is very helpful for the privileged human workers to be able to accomplish more complex tasks and reach higher levels of creativity.

While there are several predicted scenarios of either a state of heaven or hell, we won’t really know the outcome until we experience true coexistence with artificial intelligence. When we get to that point, it won’t be all good and it won’t be all bad, but it will likely be much like purgatory in that there will be struggle to work out the kinks that are related to coexistence. Long term coexistence with artificial intelligence won’t be much different than things are now because we are experiencing the advantages and disadvantages of technological advancements.

iRobot, in my opinion, perfectly illustrates all three perspectives. The capacity for the evil was shown in the moment when the newer robots begin to destroy the older robots and also began to rebel against humans, under the control of one main system of artificial intelligence. The long term future experience with artificial intelligence can also be like hell with the idea that the development of AI will reach a state in which they are uncontrollable, meaning the risk of negative results increases. The capacity for good was shown in one robot, Sonny, choosing to save the life of humans when he had the option to turn on them. In the end, robots were restored to their initial purpose of serving humanity. There was still room to be skeptical of coexistence with A.I., but in general it was acceptable and beneficial.

3. In The Most Human Human, Brian Christian reminds us that we should be just as worried about humans becoming more machine like as we are about machines becoming more human-like. When considering which one is the greater threat, the line, at first, seemed to be blurred, in my opinion. It seemed that too much of either one can potentially be no good. What I’ve noticed is that, although there are disadvantages to the advancement of artificial intelligence machines, they were created to be more human like, so it is okay and considered a success for them to operate this way. Plug and Pray explores the idea that the purpose of artificial intelligence is to create a more exemplary moral, spiritual, emotional intelligence.  Humans, on the other hand, were not created with the purpose of being machine like, so becoming like this would not be a success and could only be unfruitful.

Humans are indeed on the road to becoming more machine like in their mere dependence on machines. The use of the cellphone is a prime example of how a large amount of human activity involves technology. Many people can barely operate if they are without their phone. The constant connection to our phones, among other forms of technology, is very close to humans becoming the machines. This connection, inherently, isn’t bad; however, it becomes a threat, when the likeness of machines and other forms of artificial intelligence begin to take the place of positive human interactions. In our class discussions, we’ve talked about what it means to be human. One aspect of humanity that was mentioned in Christian’s book that differentiated humans from artificial intelligence was the possession of a soul. Humans becoming machine like and machines becoming more human like both suggest that the machines would increase in number and the sensitivity and other features of the soul would diminish.

It does seem interesting that we fear machines becoming more human like because it suggests that we recognize the danger in something like ourselves becoming more and more powerful. The assumption that there is threat in machines becoming more human like is that machines will assume power over humans, but this is quite exaggerated. There might be a struggle for power, but I don’t see the advancement of artificial intelligence being as harmful as humans becoming more machine like. The more machine like humans are, the less productive society will be because there won’t be a healthy balance of the two types of beings.