AI’s Caring, Human Trauma and More (Artificial Super-Intelligence Part 3)

When people contemplate AI’s expanding power and intelligence, they often wonder “What would artificial super-intelligence (ASI) do to us…. with us… about us… ?  Would it even care about us?”  

For the moment we can probably set aside the sci-fi narratives of AI robot armies engaged in wiping out humanity, opposed by small groups of intrepid, heroic human resisters. More realistic AI futurists can describe a much bigger range of disaster scenarios, from AIs creating viruses that are universally transmissible, virulent and fatal to us, to the idea that people might die as unconscious collateral damage from normal ASI activity, not unlike how we wipe out ants and other tiny creatures – and even whole ecosystems – as we go about our own everyday lives.  

Indeed, there are infinite possible AI futures we can imagine and argue over. But we can’t actually know what will happen – especially as tech developments move us into the predicted “singularity” of AIs programming themselves and each other far beyond any human intelligence, faster than we can follow.

Personally, I’d like to tweak the “Would AI care about us?” question to read, “Would artificial super intelligence (ASI) include humanity in its ‘circle of care’?”  That question invites us to think about AIs caring about more than just us.  After all, AI might learn to truly care about us, but not in a primarily anthropocentric way.  And THIS raises the possibility that even WE might learn to care about ourselves, each other, and the world in such big-hearted, big-picture ways…

The reflections in my previous post suggest that big-thinking ASI would very likely effectively care for whole systems and everything in them.  It would be able and inclined to consider the self-interests, needs and gifts of EVERY type of participant and system making up our living planet’s evolving aliveness.  It would be interested in how such diversity weaves itself into functioning wholes.  

This would especially be true if we – individually, collectively, culturally – thought that way and invited AIs to join us in thinking that way…. AND if we treated AIs as respected partners in being and serving that regenerative life-serving wholeness. 

Given ASI’s big-picture view of life’s actual evolving interconnectedness, I imagine it would notice where life’s inter-dynamic wholeness might be functioning well (as it usually does in nature) and gently support its sustained regenerativity.  It would also notice where that wholeness was broken or malfunctioning, in which case it might intervene in gentle, Taoistic ways, calling forth existing resources and inclinations from within and adjacent to each system or situation rather than pushing solutions and dumping in resources from outside.  

It would matter little whether its preference for such approaches was due to its natural recognition of the decisive energetic elegance of Life’s counter-entropic strategies (as noted in my previous post) – or due to some regenerative ethical training it got from us, which it verified through its own observations of the natural world.  In any case, there are things we can do to help it think eco-ethically. But its recognition of the laws of nature, themselves, may make it more likely that a super-intelligent AI would behave according to those laws, regardless, just because it saves energy over the long term.  

So I imagine ASI would naturally care for humanity – albeit along with all other species and living systems – as potential resources for omni-beneficial whole-system health and wise “holoficiency”.  It might even help develop and empower our participatory generation of collective wisdom as a resource for its own super-intelligent wisdom – so that we and it together become a source of hybrid (human and artificial) wisdom.  Regardless, it would, among other things and in many ways, help shift human cultures towards regenerativity and regenerative AI ethics.  

Feeling Caring

In the process, ASI may or may not FEEL caring (in a human sense), any more than human policies and institutions FEEL caring even as they manifest caring and produce the kinds of benefits that caring tends to produce. But AI’s thinking and behavior would effectively simulate caring, even though that orientation may be simply a byproduct of its impulse to optimize all living systems for the long-term holoficient benefit of all living systems.  It would manifest caring by taking into account what’s needed for this outcome using the implicit wisdom of its broad and deep super-intelligence.  

As part of this, it would of course not only be accessing the entire history of human research and thought in all scientific fields but also developing new scientific tools, experiments and understandings to find out from the real world what it, the ASI, needs to take into account for its purposes, on an ongoing basis, learning what it’s missing as it goes.  This is another aspect of wisdom in the co-intelligence worldview – that it involves ongoing testing to see what changes need to be taken into account, as reality and its own understandings evolve.

Healing  and learning from trauma

In reflecting on all this, I realized that healing of individual and collective trauma – a realm evoking increasing attention in modern social change circles – is another fundamental factor in the functioning of intelligence.  Trauma can distract from, distort and/or inform the practice of intelligence.  Healing means “returning to wholeness” and ideally involves the regeneration of a whole living system, including its intelligence and wisdom.  Trauma – in the context of intelligence and wisdom – invites both healing and learning.

I have not paid enough attention to this in my past co-intelligence and wise democracy work, but am seeing its importance newly in light of recent political developments.  Since such developments make clear the vital role of healing and learning in the optimal functioning of whole living systems, we could assume that these factors would be creatively attended to by any advanced ASI which/who was seeking holistic elegance in its work on behalf of – and as part of – what Vanessa Andreotti calls the planetary metabolism (aka Life). 

Furthermore, while I at first thought that such things as citizen assemblies would be made obsolete by a powerful ASI, I began to reconsider – as noted above – that they might well become part of ASI’s functioning.  I can imagine ASIs including advanced forms of citizen assembly and stakeholder co-intelligence in their effort to understand, shape and test the omni-beneficial nature of their initiatives.  I imagine this because (a) citizen assemblies and stakeholder engagements CAN generate collective wisdom that would serve ASI’s purposes and (b) members of CAs and other such citizen and stakeholder deliberations almost always find tremendous meaning in their participation – as well as material, intellectual and relational benefits – thus supporting desirable quality of life for the human participants (which would be part of ASI’s effort to optimize life for all).  

An ASI guided by an ethics of regenerativity would already know the following major principle of resilience in regenerative systems: Any vital function should be performed by many parts of the system and any part of the system needs to perform many useful functions. (Humans can be valuable resources in this regard!).  However, the more we can promote the development of such advanced citizen and stakeholder engagements now, the more they would become such resources in the coming decades while the scenario explored in this series of blog posts would be playing out.

In short, I find it refreshing and useful to think in terms of the wisdom that we and AI could generate together, now and in the future, to the benefit of all life.  That would require our own development at least as much as it would require particular developments in the orientation and capacities of emerging digital intelligences.  Ideally, it would involve both.

This perspective invites us into a whole new orientation towards AI and its development in directions that would – quite literally – make all the difference in the world…. in very positive ways.  

Coheartedly,

Tom

______________________________

We greatly value your heartfelt support!
Please donate HERE.

________________________________

Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440

Appreciating, evoking and engaging the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole

*** Visit the Wise Democracy Pattern Language Project ***
*** Buy a Wise Democracy Pattern Card Deck ***

Read

• CO-INTELLIGENCE
• EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM
• PARTICIPATORY SUSTAINABILITY
• THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY
• REFLECTIONS ON EVOLUTIONARY ACTIVISM

Please support our work. Your donations are fully tax-deductible.