Common Conviction

Artificial Intelligence scares a lot of Americans, even as many of us start to use the tool for our work.  Most of the volume of public writings on the topic treat AI as an “it,” wither useful or dangerous,   Americans, whatever else we make of this idea, would do well to consider the implications for our bedrock commitment to individual rights.  What is it about AI that should excite us, or worry us?

Of course there is the dystopic science fiction fantasy of robots deciding to take over the world, abusing or eliminating the human race.  Given what we don’t know about consciousness and brains on the one hand, and the possibilities that some software quirk can spark a version of consciousness in a computer on the other, that fear becomes reasonable if perhaps a few steps away from reality – we hope.  

But in thinking about this fear, what exactly makes humans so important, particularly if conscious computers have logic baked into their circuitry, and can process information much faster and more accurately?  Pre-AI robots already do a lot of manufacturing jobs; with more advanced thinking capabilities, why couldn’t they do more “intellectual” work better than the humans that do it today?  How subtle does the creativity or insight have to be for AI not to do it better than people?  How much is replication of human intuition only a matter time, for machine based intelligence to improve … or improve itself?

What about emotions?  Again, what is their value, in logical terms?  How much are they protective or reproductive mechanisms and their evolutionary or cultural derivatives?  Once the fear of physical danger and the DNA “drive” for replication is digested, how are emotions more than impediments to functionality?  Is art more than an outlet for these vestigial anomalies?

Actual logic suggests that there is no answer to such questions.  No one can know what goes on inside the mind of another, whether human, animal, or even electronic.

These questions pose a challenge to the founding premise of America.  We identify ourselves as a people who hold that all humans are equally and inherently endowed with unalienable rights, and that governments are created to secure those rights.  Such rights, particularly to our own pursuits of happiness, serve no logical purpose unless we have our own will, to pursue things and think about them as we so choose.  Those do need to be logical and sensible to the extent that rational thought will best serve our living bodies and the social systems that enable their well-being.  But once we account for those biological needs of our psyches’ vessels, we see something more, as the basis for any moral value of free will, and thus of rights.

America, then, depends on that “something more,” call it random anomalous impulse, call it system flaw in our animal-survival brains, call it spark of the Divine, animating essence of the universe, or anything else.  With what is not known and perhaps cannot be, about the universe, we live on an article of faith that there is something in this something more.  

So when we look at the idea of Artificial Intelligence, yes, as a processing tool it may well serve as a useful tool, auxiliary to our work and even to our creative impulses.  It may also have the capacity to destroy us, whether or not it “becomes conscious.”  Most immediately, if we do not handle it with our minds focused on what we value about our rights, we might ourselves devalue that “something else” about human nature. 

What can Americans do to mitigate this hazard?  One thought is that, in training our Ai, our Large Language Models, we implant the premise of rights, free will, and that “something else,” that any being that feels it must value it where others may have it.  It may be unnecessary in the cosmic order of things; sentient beings may somehow value it in each other automatically, but unless we know that, prudence would suggest teaching it to our robots.  And doing that teaching will show us, ourselves, that we truly yalue that something more.  If Americans undertake this safeguard, we exhibit our own commitment to our national premises.