The late celebrity scientist Stephen Hawking recently trumpeted the end of the world to the BBC:
“The full development of artificial intelligence could spell doom for the human race.”
Taking its first steps as the most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system on the planet, Google’s brainchild “AlphaGo,” hits the news headlines. AlphaGo is the first general purpose AI programme designed to play “Go,” an ancient Chinese board game infinitely more complicated than chess.
Bringing fear and jubilation for top developers in the field, this AI programme can approximate human intuition and mimic the best human brains. It has the capacity to learn on its own and outwit human intelligence. Big tech-guns like Elon Musk and Bill Gates have expressed their reservations after AlphaGo beat the world’s most top-ranked Go player.
What’s left for the human minions to do when this super-intelligent overlord takes full flight? Humanity doesn’t seem to have any advantage over our manufactured counterparts, and as a species lacking knowledge of our own consciousness, will we become the enslaved specimens of a bygone experiment?
REPLACEABLE TWO-LEGGED-ANIMALS?
Primitive robots are already earmarked for taking our jobs and have been doing so for the past sixty years. The Bank of New Zealand recently sacked a hundred employees and replaced them with automated tellers. Soon AI will be able to replace any human in information-intensive, labour-intensive specialised occupations, and even in our relationships.
Perhaps the dawn of a cyborg civilisation has seen its first rays in AI. But to what extent will our lives really benefit apart from the obvious conveniences AI brings to our material needs?
An enlightened yogi may agree that AI does everything better than humans when it comes to facilitating our base animal instincts – namely to eat better, sleep more soundly, kill more efficiently and mate unrestrictedly. But the sages explain that human intelligence is wasted if we simply try and emulate other species no matter how innovative, because human intelligence surpasses those of animals. The capacity to question the nature of our existence and attain conscious enlightenment is an asset our android counterparts will always lack.
We don’t want our intelligence simply relegating us to a kind of sophisticated animal, where all kinds of bizarre robot-human integration thrive.
Why not take it to the next level and enjoy a total interactive experience with humanoid robots? While adult dolls already make a killing for the sex industry, android-oriented “robosexuality” is a growing demographic. In France, a woman awaits a new law to pass, so she can legally unite with her robot partner in marriage.
Cars and phones were invented only 150 years ago before they became ubiquitous commodities, and now researchers predict that within the next thirty years human-like robots with AI capacity will be available in shops for use in your living rooms.
Soon you can rid yourself of the pharmaceutical love-drugs that alter human psychology with the aim of relationship refinement. Just put an AI system in a full-size human android, decked out with touch sensors and a soft-to-touch silicon body, and you’ve got a clone of your fantasy lover, fully customisable with bits and pieces to suit your physical and psychological needs. No need to tolerate those embarrassing human imperfections. Maybe all you’ll be required to do is change the batteries and upgrade the AI software. It must be more economical and less emotionally complicated to maintain a machine than to bust your brains trying to get along with human partners for your entire life.
CONSCIOUSNESS: THE MISSING LINK
Has humanity become so desperate that we must seek companionship in machines? What kind of consciousness does it take to get biologically kinky with a customisable R2-D2 anyway?
Modern science generally informs us that we are made of chemical matter, and if humans and androids are solely composed of matter, then the matrimonial match between human and machines is perfect. However, matter is not conscious and this remains the missing link that prevents most people from getting totally cosy with their new android model.
Krishna, the scientist of consciousness development, provides a systematic approach to understanding our existence beyond matter. He points out in his book, the Bhagavad Gita, that we are nonmaterial units of consciousness (known as the spirit soul) enclosed by gradations of gross and more subtle matter, namely this body, mind and intellect, which is also compared to a machine.
Therefore our needs are divided into these categories:
- Physical: gross matter, composed of material elements.
- Psychological: subtle matter, composed of the mind.
- Intellectual: finer matter, composed of intelligence.
- Spiritual: nonmaterial energy, composed of pure consciousness.
If our intelligence neglects to understand the needs of our nonmaterial dimension, then we have fallen short of delving into the deepest mysteries accessible only to humans. Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, out of thousands of people, one may endeavour for enlightenment and out of thousands who are on that path, only one may attain perfection. Consequently, the masses of people perceive matter-based technology as the holy grail.
Modern science has been baffled in trying to grasp the consciousness predicament, because there is no material tool to measure or quantify this nonmaterial particle. Spiritual nature can be grasped only by a nonmaterial framework of knowledge and technology, which Krishna gives in Bhagavad Gita, his foundational science for consciousness.
Lacking awareness of our spiritual needs, people try to satisfy their soul cravings by material means. These artificial expectations for satisfaction frustrate us and increase our dependency on technology to do the impossible. And the same people are flashing yellow lights on the runway of technological growth, only to create an intelligence-explosion that may unlock a Pandora’s box and release problems beyond our ability to control.
Shouldn’t we humans use our intelligence to understand our identity beyond the material and examine the very consciousness that was required to forge the machines that will eventually render us all bootless?
