Artificial Intelligence (AI) has left the realms of dystopian novels and become its own reality. AI is a world that we are familiar with as we unlock our iPhones through facial recognition, but the extremities of the field are debated to potentially threaten human civilisation. Regardless, scientists have carved out their own utopia and successfully placed a worm’s brain into a Lego robot body, presenting how we might one day be able to upload our brains to a computer. But how did we reach this point? What even is AI? Why do these topics relate to each other?
Modern discourse ascribes the notion of innovation to technology; forgetting that innovation too once had its own history. From the fifteenth to seventeenth century, innovation was pejoratively conceptualised as a synonym for heresy and revolt. In the sixteenth century work of Machiavelli’s The Prince: innovation was displayed as a strategy that a Prince employed in order to deal with a constantly changing world.[1] Only by the twentieth century did innovation emerge within discussions concerning technological product innovation: stimulated by the Industrial Revolution, Scientific Revolution and new forms of capitalism that made innovations and other novelties acceptable.
What exactly is innovation? There is no straightforward answer to this as there is much debate towards the definition of innovation. In 1934 the economist Joseph Schumpeter defined innovation as ‘new combinations of new or existing knowledge, resources, equipment, and other factors’.[2] Schumpeter highlighted the importance of distinguishing innovation from invention: with invention being the creation of something new and innovation being the adaption of that new thing.[3] Certain historians such as Benoît Godin view innovation as a category and make technology a division that innovation is simply ‘categorised’ into.[4] Thus, history informs us how innovation as a term is as innovative as its meaning and once again, we face a new age where innovation is evolving into a new identity – one that humans have less control over.
For the computer scientist Venor Vinge, ‘the acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century’, bringing us to the edge of change that is comparable to ‘the rise of human life on Earth’.[5] Venor’s comments are justified on the grounds of humans creating technological entities that hold greater-than-human intelligence. Theorised as technological singularity – is the hypothetical point in time whereby technological growth usurps human control as it grows in frenzy and produces unpredicted changes to human civilisation.
Technological singularity takes action through artificial intelligence (AI): a broad topic that has computerised its way into our modern vocabulary.
- Artificial Narrow Intelligence is a goal orientated AI that specialises in one area. Our world is well acquainted with this form of AI: it is the AI that drives a car, searches the internet or completes facial recognition.
- Artificial General Intelligence refers to a computer that has generalised human cognitive software abilities to complete tasks. It does not yet exist as a machine capable of understanding the human world as well as humans themselves is yet to exist. [6]
However, AI is increasingly explored with language that implicates it as an entirely separated world – one where humans cannot enter, agency is revoked to the power of machines and the individual is deskilled and devalued to the reign of technological components and algorithms.
- Artificial Superintelligence is defined by Oxford philosopher and leading AI thinker as ‘an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brain in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills’. [7] Central to Bostrom’s arguments are that if Super AI’s developments are not carefully constructed – humanity is at risk of engineering its own extinction.
How might we imagine this? Dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 certainly do attempt to imagine tyrannical world’s that dehumanise societies. However, the imagination of scientists is slightly different…
Image: Robot Lego Worm
Source: CNN.[8]
Watch it in action here!
Open Worm is an international open source project that has dedicated itself to create the first virtual organism in a computer.[9] The theory is that if the brain is anything other than a collection of electrical signals that can be catalogued, then it would be possible to upload someone’s mind to a computer and enable them to digitally live forever. C.elegans are little nematodes (multicellular insects) that have extensively been studied by scientists – their nervous system and genes have been analysed numerous times. Open Worm placed all the connections between the 302 neurons of the worm onto a map and stimulated them onto a software.[10] The neural networks of the worm embody LegoBot alternatives: ‘the worm’s nose neurons were replaced by a sonar sensor’ reports Marissa Fessenden for the Smithsonian.[11]
Scientists now work to map all the connections in the human brain – connectome. Even if we are yet to upload our brains to computers, this is certainly a step towards achieving Artificial General Intelligence. Yet, I still have to ask whether or not you would like to live forever – digitally?
Innovative? I guess so.
Author; Natalie Spencer, MSc History of Science, Medicine and Technology, Linacre College
[1] Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527, The Prince, (Harmondsworth, Eng.; New York: Penguin Books, 1981)
[2] ‘Innovation’, (http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Chapter-1.pdf).
[3] Walker, Bill, ‘Innovation vs. Invention: Make the Leap and Reap the Rewards’, Wired, (https://www.wired.com/insights/2015/01/innovation-vs-invention/).
[4] Benoît Godin, ‘Innovation: The History of a Category’, Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation Working Paper No.1, (2008).
[5] Vernor, Vinge, ‘Technological Singularity’, (1993), Symposium sponspored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute (March 30-31, 1993), (https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book98/com.ch1/vinge.singularity.html).
[6] Heath, Nick, ‘The last decade’s transformation of machine learning’, (2018), (https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-artificial-general-intelligence/).
[7] Urban, Tim, ‘The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence’, (2015), (https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html0).
[8] Shadolt, Peter, ‘Scientists upload a worm’s mind into a Lego robot’, CNN, (2015), (https://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/21/tech/mci-lego-worm/index.html).
[9] Open Worm, (http://openworm.org).
[01] Fessenden, Marissa, ‘We’ve Put a Worm’s Mind in a Lego Robot’s Body’, Smithsonian Mag, (2014), (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/weve-put-worms-mind-lego-robot-body-180953399/?no-ist).
[11] Ibid.