Robots, Humans and God

 

Humanoid Robots( HR) are no longer a fantasy. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) these HRs are soon to be a part of everyday life as much as dishwashers, vaccum cleaners, laundry machines and smart phones. There are valid concerns about how it would affect the people who make a living with low paying jobs, the kind of jobs that these HRs will replace. There are other ethical concerns as well but let’s not go into that. My focus is on human development. I am not anti-technology. Rather I see the speedy drive to develop technology as a good opportunity to compare and create a culture of healthy competition similarly for human development. In other words, human development must compete at the same scale as modern technology. And I truly believe that at every level outcomes will be a whole lot better when we combine our scientific endeavors with working on ourselves.

How? Why?

The HRs are essentially human like machines endowed with AI. Their development like any other new technology has been facing challenges and the experts are overcoming the challenges one after another. One example is use of the robot’s hand. Our human hand is one of the most complex tools in our physical body. It can sew a fine thread through a needle, it can pick, pinch, point, smack, smash, twist, stir, rotate, slap, flap, pull, push, hold things, lift things, drop things, cover things, apply, rub, scratch, write, throw, catch, sweep, reach, steady when falling or off balance, make innumerable gestures, convey emotions and motives through a simple touch, serve as a sensor for temperature, texture, shape, size, consistency. The list goes on. It would indeed be a great achievement for humans to be able to develop such a device that can match the functions of a human hand.

Coming to the “brain” of these HRs. Anything that AI could process, essentially can be incorporated into a HR. There is no doubt that AI is one of most amazing innovations, if not the most amazing one, of our times. It has a capacity to process several fold more information at any given time than any one human can process.

 But what does it process? Data! Every single piece of data that is fed into it. And what data can be fed into it? Everything which the humans have available for themselves. It is more than what one human could have. Yet it cannot be a single byte more than what all humans on the planet cumulatively have. The data will continue to grow with time but even then it would never surpass what humans have gathered. Because it is the humans who are feeding data into it.

This is where humans need to pause and reflect. 

If cumulatively speaking, human race is gathering “new” data, where is this coming from? How is it coming? Certainly it is not coming from AI. And if no human had it at an earlier time and has it now, it must have come from somewhere else. 

What’s the source of this new information that humans gather?

Science has a name for it. It is called intuition. This is a magical interface in-built into humans that no AI can ever have. Humans have the capacity to reproduce and thus recreate life. They are able to clone and copy any original form of life. But they do not have the capacity to recreate and install intuition in a man-made object like a robot. 

It is intuition from which arises thought (and feeling) which in turn transcribes into human intelligence. And then intelligence appropriates it to the ego! Newton saw the apple fall from the tree and that led him to defining the law of gravity for rest of his race. Think about it. The law of gravity was operational even before Newton discovered it. But no one had thought about it. If you were to ask Newton how did he think about it, he may not be able to answer that question.

 How does thought come? Where does thought come from? All we know is thought arises in our brains without volition. Immediately we appropriate it to our ego. “It is MY idea”. This is usually the next thought after any original thought. And then depending on the potential of that idea to generate power, money, attention, recognition, or often all of the above, we go to enormous lengths to guard and patent the idea before it is shared with the world. 

We all tend to cash in on our ideas in one way or another. Even though we didn’t have to pay a dime for those ideas ! That’s how our brains are oriented. Our relationship with the world is transactional. I’ll come to this issue in more detail later. It is an important one. But first something that is more important and basic.

Before we look at our relationship with the world it is time to look at our relationship with the source of our ideas. How many of us pause and think about the source of “our” ideas? 

We have become fishermen, sitting with the rod and/or nets and catching new fish each day and selling them in the market. The consumers pay for our goods. The government collects taxes from what we make and the rest we take home for ourselves. Ironically many who make enormous amounts of money wield a lot of power and convince the government to collect fewer taxes from them than from people who make a lot less. That’s for another time. What most people from all categories forget  is caring about the sea that took nothing from us in return for the fish! 

For every scientist, every intellectual whose brain is naturally capable of churning brilliant ideas, ideas that are channeled into applications that become valuable tools for use of the human race, it is perhaps time to pause and reflect on that “ocean” from which these golden fish are jumping out into their nets and bringing them wealth and recognition. 

We come back to that faculty in the human brain that we know as intuition. That special power that cannot be reproduced in our robots. Is this intuition limited to only producing creative ideas that lead to scientific discovery and innovation? Or is there more to it? 

Let’s go back to the interface between this intuition, thought and ego. The thought jumped out of the intuitive mind like a fish into the net of the conscious mind. The ego immediately caught it. Labeled it with its name on it and set about to marketing. For a change, if it had looked back at the conscious mind and passed on a message to the intuitive mind what would it be? A simple and obvious message in just two words would be: Thank you! 

This is the most critical part of our brain function that we have not paid attention to. This is the primary location where the distinction occurs between a selfish, blinded ego and an ego that recognizes a source above itself. This is also the location where the rivers of honesty, gratitude and civic sense begin. The reason we have neglected this part of our brain function is because we were taught to only look outward. Catch the thoughts and go sell them. Or then even easier, buy the thoughts from someone and go sell them. Worse still, steal the thoughts from someone and go sell them. Make a living out of them. Make a fortune off the fish whichever way. And don’t bother to think about the ocean. I’ll leave that for another time.

