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From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net

How the Enlightenment Ends

Philosophically, intellectually—in every way—human society is
unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.

HENRY A. KISSINGER
The Atlantic JUNE 2018 ISSUE
https://t.co/LB1jxwlWhX

EDMON DE HARO

Three years ago, at a conference on transatlantic issues, the subject
of artificial intelligence appeared on the agenda. I was on the verge
of skipping that session—it lay outside my usual concerns—but the
beginning of the presentation held me in my seat.

The speaker described the workings of a computer program that would
soon challenge international champions in the game Go. I was amazed
that a computer could master Go, which is more complex than chess. In
it, each player deploys 180 or 181 pieces (depending on which color he
or she chooses), placed alternately on an initially empty board;
victory goes to the side that, by making better strategic decisions, immobilizes his or her opponent by more effectively controlling
territory.

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The speaker insisted that this ability could not be preprogrammed. His
machine, he said, learned to master Go by training itself through
practice. Given Go’s basic rules, the computer played innumerable
games against itself, learning from its mistakes and refining its
algorithms accordingly. In the process, it exceeded the skills of its
human mentors. And indeed, in the months following the speech, an AI
program named AlphaGo would decisively defeat the world’s greatest Go players.

As I listened to the speaker celebrate this technical progress, my
experience as a historian and occasional practicing statesman gave me
pause. What would be the impact on history of self-learning
machines—machines that acquired knowledge by processes particular to themselves, and applied that knowledge to ends for which there may be
no category of human understandin

XPost: soc.history, alt.philosophy, alt.christnet.religion
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From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net

On Sat, 23 Jun 2018 10:56:35 +0200, Steve Hayes
<hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:

How the Enlightenment Ends

Philosophically, intellectually—in every way—human society is
unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.
Heretofore, the technological advance that most altered the course of
modern history was the invention of the printing press in the 15th
century, which allowed the search for empirical knowledge to supplant >liturgical doctrine, and the Age of Reason to gradually supersede the
Age of Religion. Individual insight and scientific knowledge replaced
faith as the principal criterion of human consciousness. Information
was stored and systematized in expanding libraries. The Age of Reason >originated the thoughts and actions that shaped the contemporary world
order.

That is a modern judgement on the premodern era.

But just as the author expresses the fear that in entering the
postmodern age of Artificial Intelligence, he does not stop to
consider what might have been lost in the transition from premodernity
to modernity.

<snip>

Second, that in achieving intended goals, AI may change human thought >processes and human values. AlphaGo defeated the world Go champions by
making strategically unprecedented moves—moves that humans had not >conceived and have not yet successfully learned to overcome. Are these
moves beyond the capacity of the human brain? Or could humans learn
them now that they have been demonstrated by a new master?
If AI learns exponentially faster than humans, we must expect it to >accelerate, also exponentially, the trial-and-error process by which
human decisions are generally made: to make mistakes faster and of
greater magnitude than humans do. It may be impossible to temper those >mistakes, as researchers in AI often suggest, by including in a
program caveats requiring “ethical” or “reasonable” outcomes. Entire >academic disciplines have arisen out of humanity’s inability to agree
upon how to define these terms. Should AI therefore become their
arbiter?

<snip>

Third, that AI may reach intended goals, but be unable to explain the >rationale for its conclusions. In certain fields—pattern recognition, >big-data analysis, gaming—AI’s capacities already may exceed those of >humans. If its computational power continues to compound rapidly, AI
may soon be able to optimize situations in ways that are at least
marginally different, and probably significantly different, from how
humans would optimize them. But at that point, will AI be able to
explain, in a way that humans can understand, why its actions are
optimal? Or will AI’s decision making surpass the explanatory powers
of human language and reason? Through all human history, civilizations
have created ways to explain the world around them—in the Middle Ages, >religion; in the Enlightenment, reason; in the 19th century, history;
in the 20th century, ideology. The most difficult yet important
question about the world into which we are headed is this: What will
become of human consciousness if its own explanatory power is
surpassed by AI, and societies are no longer able to interpret the
world they inhabit in terms that are meaningful to them?

These are some of the questions that Marshall McLuhan raised 50 years
ago and more -- how technology had changed human thinking in ways that
many people did not realise, and he tried to examine some of those
ways, using metaphors of "hot" and "cool" and "aural" and "visual"
learning.

Modernity gave us a new and different way of seeing and understanding
our world. Unlike Lissinger, however, I don't think modernity
superseded premodernity, rather it supplemented it.

I believe the culture of modernity could be summed up in the saying
that it teaches use to know the price of everything and the value of
nothing. It was the premodern period, the Age of Religion, that
Kissinger so cavalierly despises, that taught us values, the
non-quantifiable things. Modernity gave us the ability to understand
better the quantifiable things, like prices.

And it was modernity, with the invention of printing, that also
changed religion. It was the invention of printing that gave us the
Protestant deity, the Bible. In premodern Christianity the God
Christians worshipped was the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. After the invention of printing a new trinity emerged --
Father Son and Holy Bible.

This can be seen in "statements of faith" produced Protestants in the
modern era -- they nearly always begin by saying what they believe
about the Bible. Premodern statements of faith usually began with God,
as in "I believe in one God, the Father almighty...."

Moderns are greatly busy occupied with trying to decide about the
Bible. Premoderns did not occupy themselves with such things. They
simply believed that in the Bible (a term they were probably
unfamiliar with) Christ has decided about us.

Before the invention of printing there was no "Bible" -- the concept
did not exist. There were the "Holy Scriptures", which were read in
church, and most people heard them with their ears rather than seeing
them with their eyes. In McLuhan's terminology, they were a cool
medium.

So religion tended to change with modernity, and, as some
missiologists would say, it contextualised the gospel to modernity.
Religion was not absent from modernity, as Kissinger seems to suppose.
It still provided values, but in a slightly different form than
previously.

So it was modernity that reduced things to the quantifiable and the mathematical, and AI technology will just take that one step further.

These are just a few thoughts provoked by this article. I'd be
interested in hearing what others have to say.


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com

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