June 12, 2022
What’s love but a second hand emotion if it lives in fear? Lot’s of things can be faked but for those with all faculties working, fake is fake. Can artificial intelligence write a thesis about artificial intelligence? Can Ai feel but artificially? Where is love, how can someone show you? What is love? Can you be shown? For the mind, perhaps. For the heart, you have to experience it, then it may be anywhere from fake love, light love to deep love and even deeper. Words can only point to the moon, not the experience of reality.
Descartes’ famous statement: “cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.”
A professor, teaching the philosophy of Descartes, was asked by a student, “Sir, I think, but how do I know that I am?” The professor pretended to peer around the classroom. “Who is asking the question?” he said. “I am,” replied the student. One needs a certain idea of ‘I’, otherwise functioning will become impossible. So because we don’t know the real ‘I’ we substitute it by a false ‘I’ – something invented, composite. No biocomputer or any other kind of computer has any idea of self or no-self.
A computer cannot have any awareness. A computer is incapable of feeling silence. And these are the qualities which prove that man has something more than artificial intelligence. You can make deductions about a computer but it’s from a scientific onlooker. It is not your experience, only your observation. You can study biochemical computers, artificial intelligence, from the outside. Who is studying outside? A computer cannot be in love. You can keep many computers together – they will not fall in love! A computer cannot have any experience of beauty. A computer cannot know any bliss. A computer cannot have any awareness. A computer is incapable of feeling silence. And these are the qualities which prove that man has something more than artificial intelligence.
Ai can do scientific work, mathematical work, calculation – great calculation, very quick and very efficiently, because it is a machine. But a machine cannot be aware of what it is doing. A computer cannot feel boredom, a computer cannot feel meaninglessness, a computer cannot experience anguish. A computer cannot start an enquiry about truth. A computer cannot give birth to a child.
A computer cannot conceive of anything beyond the mechanical – and all that is significant is beyond the mechanical. Mr Rodgers enjoys playing with cuckoo clocks. One rainy Sunday morning he takes his cuckoo clock apart and puts it back together again. At twelve o’clock the family gathers, waiting for the pretty little bird to sing its song… nothing happens. They wait till one o’clock – no cuckoo. At two o’clock they are still waiting for the bird to appear. Finally, at three o’clock, the little door opens and the cuckoo comes out. “Dammit!” it squeaks. “Do any of you guys know the time?” C’est la vie!
Arhata~
