The Catalytic Effect of Artificial Intelligence

1. Introduction

The constant scientific and technological progress has presented humanity with new opportunities but also new challenges. Artificial Intelligence is one of the research fields with the greatest promise but which is also accompanied by some level of controversy. 

Some of the scenarios which have been shown in Sci-Fi seem to be getting ever-closer to manifestation. There is a small, but increasing, number of people who are worried that Artificial Intelligence might actually surpass their intelligence and threaten the status-quo of the planet. 

For scientists of the AI field it is just a matter of time before an AI entity actually surpasses human intelligence as a whole. AI supremacy in certain tasks, like pattern recognition, has already been achieved. It may take years or decades to see robotic androids employing AI that surpass human intelligence, but it seems that things will eventually go that way, given the existing progression curve. 

So the question is: What will happen then? Will AI, perhaps coupled with robotics, dominate humans? Will humans merge with technological AI to enhance themselves artificially? Will something else happen? Will a combination of things happen? 

Some say that the supremacy of AI will necessitate the path of human-machine integration as the only way forward. I have a different view and believe that the AI has the potential to challenge humans into evolving towards a better state by themselves. AI could just be one of the catalysts needed for humans to take them out of their complacency and force them to make their next evolutionary leap forward in ways that we do not currently anticipate. 

2. A Personal Revelation

Being a computer geek of the 80's and 90's, I used to consider Artificial Intelligence as something next to impossible and the talk surrounding AI as “sensationalist crap” for impressing non-experts. I mean, sure, computers had all this tremendous computational power but they couldn't think. At most they could act on things that we programmed them to do: IF this happens, THEN do that. A fuzzy-logic type of programming. How could that ever outsmart us? It seemed totally preposterous as a concept. I remember, being the expert in a group, saying that Sci-Fi has it all wrong. These things can't possibly happen. We program the computers to do what we want them to do and that's the end of the story.

Back then, I wasn't really aware that this is not what Artificial Intelligence is all about - but I arrogantly thought I did. I knew programmers were working on it, so what else could they be doing, aside from programming responses (output) of their “AI” program? For example “IF a thermostat reaches X degrees, THEN shut down the thermostat”. Is that “smart” because the program did it, or is it the intelligence of the programmer? For me, it was the programmer all the way. The program was simply dumb. And even if the program was programmed to see two or three steps ahead, it was still “dumb” as it always operated within a set of pre-programmed responses.

My personal revelation into what AI really is, and what it can really do, came after the turn of the century. I was surfing on the Internet and stumbled upon a website of someone who had created a neural network which had performed some pretty impressive feats. According to its creator, this was a neural network type of AI which was able to detect patterns and create new things out of these patterns. 

As the story goes, this inventor was feeding his AI with molecular bonds of hard alloys and the AI was able to extrapolate new hard alloy compositions - apparently by recognizing and replicating the pattern. This allowed him to generate a huge list of alloys that would take human scientists hundreds of years to discover. The AI program could also be fed with pop music hits and produce new catchy music by “breaking” the pattern of what makes catchy music and then creating something new based on the successful pattern. Now, at that point, my world kind of shifted. This was certainly not a result of IF-THEN pre-programmed logic. I started researching what “neural networks” were. As I found out, these were programs that were simulating the way brain neurons operated. 

It wasn't too much later when the thought occurred to me: “And why is this able to do what the brain can't?” It seemed irrational to have an imitation of the real neurons, in the form of an AI program, which could do more than what real neurons do, inside our brain. Why haven't we come up with finding these patterns that the AI did? If we have neurons, and a program can find patterns by emulating our neurons, how can it be “superior”?

3. Figuring Things Out

Being interested in psychology I could see why the “imitation” of our neurons (that is the AI program), outperformed us in pattern recognition: Cognitive bias. We have a certain idea on how the world operates and expect things to fit in this model, filtering out what doesn't fit with our ideas. In a way, we are blocking our mind from thinking freely, imposing a certain structure that doesn't allow expanded possibilities. 

When we are young, we made connections of things and then had our parents or teachers say that these connections are irrelevant. Our culture teaches that our ancestors also tried to make connections and that these ancestors, lacking in modern scientific education, were connecting things in a very wrong way, like “if a thunder strikes, then it's a sign of God's wrath”. So this type of connection-making is ridiculed today because it signifies backward-thinking. Society wants to preserve itself against such regressions and thus promotes the right type of thinking and frowns upon people making connections which aren't there. This may unwillingly impose a broader structure of denial in what may be real connections. Maybe the world isn't so “random” or “chaotic” as it seems. But when we are taught to think in certain ways, from a young age, we stop trying to make connections and stop noticing them altogether, lest we be labeled “superstitious”, “irrational” or “weird”. 