 What is being discussed at hand is about facing the fact that all ideas, even the brightest and original ideas that come to our conscious mind arise out of a source, a dimension that is unknown to us. Because it has no form or a given name we have become habituated to not acknowledging it. Yet, just because we do not acknowledge it, none of us can deny that our ideas stem from a source unknown to us. No scientist, physicist, mathematician, naturalist, economist, artist, poet or mystic can answer the question about how any of his game changing or creative ideas came to him. He can just claim that they came to him. 

Furthermore , just because we have become habituated to not acknowledging a source of our ideas, it does not mean this practice has no consequences. It has terrible repercussions for mankind. It has created a disconnect not only between the invisible part of our existence but also an aberration in our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with the visible parts of the universe around. 

I am reminded of the famous argument of Jane Goodall against the prevalent notion of the scientific community that to be a scientist you have to be objective, you cannot have empathy for your subjects. She effectively proved them wrong by following her intuition and refusing to buy their baseless assumptions. Science does not want to collaborate with empathy and matters of the heart because empathy is not understood by an alarming majority. They do not recognize it as being complementary and not contradictory to objectivity. They also have not given adequate time to reflect on the fact that scientific ideas arise from the same invisible source within our consciousness from where empathy comes. 

Let me go back to what I said earlier. Intuition is the most critical part of our brain function that we have not paid attention to. This is where the rivers of honesty, gratitude and civic sense begin. Curiosity too, but will discuss that in a separate post in more detail.

The culture for objectivity made us turn the focus towards the visible world. What we missed in that pursuit is that part of us which could not be seen, quantified or documented. We disregarded the fact that it can however be experienced. Just like the exact moment when a thought arises in our consciousness. If that moment when we recognize and seize the thought was accompanied by an acknowledgment that it came from a source unknown to ourselves, it would open the door to the most basic virtue of mankind which is honesty. Conversely, a human brain appropriating to itself, an original thought that came to its attention but without the understanding of how or from where, is the beginning and propagation of a culture and pattern of deception. Read this again. 

A brain that is able to acknowledge that its thoughts came from some invisible source, even though he may not be able to identify the source, will still tend to have a conscious sense of gratitude towards the unknown benefactor. Not only gratitude, there will be an automatic sense of being a steward instead of owner of the thought. That is the birthplace of humility.

Next comes the issue of what to do with this thought that has miraculously fallen in my lap? 

Is it useful in any way? If not, I dismiss it. 

If it is useful, is it only going to be useful for me or for more people? 

This is the birthplace of civic sense. 

Civic sense once born can remain rudimentary or blossom into a beautiful curated garden. Again I’m reminded of Jane Goodall. Her life is an example of how civic sense blossomed into a huge garden that was appealing to just about anyone on the planet. 

Examples of people with a rudimentary civic sense are too numerous to mention. Basically the civic sense that is hindered from developing turns a man into a miser and a miserable moneylender. It also throttles whatever small amount of honesty and gratitude that may have existed in the person. This underdeveloped sense of civic duty is the birthing ground for greed. I have this great idea, I will use it for this innovation and the world will see my genius. I will name the price for the innovation and become rich, richer than any other man on earth. This is my wealth, earned on my own merit and I owe nothing to the world. No one in the world deserves charity. Each one must earn for themselves. People who donate to charity are foolish. People who are poor deserve to be poor. People who are rich deserve to get richer by the day. People who are suffering deserve to be suffering. Anyone know a person who has brilliant scientific ideas and such stunted and perverse civic sense? How can he be considered rich? An entire part of his brain is underdeveloped. This brain never tapped his intuition to learn about nurturing gratitude and empathy. It never learned to keep just as much wealth he generated to sustain a comfortable living for himself and give the rest away to those who are struggling with basic needs. Instead he initiated a campaign to cut off their available pipelines for help. 

Such a person is a perfect example of the dangers to mankind when intuition is channeled singularly towards science without concomitant development of human virtues of honesty, humility, stewardship, gratitude, contentment, generosity, compassion, empathy. Mankind needs science to make progress. But not at the cost of losing empathy. When empathy is lost in the blind pursuit of scientific advances, man does not have the ability to make friends in the true sense. A society that lacks relationships built on strong friendships cannot survive with scientific discoveries alone. These discoveries with their shiny gadgets in the absence of virtues like robust civic sense and compassion will become cause for destruction of civilization. Who are you designing the modern technology for if you don’t see fellow humans as friends and are actively working to expand the gap between the rich and the poor? 

As we enter into the future that is already ready to welcome HRs into mainstream society let us pause to think about that one thing within us that makes us superior to these HRs which is our intuition. And let us acknowledge it in its totality, not just the part that leads to creation of more physical comfort and material wealth. One of its babies is scientific curiosity, one is creativity and one is humanity. Let us spend equal time, no less, no more, to develop our human side out of it, without which there would be no difference between the HRs and us. 

And as we proceed with the pursuit of developing  these potentials from our intuition let us frequently wonder about the mystery of this intuition. How did it come to be within us ? Is the intuition within me different from the intuition inside my best friend? How does it lead me to developing bonds with strangers or with animals or with nature? How does it make me react and reach out when pain is coming from another person’s body ? How does it bring a smile on my face when I see a rainbow across the sky? How does it make a lioness become gentle towards her cubs? Let us be curious about that part of us that we have not previously thought about. And about that part of our surroundings that we have not ever thought about. It may just prove to be a revelation. 

Saree is a munga tussar from Vidarbha with hand kasuti embroidery all over.