Toffler - Wired together

Wired together

Comparing machine intelligence with human consciousness has led us up a blind alley, not least because we are already integrated with machines through our shared unconscious processes

Just over 50 years ago, the American psychologist Donald Hebb explained his highly influential assembly theory with the pithy phrase neurons that fire together wire together.

The simple meaning of this long-lasting idea is that brain cells (neurons) that are apt to respond to the same sort of stimuli connect into networks.

Subsequently when any neuron in a network is activated, the others are prompted to react too. That would explain people’s often instantaneous response to the things in the world. It also provides a ready-made theory about how people remember, by activating existing networks, and learn – by building new ones.

Unconscious

Since then, theories of the cognitive unconscious have become more commonplace. Seen in that light, most of the action that Hebb describes happening in the brain acts below the surface of our everyday awareness. While readers of this article may vaguely notice, for instance, the device or paper they are holding, or the smell of coffee wafting up from their drinks, most of their active attention is (hopefully) directed towards understanding the words as they unfold.

Theories of these unconscious networks are now popular in the psychology of risk. For example, in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s highly influential 2008 book Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness, the authors favour using prompts that act at a largely unconscious level to change behaviours. Replacing eye-level chocolate with fruit at a supermarket checkout is a nudge. The stimulus is meant to activate our unconscious networks and reinforce our good intentions.

Machine intelligence

More recently, machine intelligence has entered into the debate. It has taken a a lot of human ingenuity to create artificial intelligence systems to recognise human speech and images and objects in the world. But today, given the ability of those systems to respond accurately to their environments, there is little doubt that some robots and software programs exhibit intelligence.

According to the philosopher of technology N. Katherine Hayles, though, we have been thinking about such artificial intelligence in the wrong way. We have tended to measure how well machines can think in comparison with conscious human thought. But machines are already thinking in the same way that humans do because their networks of circuitry operate unconsciously in the same way as our networks of neurons.

Cyborgs redefined

In her 2017 book Unthought: the power of the cognitive nonconscious, Hayles argues that when human and machine intelligences work together, the whole system effectively wires together. That explains why so many people can work with and understand computer systems at an intuitive level without understanding a shred of code. The messaging between humans and machines is out of sight and out of our conscious minds.

Hayles’ theory is provocative, but she is largely positive about its implications. For example, she argues that her framework can be better used to unpick the legal responsibilities and human accountabilities for drones operating in war zones. But since we join with machines at a largely unconscious level and are susceptible to being nudged, we had better hope that the software engineers and their bosses have our best interests at heart.