
05/20/2025
Reading Between The Lines Of Computer Code
The Enigma of Artificial Intelligence
There is a natural mystique about the forms and implications of AI, but it is No different from the wonder we experience in studying nature or other forms of science. The understanding of AI or artificial intelligence is what in logic is called a recursive problem. We create machines with our own intelligence and then analyze how the machine itself manifests more complex forms of similar intelligence. While AI is based on electronics and mathematics, the vast array of its manifestations that effect many parts of life in the modern world has created for AI a dubious reputation of being harmful or evil. So too any large scale business engine can be, and is used for both productive and non-productive causes. Photography in the 20th century has profound connections to astronomy, with perhaps equal competition in money making to the Hollywood and related po*******hy abuses.
The development of mass machine technology first became deeply controversial in 1800's England, when factories became able to produce large amounts of capital in money and commodities. Karl Marx goes into great depth to expose the extremely abusive living conditions, particularly in England, when whole families, men, women and children worked in nearly slave conditions of over 12 hour work days, and living in dwellings made only for basic shelter. The pollutions created by large scale coal mining and coal burning created unhealthy lifestyles, of misery and chronic disease.
Machines are useful in replacing human labor for speed, sheer force and the quantity of products. As such they have always been a part of civilization, though historically they were much simpler and less pervasive then what we see today. Aboriginal Americans had irrigation, machines made for fishing, and a intense system of mathematics implicated into the daily life based on astrological calendars. Sadly, I do Not know much in details, partly because of the European destruction of the Aboriginal civilization and literature was committed with unbelievable thoroughness and force.
The major step from using machines in factory settings to AI is that AI is supplementing human beings abilities to use mathematics and logic. The beginnings of computer science owes much to the work of A. Whitehead and Bertrand Russel particularly in the still classic text called Principia Mathematica published in 1910. This book bridged the conceptual gap between logic and mathematics into a system of practical computation. Strictly speaking, for a modern scientist, their is No distinct difference between logic and mathematics.
The puzzling mystification comes because logic is a natural part of human reason and thought while mathematics is learned. Every functioning human being, from early childhood forwards uses logic for survival, communication and creativity, even if the individual does Not clearly realize they do so. However the inspirations for decision making in such simple deductions as 'I am hungry so I will eat.' is in theory of the same kind of reasoning used when a scientist harnesses inventions such as building construction, farming and creating commercial art.
The dark and dangerous fears of AI is that machines can replace human labor in both positive and negative ways. Machines help alleviate heavy physical labor, and can save much time. What would the average consumer do without his electric can opener? In negative ways, mass production controlled by exploitative types of ownership, known as capital, can force and induce large populations into demeaning, basic living wage and unhealthy lifestyles by the conditions created in mass employment, as in offices, factories and armies. Such I think is the same danger of AI abuse in replacing human thinking forms into machines. If AI becomes under the power and economy of large governments, then the development of controls such as data collection and arms manufacture will make it easier for the few in power to control the citizens, whether in democracy or other forms of government. As such the human spirit which depends on morality, love and beauty can be overwhelmed in the face of a world dominated by digital machines.
In his last book, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy by Edmund Husserl, the writer gives a profound warning about the dangers of thinking that science can replace the need for experiencing life in a human context. He says the superimposition of the models of science on our life-world as a whole, a tendencey that began with Galileo, will lead to a loss of meaning and direction, as I understand him. So too, the imposition of the model of AI to become synonymous with the human mind as a whole, is destructive to self-esteem and shared community values.
The fears in the controversy around simulating a human being by AI machines is largely based on the lack of distinction that machines, no matter how complex, can only reproduce what humans have put into them, in thought and in labor; granted in almost astronomically larger output. Medical science recreates AI models of humans for better ability to cope with diseases but that does Not imply the doctors are trying to build a race of robots.
The spiritual contest is that AI can be and is currently harnessed for greater forms of mass destruction by military around the world. Science regretfully has always been a tool for warfare, and the cry of Albert Einstein, referring to the atom bomb, 'If I knew what was to become of my discoveries, I would have become a watchmaker.' often vibrates in my memory. The horrifying possibilities of AI war technology, I hope will force humanity to realize a necessity to ban the development and use of weapons altogether. This ending of a lifestyle of scientific and materialistic aggression has long been the dream of human right activists, religious leaders and the common need for peaceful and productive family/community life.
There is much more to be said about AI, particularly in relation to energy consumption, our almost total dependence on electricity and the absolute imperative to change from fossil fuel to clean energy. It is my experience, that those most sincere in AI development are also leaders in the production of clean energy, in which AI plays in important role. In a positive note, virtual reality is facilitating wonderful ways of creativity, which I personally enjoy in music and art, and will likely be an important part of classic education for all ages.
There is No stopping the human imagination from the science fiction of AI replacing human beings altogether, of humans evolving into cyborgs and war between the machine and humans. Alien forms of technology said to be under the censorship of government controls, may be implicated in manifestations of AI technology. The more practical and necessary controls is to curtail abuses of AI, in excessively violent and other abusive gaming, in obsessions with technology that take us away from the love of nature, in a philosophy that put the human mind into the form of a machine, rather than the appreciation of a Higher Power creating such an amazing and sacred life form that we embody.
AI simulated the multifaceted nature of human nature; of artistic beauty, of intellectual genius and the needs for leisure because human beings put their own ideas and labor into their construction. On the other hand, we need culture, religion and moral sensitivity to keep under control our baser instincts of greed, tyrannical controls and thoughtless indulgences.
Note - The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy is an unfinished 1936 book by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl. The work was influential and is considered the culmination of Husserl's thought, though it has been seen as a departure from Husserl's earlier work. - edited from Wikipedia
The painting is called the The Robot Uprising by Bryn G Jones.
On this day, May 20th 1925 as grocery prices become the highest form of financial inflation in Canada.