Book Review
The Age of Spiritual Machines (by Ray Kurzweil)
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- Intelligence is, at its very base, a set of cognitive capacities — and we know these capacities are purely physical. They are a production of systemic neural firings. When I see the color red, for instance, areas of my brain light up and I have an appropriate response — like braking before a “stop” sign. Intelligence is not the sensation of seeing red, of revelling in the marvellous depth of that color, or of appreciating the beauty in it. Nor is it mysterious.
- This simple but deep distinction is why a superintelligence is possible. First, it entails that intelligence can be instantiated in machines. Why? Because machines can replicate the right kind of information processing that constitute these cognitive abilities. In principle, machines could emulate, bit-by-bit, module-by-module, system-by-system, exactly the sort of processing required to “see” the color red (perhaps by copying the human neuron-for-neuron response). And second, the insight above suggests that cognitive abilities may exist that humans do not possess — just like humans possess abilities that frogs or mice don’t. These abilities would enable an entity equipped with them to process information in ways humans could not, reason in ways alien to us, and think in an incomprehensible fashion. This is more than just a savant or a memory gymnast — this is a system as far removed from human comprehension as mice are to humans. Such a system would be a superintelligence.
- But this last implication is also why I disagree with Kurzweil. A superintelligence is possible, but we will not fully understand its functioning. Aspects of its cognition will be entirely beyond us. Consequently, we will be very unlikely to create it. Really the only way to do so would be to create one by accident, by a fortuitous blunder — not through any conscious deliberation. So the scientists at OpenAI might as well resort to rolling the dice. We are not going to have a superintelligence anytime soon.
- Also, the title seemed a bit ostentatious: “The Age of Spiritual Machines.” Spiritual. Really? Kurzweil might have stuck with superintelligent or some other variation of “more intelligent.” But importing spirituality into the conversation complicates things far too much — there is so little we understand about why we are conscious to begin with, not to mention why something like transcendence exists — to be of much more than rhetorical use.