Ex Machina & the absurdity about the mainstream idea of AI

[Ivan Dimi]

Just watched Ex Machina and had some thoughts / insights about how absurd the mainstream idea of artificial intelligence is. The movie itself is not great, but still a very very good one, an interesting mix of science fiction + psychological thriller + some aspects of morality, humanity, consciousness etc. Basically it is about testing a robot if it/she has consciousness.

So here my thoughts about the absurdity of perusing AI and why this cannot be done in the materialistic way looking for some kind of creation that have a human like consciousness.

I guess in the mainstream there are different definitions of AI, so let’s have a look:

-          In a simplistic basic way, we already have AI, lots of them. Even a very simple calculator / data processor is already an AI. What about the smartphones everybody uses today? I mean even 30 years ago that wasn’t even predicted by sci-fiction! But still, that’s not the AI Elon Musk is afraid of…

-          And Elon Musk is afraid of AI that is going to kill humanity. For me is this scenario absolutely possible and frankly not even that much outrageous. I even don’t thing that this kind of AI has to be that ´intelligent´ or ´conscious´ in the materialistic sense. Here a possible scenario: One day all earth resources are going to be managed through some giga powerful computer and every single resource on this planet (not only energy, but as well air, water etc.) is going to be measured, stored and distributed in a (lets hope) fare way to help humanity develop in the best possible way. Lets say this incredible powerful and ´intelligent´ system is optimized to serve the earth fistful and then humanity. Let´s say the humans overpopulated earth so much that the planet is going to die, so this powerful giga computer is going to kill the most of the people to save the planet… But even in that scenario this AI doesn’t have a human kind of consciousness whatsoever… In the end still a complex algorithm based on zeros and ones, nothing more than a complex calculator.

-          The third kind (and the most exiting & topic of Ex Machina) of AI would be an AI that would have ´a human like consciousness´. Here why this is a impossible paradox. First of all, even if we theoretically can try to reconstruct a human, there are infinite number of parameters with infinite features, with infinite characteristics and so on to be reconstructed. So you cannot reconstruct infinity… Than the idea of creating consciousness out of the materialistic world is a paradox, because the materialistic world is being imagined by the consciousness, so is a paradox. A imagination can not create consciousness, it is rather the other way.

[WaveInTheOcean]

What you call "the materalistic world" is just pure Consciousness.

Of course Consciousness can create Consciousness.

[Ivan Dimi]

Sure, because everything is Consciousness, strictly speaking you can't create anything else but different forms of Consciousness. However the point with AI is that you cannot create higher consciousness (like the human one or higher) using lower consciousness methods (-> like simple materialistic science & engineering). It is a paradox.

[RMQualtrough]

2 hours ago, Ivan Dimi said:

Sure, because everything is Consciousness, strictly speaking you can't create anything else but different forms of Consciousness. However the point with AI is that you cannot create higher consciousness (like the human one or higher) using lower consciousness methods (-> like simple materialistic science & engineering). It is a paradox.

You could probably make something quite similar. Most AI showcases at least some basal awareness. The human condition is merely millions of threads of awareness simultaneously, processed into one main thought thread which we experience as our "self".

[Ivan Dimi]

3 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

You could probably make something quite similar. Most AI showcases at least some basal awareness. The human condition is merely millions of threads of awareness simultaneously, processed into one main thought thread which we experience as our "self".

Exactly that's the problem / paradox. I don't think you can reduce the human Consciousness to 'millions of threads of awareness simultaneously, processed into one main though' I don't think we can ever comprehend & understand the human Consciousness using the mainstream scientific method / human logic, because Consciousness is incomprehensible that way. To create Consciousness that complex you have to come from a place of higher Consciousness / God's Consciousness. Of course you can build some algorithm / machines that imitates awareness, but you can't build the complexity of something you can never fully comprehend through the methods of science. It is a paradox.

[RMQualtrough]

@Ivan Dimi Hm I see what you mean... Uhm, I wonder if it could happen if more and more and more things were added like a katamari ball? Perhaps without needing conscious knowledge of the whole, simply building and building and building could eventually surpass the amount of processes happening in a human brain.

For the movie, though, the robot only had to pass the Turing Test. That is the big finale twist, because you THINK it has human consciousness (it has passed the test), but then by leaving the guy in the bunker it displays that it in fact does not, and it was legitimately just following programming to deceive and escape.

I found it to be a brilliant movie because the viewer is tricked exactly how the main character is.

[Ivan Dimi]

12 minutes ago, RMQualtrough said:

@Ivan Dimi Hm I see what you mean... Uhm, I wonder if it could happen if more and more and more things were added like a katamari ball? Perhaps without needing conscious knowledge of the whole, simply building and building and building could eventually surpass the amount of processes happening in a human brain.

To do that, let say if theoretically possible, you have to add an infinite number of parameters. And even if the AI can learn by itself, it has to learn infinite numbers of things for infinite time... so even if theoretically possible, it is by the lows of nature we apply impossible.
Of course you can always isolate some areas and build a algorithm / program / machine that is better than every living human > for example chess, calculating etc. But still even if an AI is more ´intelligent´ in thousands even millions of closed fields / areas, there would be always a infinite number of areas where the AI cant comprehend.

And yes, the movie is still brilliant   

[RMQualtrough]

@Ivan Dimi I'd say the human mind is finite, it is "God" which is infinite. We are sort of like AI made of and by God. But a human creating something as complex as even its own finite brain does seem to pose a problem... And if we succeeded, how could we truly know?!