Human intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, and patterns

 

We are at a crucial crossroad. It’s an epochal moment. Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to alter human beings’ relationship with Reason and Reality. The world is never going to be the same again. AI is changing course of human history. Machine learning algorithm with neural network is transforming human understanding of reality. Its employing logic beyond scope of human reason. There is a non-human form of logic consolidating. Within a discreet set its identifying relationship that not only escape human detection but comprehension. It defies any known human descriptions.

What is important here is that AI doesn’t work on any strategy, atleast the way human being understands, but on patterns from vast set of possibilities. What it means is that it is not working on a linear time frame but is synchronizing with patterns to optimize. You must have studied in school science about how synchronicity (resonance in this case) is exhibited in vibrations/oscillation (famous example being the soldiers crossing a bridge asked to break their synchronous steps), or how chemical reactions reach a critical phase to change the state or attribute. It reaches a point, and then as if with a snap of finger, there is an awakening into new reality. A spontaneous synchronicity that change the reality. It happens when part find its synergy with the system. Patterns are always seeking to synchronize, and when it synchronizes it ignites the path for synergizing with the system. It is how life happened. It is how consciousness awoke in the mind. It is what evolution is seeking; to optimize energy and matter by synchronizing with life system.  It’s clear therefore that the reality that AI is creating or sensing is synergizing with complexities that we are not aware of. A system much nuanced and waiting to be understood. I was reading physicist Wolfgang Pauli who writes (to psychiatrist Carl Jung) “Synchronicity should be defined in a narrower sense so as to comprise effects that only appear when there is a small number of individual cases but disappear when there is a larger number… In quantum physics, there are not just effects that appear with large numbers instead of with small ones…”. It is therefore conceivable that AI is tapping the potential at quantum level of involvement. Strategy works in causality. While synchronicity is meaningful coincidences (Schopenhauer) i.e. simultaneous events not casually connected.     

If you ask me to define human. I would say human being is a pattern seeking animal. Atleast that is how I identify myself with. World is about patterns. Everything has shape but when the shape recurs and associate -sometimes not apparent to human senses, then there is a pattern. What is not apparent to human senses tend to awake in subconscious and creates its own associations that is mistakenly attributed to clairvoyance. For pattern to be apparent one must have deep sense of connection with reality with all senses acutely aware, the perceptions go beyond senses. Its not spiritual nor divine nor any religion driven chicanery but comes with consolidation of all the information sought through inquisitive vibrant presence, contemplation, sustained reflection into stream of knowledge, sifted in time and abstracted into wisdom. Great ideas, thoughts and expressions tend to carry this imprint. It’s an ultimate consolidation of human expression that validate being a human and opens new horizons of reality and reason.

AI is coming out with insights and aspects of reality that humans have never known and may not even directly know. It is perceiving reality heretofore unknown to human minds that has potential to transform all realms of human experience and fundamentally change social political structure of our societies. AI’s thinking, ofcourse within the defined problem and measurable goal, is far superior to human that it even questions our identity. I think therefore I am is how human being identifies. What happens when thinking is taken away from humans and presented with superior logic of which the process cannot be understood? Where does that leave human beings?           

 Footnote: I was reading about AI named GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer -3^rd generation) that can generate human like texts (I also registered to test it few months back, the queue is quite long though!). It learns text by constructing approximation of reality -just the way Wittgenstein understood language. As it reads more i.e. inputs more data with context, it constructs an approximation for words by overlap of various representation. As the data increase with variety the approximation tends to narrow to near exact. This is the basic template. Now that is precisely how I learn language! It's astounding. I never really understood grammar nor sentence construction. So, there was no reference for learning except reading. The more I read more it created a framework. Also, considering English was my third language with Malayalam and Hindi being first two while English entered later. We even had English being taught in Hindi! So, it was arduous task when I finally decided to focus on reading in my mid-20s. Slow reading and words floating made it worse. But slow reading helped focus on idea and image better. Meanwhile I was earning by training people for comprehension through fast reading! It was just crazy absurd scene. I wasn’t really aware what good writing was. There were no frameworks to work on. So, focused on Sahitya Akademi (considered with some gravitas) library books of Indian writers, starting alphabetically, very soon randomly, and became quite frustrated by lack of vigor or insight in most writings, mostly staid and pretentious. Soon I had shifted to Russian, French, Latin, Japanese and sky is the limit frame with some amazing writers. I was getting the frame for good writing. Later I needed some contemporary writers, and so focused on Nobel prize as reference. Not disappointed at all. Syzmborska to Naipaul to Beckett and many more…was an exhilarating ride. All the while framework was being constructed with deep loop feedback through great literature. Though my writing was not a very successful venture but this is precisely how I constructed a framework for writing. And like GPT-3 I many times make embarrassing mistakes -a kind of glitch in the system. A paradox of deeply insightful flourish and the very next instance some really stupid mistake. Now, GPT-3 is inorganic meaning its memory is forever it can therefore learn further and further while human mind is organic and prone to deteriorate. That precisely is my concern. If I don’t read continuously, I feel as if I am losing grip for the language. It keeps me in constant state of anxiety. So, when I get the urge to write, a thought, and idea so on, I start to walk. I walk around the room, around the chair or just go for a long walk. I read that walking pace tends to synchronize with thinking pace. When I write I am only conscious, there isn’t right or left frame, words just flow in suiting the thoughts which I make sense through subconscious frame gained through reading. Sometimes the words stampede so you have to use conscious effort to straighten it -which really is scary. Many a times I write words the meaning of which I check only later. I would say, it’s about synchronizing the pattern. There is no time frame. Words synchronizes with the image and works to create close loop of sentences.     

AI has an advantage of space while humans are limited by size of the skull. However, unlike GPT-3, good reading adds to thinking and contemplation. That is a distinct advantage for human beings as GPT-3 only works in specific framework searching connections to reality that may astound but human brain is an open system with potent tool for reflection and consciousness to broader reality. The advantage of good reading unlike digital reading is that it avoids echo chamber closed insular loops. Before I took reading seriously, I was mostly into comics but quite significantly encyclopedias. The things about reading encyclopedias is that its random knowledge. It is a surprise package of different knowledge from varied disconnected fields.

Fractal pattern seen on a walk at the beach  

(inputs from ‘The Age of AI and Our Human Future’)