Has AI a soul? Can science approach that problem?
Vasil Penchev Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge: Dept of Logical Systems and Models vasildinev@gmail.com
“Human Person and the Challenges of Secularization�
International Seminar 22-25 June 2017 in Vatra-Dornei, Romania
My motivation
Has AI a soul? Can science approach that problem? • I do not know the answers of those questions o However, I think that they are actual and very important especially meaning the dialog of science and religion • Indeed, AI is rather a scientific conception, and Soul is rather a religious or at least philosophical one o The former refers to the material and visible world studied by science via its causal, experimental, and quantitative methods, and latter to the spiritual and invisible world, to which religion is devoted
About me ‌ • Anyway, I am a scientist rather than a theologian and my viewpoint will be from the science o However, I hope a dialog with theologians • I do not belong to that large group of scientists tended to reject religion initially and fundamentally as wrong, false, misleading, and primitive o Nevertheless, I self-determine myself as an atheist
Science and religion • I think both science and religion are two great achievements of humankind, though o They might join and unify their efforts and approaches in a whole much bigger than the sum separately • To take place that, they should overcome the age-old hostility and mutual misunderstanding o I intend my presentation as a quite, quite modest and humble gesture in that direction
The viewpoint of Christianity (alleged by me) to the problem “Has AI a soul?”
About “soul” • The “soul” is not a scientific notion, at best it is a philosophical concept or category o The closest counterparts in science can be found in the area pf psychology: e.g. psychics, mentality, personality, mind, reason, consciousness, etc. • However, I think that all those would be irrelevant to the problem for they refer to the simile of AI and human beings o On the contrary, “soul” means the simile of human beings to an entity called God • So, psychics and all the rest psychological terms can serve only as metaphors or analogies of the “soul” properly, at best
Creativity in Christianity • Christianity offers a direct criterion for the simile of human beings and God: creativity, therefore meaning the ability to create new, whether material or spiritual, entities o The human being both material and spiritual is the Crown of God’s Creation for the humans themselves can create in turn with or without God’s assistance
Creativity from religion to science • Then, one can question whether human beings can create entities, which or who might create by themselves with or without humans’ assistance o Then, the similarity in creativity of human beings and AI (if any) might be considered as a criterion for the availability of soul in a sense, which can be directly reinterpreted in terms of science
Creativity in terms of science
Many approaches to creativity • Creativity might be defined and accordingly investigated from different scientific viewpoints, theories, and disciplines as well as by various methods
Creativity by choice and free will • However, meaning the particular objectivity for the creativity of AI and thus computer science and mathematics, one can define creativity by choice, or by free will in the narrow sense of free choice between the elements of a set o That choice is accomplished by a criterion, which is not granted in advance, but it is invented ad hoc keeping in mind the previous experience of analogical or similar choices • That kind of choice is neither random nor predetermined o It takes an intermediate position between the poles of absolute randomness and unconditioned necessity
The probability distribution of all possible choices • That intermediateness can be described quantitatively by means of the probability distribution of all possible choices reflecting the previous experience of analogical or similar choices o Then the pole of absolute randomness would correspond to the equal probabilities of all choice, i.e. without any previous experience, and the pole of necessity to the unconditioned choice of a single alternative • The quantity of entropy (or respectively, information) of all possible choices can determine unambiguously the position of any probability distribution between the two poles: oThe randomness has maximal entropy, and the necessity zero entropy
A formal description of creativity • Then, creativity can be formally described as the velocity of learning or understanding for both learning and understanding themselves can be represented as to motion from the pole of randomness to that of necessity o The motion is faster, the corresponding creativity is stronger
Still one formal criterion of creativity … • Still one formal criterion of creativity can be additionally involved in that scientific model of creativity: o Creativity should be maximal in the middle between the two poles • Indeed, if one chooses absolute randomly, or of one knows absolutely exactly the right choice, creativity is absent o Then, it should be maximal just in the middle between the poles
Both formal criteria for creativity • Combining both criteria above, one can define creativity either as the velocity of understanding in the middle or as the complementarity of the two criteria: o Either of them can be utilized, but not both together
An example
An example • An example can visualize those criteria as to human being’s creativity as to God’s creativity: o A master and an apprentice make a table: • Both have an idea and plan for how the table to be made o Master does it much faster and without mistakes • The master knows how
An example … • Nevertheless, the apprentice can be more creative than the master o To estimate that fact, we have to compare how fast the master learnt while being an apprentice to the apprentice at issue • If the master learnt faster as an apprentice than the master’s apprentice now, that master is more creative o Otherwise, the apprentice is more creative and will be a better master than the teacher in time, in the future
God
• One can imagine a series of better and better masters, and at last the best master among all possible masters: to be the best, that master’s idea, plan, and “table” have to coincide o That best master just being the best creates instantly and not only tables, but anything and all • That best master is a metaphor of God o God’s creativity is infinite, human beings’ creativity is finite • The former creates instantly and thus, the idea, plan, and the made coincide, the creativity of a human being needing a period of time to realize the idea to the made and may make only a few things properly according to the profession • God creates “ex nihilo” for the creation is instant
Maybe theological problems … • However, the Christian Bible says that God created the world and all in it for a week, i.e. not instantly o Nevertheless, anything in the world can have created instantly by God appearing “ex nihilo” • Or God is only a very, very good “master”, but not the best one, and thus cannot creates material entities “ex nihilo” instantly just as a human being cannot needing a period of time as well as row material for the creation? o Of course, this would be a theological dispute, to which science does not refer
Resuming‌ • Resuming, science is able to describe uniformly the creativity of God and any human being relating both to each other, e.g. as infinity and finiteness