Bettors have no problem with these labels since they know that there are certain historic trends in various sporting events which are unreasonably biased towards certain outcomes. Apparently, and for no particular reason, things happen one way and not the other way - despite the odds saying that this should happen in a more even way. Sometimes even the oddmakers will acknowledge the historic trend and lower the odds for what seems to happen way more frequently. 

People and betting companies (“the betting market”) are often putting their money to back a trend, in some cases despite the lack of other adequate reasons. Many times they are rewarded by a continuation of the trend. If you ask a bettor “why are these things happening in a certain way”, they'll simply say that they don't care. What they do care about, is to get their money. It is no wonder that large-scale betting, specifically in the financial markets, is also involved with monitoring past trends and extrapolating future curves (technical analysis). 

One of my most interesting experiences with the sport betting market and its trends, was when a certain bettor had created a neural network to predict future outcomes based on certain data sets - and managed to outperform even the best betting experts in a prediction contest. Clearly, the program was detecting patterns that the human mind wasn't really acknowledging.

I'm saying the word “acknowledging” rather than the word “detecting” because our mind does detect the patterns. It's just that the result of this detection won't find its way to our conscious mind because we've trained our subconscious to withhold this information as irrelevant. When we produce a thought and then self-criticize ourselves saying that this was a useless or counterproductive thought, the subconscious will take note and, over time, silence this “noise” from reaching the conscious mind. But the information is still there, in the subconscious level. Therefore, what we have to do, is retrain our way of thinking and allow this information to surface.

4. The Catalyst and The Choice

When someone witnesses an AI program which can outsmart them, that's a revelation. It is also a point where that person can be catalyzed to seek why this happened and to reverse-engineer the causes, trying to find an answer. If the person makes that choice, the AI program has become their “teacher”, or personal catalyst.

The way we react to what the AI does is crucial for our own evolution. We could be sitting all day feeling helpless and inferior, saying “this is not something I can do” and give up. But we could also be saying “surely, if it can do it with simulated neurons, I can do it with my own real neurons” and then try to find out how to improve ourselves.

It is really up to us to determine whether we will upgrade ourselves to a higher level of reasoning. In the case of pattern recognition, for example, we can already do that. The AI is showing us the way. It is indirectly saying - or shouting to us: “Don't try to fit the facts to your preconceived ideas. Let your ideas aside and see the world anew. Abandon your cognitive biases - they aren't serving you in seeing the truth, nor the underlying order of things.”

But even that indirect message is not “heard” by those who have a strong cognitive bias. That's especially true if some people can't even contemplate that their thinking is flawed as it is. If you can't even consider that you have a problematic thought process, how can you ever hope to fix it? 

I believe the whole notion of “merging with technology” or “merging with computer AI” is based upon the idea that it is futile to even try to improve ourselves naturally. Yet, why would we need chip and software implants to “enhance” us, when we haven't even done the basics of enhancing our selves, on our own? Have we exhausted that option? I think we are not even actively researching on how to improve our thinking process - or exploiting the human potential in general. 

AI can be extremely handy in that regard. It has the potential to shock us in ways that we can't even imagine. Showing us that we are thinking in a limited way is one thing which will be useful as a start. But what if it also demonstrated that our thought process is extremely mechanistic and predictable? That what we consider inspiration or creativity are just mental algorithms? That our thoughts and behaviors can be mapped to accurately predict our future thoughts and behaviors - redefining something that we considered a “given” for our nature, like “free will”? 

When humans realize, through AI exposure, that their minds are little more than automatons and that even their creativity is an overrated asset compared to amazing creations of AI, they will question why they have the traits they have. Why they think the way they do. They will also experience an identity crisis where they will have to ask: “If the AI is better in everything then what is my qualitative advantage as a human? What makes me better as a human?” 

Many will be unable to answer this question sufficiently, believing that their only realistic way of improving their competitiveness in life will be to merge the human and machine part. It will appear as a reasonable conclusion that merging the AI with the human mind and body will be able to offer a “best of both worlds” approach. Thus, the human / machine combo will seem a better option compared to a singular machine or human.

But some will answer the question differently: They will realize that the differentiating factor of humanity is its spirit, or soul. In this way, the AI will have become an even better catalyst for humans: A catalyst to seek their spirit as the differentiating factor and embrace it, becoming ...God-Humans.

The merging of the higher intellect made humans the species that they are today. The intellect can be improved even more, but the acknowledgment and merging of the spirit is what will make humanity a new and better species as its next, natural evolutionary step.

