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Software artist; creator, Electric Sheep
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I think thinking about machines that think is the most interesting thing to think about. Why? Because the possible implications of this phenomenon are profound. Cosmic even.
“Thinking machines” have been with us for a long time. There are two ways to understand this, depending on which word you start with. Let’s start with machines first, and by that these days we really mean computers. Computers started out, well, pretty mechanical. But they keep getting more and more subtle. Even the computers of the 1980s could perform some remarkable feats with expert systems and databases. Today we’ve passed the point where we could explain in detail how voice recognition and natural language allow our phones to answer a question spoken by a child. “Magical” is hardly hyperbole. But is this really thinking? Not yet, but it’s a good start, and the trend is accelerating. True, the goal still seems far away. Instead of considering our climb step by step, look up and consider what lies at the summit. Can anything halt our progress?
Certainly the future of chip technology is in doubt. Moore’s Law has been good to us, and has dodged a few bullets, but it’s ending. Historically, new technologies have appeared just in time to keep the exponential growth of computation on schedule, but this is no given. Perhaps the next leap is incredibly difficult and will take fifty years. Or it may never happen, though we can always add more chips in parallel. The schedule is an interesting question, but it pales in comparison to pondering the destination.
Now let’s take up the word think. The other way that thinking machines have been around for a long time is ourselves. Biological brains have been thinking for millions of years. A brain follows the laws of physics, which are a mechanical set of equations. In principle, a good physics simulator could, very slowly, simulate a brain and its environment. Surely this virtual brain would be a machine that thinks.
The remaining question is, How much physics is required to make the simulation work? Would classical physics, electricity, and chemistry do? Would quantum logic (or beyond) be required? The consensus is strongly in favor of the idea that classical physics suffices (the Emperor’s New Mind has been rejected). Hence I think of my brain and body as a giant machine made up of an octillion molecules: many, many tiny magnetic Tinkertoys whose behavior is well understood and can be simulated. There are good reasons to believe a statistical approximation of physics can provide the same results. But again, this affects only the schedule, not the destination. The important question is, How do thinking and consciousness emerge from this complex machine? Is there some construction, some bridge, from the digital and virtual to the analog, organic, and real?
These threads meet with the merger of human and computer substrates. Smartphones are rapidly becoming indispensable parts of ourselves. The establishment has always questioned the arrival of new media, but adoption of these extensions of ourselves continues apace. A lot of ink has been spilled over the coming conflict between human and computer, be it economic doom, with jobs lost to automation, or military dystopia teeming with drones. Instead, I see a symbiosis developing. And historically, when a new stage of evolution appeared— like eukaryotic cells, or multicellular organisms, or brains—the old system remained and the new system worked with it, not in place of it.
This is cause for optimism. If digital computers are an alternative substrate for thinking and consciousness, and digital technology is growing exponentially, then we face an explosion of thinking and awareness. This is a wave we can ride, but doing so requires us to accept the machine as part of ourselves, to dispense with pride and recognize our shared essence. Essentially we must meet change with love instead of fear. I believe we can.