• One should demonstrate further that the same criteria of creativity are applicable to AI, i.e. to a computer, e.g. to a contemporary computer representable by the model of a “Turing machine” o That model represents any computer similar to a human being who calculates: calculates digit by digit according to certain unambiguous rules and records new and new digits as intermediate results • The rules constitute a finite algorithm: when the algorithm ended, the result is ultimate o The calculation has finished • If the rules are kept, the ultimate result is necessarily correct
Any computer is a Turing machine • Any contemporary computer works in thus: if it is not broken or its rules to keep (the software) are not wrong, it obtains the correct ultimate result necessarily o So, it seems no to be creative not being able to any choice as far as it follows a plan by the rules to keep • That plan is not created by the computer, but by some human beings really creative and thus really created the rules
• Indeed, Christianity postulates the creativity of human being, but maybe not all religions do the same o Perhaps, there exists some religion which deprives human being of choice • That religion (if any exists) would consider any human being just as the model of a Turing machine and thus as a contemporary computer o God’s predetermination, the fate must be followed unconditionally and then and only then a true ultimate result is obtained necessarily • It seems that any human choice violates God’s intention and thus corresponds to a broken computer, thus useless and redundant o I am not a theologian and do not know whether such a religion exist really • It is only a hypothetical example for my topic
An infinite Turing machine • Another hypothetical example may be involved by generalizing the model of a Turing machine from the finiteness of both rules and calculations to the infinity of either o Mathematics and computer science state that the case is equivalent to a finite Turing machine able to makes choices if need be, i.e. to a self-learning machine
Self-learning • For example, the algorithm (the list of rules) is incomplete and should be complemented by the computer itself in the processing of data o It may make an absolute random choice or it may compare the blank space in the algorithm with others in its memory and pick up more or less randomly a series of instructions to fulfil the blank space in order to be able to continue the work • It obtains a certain ultimate result, which it compares with other previous results and estimates whether or as far the made choice is successful
About the self-learning computers • Self-learning computers exist o They seem to be able to be creative if need be, but “creative” in a too restricted sense • Anyway the development of the computers thrives and they become more and more creative though in that restricted sense of partial selflearning and the complementation of their software by themselves o Furthermore, one can demonstrate that information, including that processed by computers, is the quantity of choices and thus fundamentally related to the concept of choice, and via it to creativity as above
Choice: the quality of information • Indeed, any quantity including information can be defined as a quality by the quality of its measuring unit o The unit of information is a bit • It is defined as an elementary choice: the simplest possible choice between two equally probable alternatives o Consequently, the quality of information being the same as that of its units is the choice, and as a quantity information represents the minimal amount of choices necessary for a structure to be ordered • Then, one might think of information also as the amount of creativity for anything to be ordered starting from an initial state of maximal chaos (entropy)
Quantum information • Quantum mechanics introduced the concept of quantum information measured in units of quantum bits o A quantum bit can be interpreted as a generalization of the concept of “bit” as to infinity: to infinite series or sets • Quantum information allows of quantum mechanics to see all physical and thus material entities and processes as different manifestations of a single common substance: o Quantum information and thus as infinite creativity in the final analysis
“Infinite creativity” • Maybe many theologians would accept “infinite
creativity” as a possible metaphor of God o Unlike it, the creativity of all human beings is finite • The former corresponds to quantum information studied by quantum mechanics, the latter to finite information defined classically o Both are information whether infinite or finite
Computer: an informational tool • Humankind managed to create in turn a special kind of tool, an informational tool, the computer o As a tool, it is not more a continuation of human free will, deciding how to use it by means of the corresponding software • However, as processing information, it is related to any human being’s creativity, and as a possible hypothesis to God’s creativity
The sorites paradox • One may utilize the metaphor of the sorites paradox to formulate the problem about the creativity (soul) of computer in principle: o The version of the sorites paradox, most relevant to the problem, may be told so: one adds a grain of sand again and again, grain by grain • When will the collection of separated grains of sand become a heap of sand? When will the quantity of grains transform into the quality of heap? oWhenever, the number of grains in any heap is finite though huge
The sorites paradox in arithmetic • One may reformulate the same into term of arithmetic or set theory: o One counts natural numbers adding unit by unit • For example, 1+1 =2+1=3+1=4, etc. o Any unit corresponds to a grain of sand • Then when will the units become infinitely many? o When is finiteness transformed into infinity?
The answer of arithmetic • In fact, arithmetic answers “Never!” if one uses the Peano axioms o Indeed, 1 is finite, adding a unit to any finite natural number, we obtain again a finite natural number • Then, all natural numbers are finite according to the axiom of induction (the “fifth axiom” of Peano arithmetic) o Infinity cannot exist in that arithmetic
Set theory vs. arithmetic about infinity • Set theory postulates the existence of infinite sets and it is an independent axiom uninferable from all the rest o Thus, mathematics is grounded on two fundamental mathematical theories, which contradict to each other as to infinity • Arithmetic rejects infinity as a corollary from the axiom of induction On the contrary, set theory postulates infinite sets o Gödel’s theorems of incompleteness (1931) reflect that contradiction between arithmetic and set theory to infinity
The sacrament of any new quality • So, arithmetic would say that any collection of “grains of sand” is not a “heap” o Set theory in turn would tell that heaps exist anyway • However neither of them means or can explain when or how a huge quantity becomes a new quality, when or how many, many grains of sand become a heap
Conclusion • Resuming, we may return to the development of the contemporary computers oTheir computational power increases, teraflop by teraflop as well as their ability of self-learning • Humankind adds new and new “grains of sand” o One day, they will constitute a “heap” • The computers will acquire the new quality of creativity properly and therefore “souls” perhaps o Or never? • We do not know o However we may think of that
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Salut întrebările!