Ultra Intelligent Computers, Selfishness and Singularity

How things have changed since I bought my first full size pc in 1986. It cost about the £1000 and the total memory was only 512 K. I thought it was amazing in comparison to what I had before; a Sinclair XZ spectrum with 16K memory. But looking at the desk top on which I am writing this blog now it seems how awkward, unyielding and primitive it was. This desk top has 4 GB of RAM and 1 TB hard disk and it costs a bit less than what I paid in 1986.

The rate of development in computer science and technology has been and is phenomenal. The computing power is not just growing rapidly but the rate at which it is growing is also getting faster. At this rate soon they will surpass human intelligence. At present the computer brain power is still less than that of a mouse. It is predicted that computers will exceed this in 2015. But as the computing power is growing exponentially it will surpass a human brain by 2023. The direst prediction is for 2045 when it will go beyond the sum total of the brain power of all the humans on the planet.

Once the computing power of the machine goes beyond the human brain it can be argued that that will be the last machine the man will make (I J.Good,1965)

After that the only way the mankind can keep progressing is by merging their consciousness with the intelligence of the machines. This state of affairs has been termed as Singularity. Will you believe it that there is an academic institute called Singularity University (http://singularityu.org/) in existence for the last three years?

One of the major problems when we talk about achieving and surpassing human intelligence and consciousness is how to define them accurately enough to enable meaningful measurements.

Usually people say we can make computers intelligent but machines will never have consciousness. But I think it is upside down thinking.

One of the simplest definitions of intelligence is ability to look after oneself. Intelligence can be graded; one can be more intelligent than other. But before you develop the ability to look after yourself you have to have understanding of self. I am not talking here in metaphysical or theological terms.

Knowledge of self is simply realisation of ”I, me and my”: this is my hand, this is my leg, I am hungry, I am tired, you are looking at me etc. And this is what I define as consciousness. This is different than medical concept of consciousness which awareness of one’s environment in space and time. Computer can be made aware of the environment around it with various sensory input devices such as cameras, pressure and chemical sensors. But that in my definition does not make it aware of self and thus it is not conscious of self. And without this consciousness of self it will not have the ability to look after itself. Hence it will never be intelligent in biological terms, not even as intelligent as the simplest cognisant living being.

It will certainly have superhuman computing power but not intelligence till we discover the mathematical algorithm for awareness of self and put this on the chip. Then it will truly be the chip of the same block and more!

Till then the much maligned of our attributes “selfishness” will keep the machines enslaved to our advantage.