The eyes, window to Soul or Machine?
More than a year ago, the YouTube algorithm suggested a video to me that has been rattling in the back of my mind ever since.
The video is called Interview with Inventor of Neural Nets Warren McCulloch... and it's an excerpt from a documentary called The Living Machine published in 1962.
One of the questions the documentary attempts to answer is whether or not humans will ever create a being superior to themselves.
Dr. McCulloch thought it possible. Here's a particularly interesting part of the interview:
McCulloch: There's one thing you can be sure of, man won't survive forever.. From all that we know of the sun and of other stars that would be the most improbable thing. Something else will come.
Interviewer: And in your opinion it might be something of man's own creation?
McCulloch: Yes.
Interviewer: Here's the problem I'm trying to get at, you have two grandchildren right there and I can't see that a machine will ever feel toward any of its..
McCulloch: Why not?
Interviewer: ..creatures the way you feel about them. That's the one thing that I can't "get".
McCulloch: Well I think I can set it up for you. Because I'm certain that if I do it, there's a mechanism that can do it. If I can manage to state that in a finite and unambiguous manner then.. I think it can be done. And I see no reason why we can't develop a logic of relation in time to come. Granted it's defective at the present time.
And after dropping a statement like that, he smiles and looks straight into the camera lens in such an eerie and uncanny way that it sent shivers down my spine.
It's as if he somehow managed to look into my eyes, despite the recording being more than 60 years old, with a look that says I've seen the inevitable future of humanity.
The reason why this has remained in the back of my mind for so long is not only because it is more relevant now than ever before, but because both men represent opposite standpoints to a truly fundamental question. Namely, what is the nature of consciousness?
If consciousness is truly something that is created by the brain, out of matter, then Warren McCulloch's argument is foolproof. We are simply an organic mechanism that can be replicated with enough technological advancement.
However, if consciousness is something special, a fundamental fabric of existence, it would mean that matter results from consciousness instead.
That being the case would mean that conscious, living beings are unique and will never be truly replicatable.
I don't know what's true. But if the foolish AI race continues, and it probably will, we might get an answer pretty soon (in our lifetime).
Either we get "AGI" and "Singularity" or we face an insurmountable plateau that would indicate that consciousness might not be something we can create after all.
What do you think? Were the unwavering eyes of Warren McCulloch seeing an inevitability or a fantasy?