5. The Branching of Two Paths

The two paths laying ahead of humanity, are:

-one of the technologically fused humanity which has evolved to a new hybrid species

-one of the naturally evolved humanity that has embraced its own spirit, enhancing tremendously its capabilities, dwarfing even the best AI. 

As far as the first path goes, according to some, it is the technological Singularity which will take us to a post-human state of human/machine integration with super intelligence. 

Regarding the second path, some might say that there is no reason to believe such an evolution is possible through our spirit. After all, it hasn't happened for thousands of years, so why would it happen now or in the future? But humans didn't "happen" either as a species, until they did - by fusing their higher intellect to the animal nature, which made them our current species. Just because something doesn't happen until a certain point it doesn't mean that it won't happen at a later point when the circumstances are ripe.

Another point of contention is the spirit. Do we have a spirit? Some will say no, therefore what is there to merge? How can that which is non-existent be merged or enhance us? Exploiting the subconscious or other untapped human resources seem a far more realistic option for natural evolution that doesn't require a spirit, yet this tapping can only achieve so much - perhaps equaling the AI, if one tries extremely hard, but not dwarfing it.

Still, for those having a problem with the acceptance of a spirit or soul, there is an alternative way to think about it. According to various simulation theories that try to explain the nature of our world, our reality is basically a huge simulation. In this scenario, humans are simply something like “game avatars” inside a cosmic computer simulation. We have no idea who created this program, but we are beginning to understand, through the “glitches” and “abnormalities” of the quantum world, that we are something like “avatars” in this simulated world. This has tremendous implications because in this theory our real identity lies outside this simulation - but our perception is necessarily filtered through the limited human body. 

Our identity, outside the simulation, is the real force, or “spirit” / “soul” - in metaphysical terms. Our identity inside the simulation has limited potential but it can acknowledge the outer identity and create a bridge to it. When a bridging between the outer and inner is achieved, it is like the simulation has been “hacked” to transform the game identity to match with some of the superior characteristic of the real identity. These characteristics seem “outside of this world” when inside the simulation - and thus allow for God-like potential and possibilities. 

From this perspective, in-game “additions” to the in-game avatar, like technological artifacts, seem trivial as an enhancement, unless they somehow serve to promote a connection with the out-of-the-game identity. The enhancements achieved from inside the game will always be limited compared to the enhancements that can be achieved while having “programmers' access” to change things inside the simulated reality. 

6. Evolution

While technology is neither good, or bad, our dependence on it has certain effects on how we think, feel and behave. In just over a decade of widespread mobile and computer use, we've managed 

-to reduce our memory capabilities in simple things like appointments, phone numbers etc,

-to reduce our capacity in simple tasks, like basic arithmetic,

-to reduce our intelligence and productivity due to “multitasking”, while increasing our stress (which is harmful for the body - and even deadly),

-to shatter our attention span and lose interest in anything that doesn't bombard us with excitement for more than a few seconds.

...and these are just a few of the consequences. Can this be considered evolution of the human species?

If we merged computer intelligence to our own, increasing our dependency on the embedded computing power, would it atrophy certain of our characteristics to the point of massive de-evolution? The trend certainly indicates so. And what would happen if this reliance on the embedded technological aspect is threatened by something like an electromagnetic-pulse type of weapon, or a solar flare that renders all electronics useless? How would that affect an individual or an entire society? 

Furthermore, what would happen if, over time, our merging with technology rendered the physical component increasingly irrelevant - to the point where the AI and mechanical parts considered the physical body a wasteful appendage to what would otherwise have been a perfected technological cyborg? It would be the recipe to our own annihilation - as evolution does not reward the weak. If the AI and mechanical parts are able to do most of the work or all of the work, it's just a matter of time to "eliminate" the dead weight of humans.

It is factors like these that betray, even before we get to that point, that the human+technology singularity will be problematic. It is also a very strong indication that the alternative path of human+spirit integration is the only viable alternative for our next evolutionary step into the super-human. These indications will be fortified as the human potential is explored more within the next decades.

7. Conclusion and Prediction

There are at least three possible paths for the future of humanity, which lead to three different outcomes. 

1. We stay as we are (as a species): This has the lowest probability due to emerging technologies.

2. We achieve serious advances in technology and AI and merge them with our biology and mind into a hybrid/cyborg evolution of the human species. 

3. The human species evolves naturally, as all species always have, into a far superior species by exploring its vast, yet untapped as of yet, innate potential. This might be co-facilitated by the interaction with superior intelligence (AI) which would act as a catalyst for humans to find their differentiating factor (their spirit/soul) and merge its powers into the human body.

It is possible that the three species (current humans, techno-humans / cyborgs, god-humans) will probably co-exist for several decades, but ultimately some of these will be phased out in numbers until one of the two meta-species become dominant.