Artificial Intelligence & Natural Stupidity

Self-Aware Life is information interacting with itself and some other, which brings the recursive circle of life into direct contact with the awesome power of information flow in the FrictionLessSociety™ that we are currently creating.

Natural Stupidity and Human Intelligence

Natural human intelligence–that which evolved through billions of years of trial and error organic growth cycles–left a dash of organic stupidity in our human supercomputer brains for a good reason:

To make us pause for a moment in a potential life or death uncertain situation to quickly locate a strategy  in our memory, or to quickly create a new one on the spot, in order to survive.

At such precious moments, humans were and will always be instantly and technically “stupid” for a brief moment.

Stupidity Opens the Gate to Possibility & Intelligence

We each experience this stupid moment every time we have a new experience physically, mentally or emotionally:

• Speaking authentically in public.
• Following a truth you cannot prove.
• Being lost in traffic in a strange city.
• Having a first date with someone to whom you are attracted.
• Grappling with a totally new worldview, or paradigm.

These moments of “temporary stupidity” are constraints, or mental processing friction, which provide the  impetus to be fully in the moment as  a dynamic participant of the information flow between you and some “other” human or object that is presenting a new experience possibility.

These moments of stupidity evoke the “learn or die” response that seems to be distinctly human and is analog in nature. Decision tension builds up to a threshold until your being jumps across a little quantum gap of uncertainty in which a possibility gate has opened to either move you from a possibility to a new reality, if it interests you, or;  to close the gate and you retreat if not  interested (unless you are existentially threatened.)

Being Alive is Being in Information Flow

The good news is that these moments of stupidity–when we are called to be authentic and fully alive (and/or terrorized with fear)–initially lasts only a half second or less.  This is fast enough by human standards but very slow compared to nano speeds of current digital technology.  Once in the information flow your focus sharpens, time slows and the miracle of being truly alive happens in real time, for better or worse.  Being in the information flow, with a constant dash of stupidity as a humility/creative reminder, is being human.

Can this feature be  programmed into AI? If not, this dash of stupidity in humanity will most likely dim away over time as humanity gets fully integrated with and connected to peta-speed smart digital technology  in the FrictionLessSociety™ age.

Stupidity Questions & Predictions

Will smart neural-net artificially intelligent AI be designed so that it learns (evolves) to include a dash of planned analog stupidity at the heart of its computations to give it a dash of humanity?

Or, as I believe today, will transhumans evolve as hybrid man-machine beings–“humanichins™ in which humanity extends its current practice of replacing worn-out parts to gradually integrating smart technology  with “nanobots” into its genes,  matter, and brain/nervous systems to extend life in all dimensions. This would mean launching humanity on its next great leap since one of our brave ancestors stupidly climbed down from the  safety of trees millions of years ago and somehow survived for us to be alive today.

The central question is this:

"Why would much-smarter-than-human self-aware, self-dependent AI beings want to let us live consuming energy they need in order to exist and flourish? Our own experience with life forms of lesser intelligence does not bode well for humanity on this question."

Consider the huge intelligence gap between humans and our closest relative (the bonobo?) with only 1% DNA difference.  This gap arguably exists because of a slight competitive advantage that our early language ability gave our ancestors to communicate with each other eons ago. This powerful edge quickly mushroomed into complex human language of hundreds of  thousands of symbols and rules, which conferred better ability for our ancestors.  With this edge we developed a survival culture with commonly accepted meanings, and multiplied, organized, invented, innovated, built, and flourished as  the dominant species on earth.

Will we be “today’s bonobos” competing with today’s fledgling AI? Can super smart AI systems be made with a dash of smart stupidity to be more  human? Are bits and bytes the new symbols for the new language edge of the future?  If so, where does meaning ambiguity fit into the  emerging FrictionLessSociety™ age?

One thing seems clear:  If humanity does not stay ahead we will fall behind to become artifacts of life.

@viewshift1