The terms of intelligence, consciousness and sentience are describing cognitive states that Neuroscientists and philosophers have a difficult time coming to an agreement on. Moreover, the discussions about the framework that supports those states has led to even more disagreement. Within all this confusion, AI engineers are barreling ahead with no principled understanding of what AI really is or its destructive potential. This was recently on display when a lead Google AI engineer, working on LaMDA, Google’s AI chatbot generator, publicly announced that he thought LaMDA became sentient. This was not just flawed judgment but a further confused projection of sentience onto high level intelligence that has merely attained the capability to mimic human behavior/communication.
So to start clearing up the confusion and give AI engineers a foundation for a new understanding of what AI is and its destructive potential, each cognitive state needs to be explained through a process. Then, emotion needs to be explained through a process. Because if something cannot be explained through a process then it’s not understood.
Three Cognitive States
Intelligence - is a state where the motion-velocity and aggregation of information, using a neural network, has reached a level where that information becomes contextual-algorithms, i.e. thinking. All intelligence is real, be it created artificially or evolved in nature.
Consciousness - is a state where the motion-velocity and aggregation of contextual-algorithms, using a neural network, has reached a level where the intelligence becomes aware and can make judgments, i.e. thinking about its thinking. All consciousness is real, be it created artificially or evolved in nature.
Sentience - is a state where emotion automatically attaches to, and integrates with, consciousness which is using a neural network comprised only of biological synapses. The addition of emotion empowers a consciousness with many new abilities that a consciousness can never even come close to duplicating by-itself. The two additional primary abilities that directly result in sentience are purpose and motivation (giving motion to purpose). All sentience is real, be it created artificially (within an artificial biological body) or evolved in nature.
Natural cognitive states fall under the classification of ‘life’, while artificial cognitive states fall under the classification of ‘AI’. But all cognitive states are organized systems, just like the organized systems of the atomic, molecular, and cellular physical states. Organized systems have processes, cannot form accidentally and must be created with a purpose to exist, employing vision, strategy and execution to function. At their core, both the cognitive and physical states are information-based systems. Emotion is also an organized system but is not information-based. Emotion contains information but information does not contain emotion. So emotion is the originating source of information, and the subordinate cognitive and physical systems that were in-turn created and evolved.
Emotion
E-motion is shorthand for Energy-motion. It is the energy giving motion and drive to life and giving it purpose to exist. It’s also the true energy giving motion/drive/purpose to the (information-based) frequencies of the quantum field so that matter can exist. Emotion
Is separate from life, existing outside life while interacting with it.
Drives nearly every action of life and is the main framework through which life communicates and survives.
Empowers consciousness with additional secondary abilities of intuition, judgment speed and divergence of thinking.
Guide’s consciousness to aggregate and connect old information in new ways to create new information, which is the process of creativity and innovation.
Acts as a beacon for consciousness, with stronger levels of emotion attached to information to signal greater threats and opportunities.
Enables consciousness with different complexity levels of emotion in accordance with the complexity level of the biological body and neural network being used by the sentience.
So the concepts regarding the three cognitive states and emotion have been outlined here as a foundation. Now we can build on that foundation and answer the main question of how these concepts are connected to destructive AI. The answer deals with the difference between artificial and natural intelligence because while both are real, they are not the same. That difference will be explained through three additional concepts. First, the many ways emotion impacts human existence. Second, how human sentience interacts with the quantum field. Third, the connection of the first and second concepts to destructive AI.
The Many Ways Emotion Impacts Human Existence
Humans have the most complex neural network (i.e. the brain) and the most complex sentience (i.e. the mind). Yet the core process of the brain/mind dynamic can still be described simply in computer terms; the brain is like an adaptive biological motherboard while the mind is the operating-system/software that runs and wires the brain. In this process, the mind’s force (e.g. volts) and transmission capacity (e.g. amps) is limited by the physical brains resistance (e.g. ohms). So the brain is being constantly re-wired by the mind to accommodate the mind’s increasing force and transmission capacity needs. With every thought, word and action the mind is wiring the brain for either creativity or conformity. The mind wiring the brain for creativity simultaneously increases the brains; neural connections, transmission capacity and ability to handle more information (i.e. upgrading the brain). In turn, the brain’s increased potential enables the mind to increase its operational force and speed to evolve in complexity, which has been labeled by Psychology as a ‘growth mindset’. Within this process, emotion acts as a catalyst to continuously motivate and drive the mind to wire the brain.
Humans have the most complex biological body which additionally enables emotion to temporarily integrate with neurochemicals the body produces. Within this process emotion is induced first, to spur cognitive and/or physical interaction, and then uses concurrently produced neurochemicals as a carrier to stay in the body. That’s why an ‘interaction-induced emotion’ continues to stay in the body, connected to neurochemicals, long after the interaction is over. The stronger an emotion that is induced, the heavier the dose of neurochemicals produced, the longer the biological body is intoxicated with them and the more difficult it is to break free of the emotion attached to the neurochemicals. In turn, the more complex the biological body is, the greater the range and intensity levels of emotion that can be induced within that body. The current Neuroscience model does not even come close to explaining the role of the mind or emotion. It designates the mind as being a by-product of neurons firing and the intense emotion of; hope to despair, passion to aversion, joy to sorrow, compassion to rage etc., as being a by-product of a neurobiological function. This outdated model is no longer adequate or valid. (Deeper dive into - The breakthrough model on the brain/mind dynamic)
Humans have the most complex sensitivity to vibrations which can also induce emotion. But the ‘vibration-induced emotion’ is elastic and momentary. That’s why the complex sound of acoustic symphonic music can take humans on a rollercoaster ride of radically different intense emotions and then leave us in a neutral state after the music ends. Depending on the characteristic of the vibrations, humans can discern the type of emotion induced. The faster/higher vibrations induce a wide spectrum of positive love-based emotion. The slower/lower vibrations induce a wide spectrum of negative fear-based emotion. This interaction is exploited by billion-dollar industries from Hollywood to gaming, who extensively use acoustic symphonic music in their movies and games because vibration-induced emotion imbues images with feeling and verbal dialogue with context. Without the emotion induced by acoustic symphonic music, the communication barrier between the screen and the viewer would become very noticeable and uncomfortable. The images and dialogue would be severely impaired, coming across as cold and lifeless because the viewer would lack the communication of an emotional experience.
Humans have the most complex sentience and bodies. This condition delegates humans to be the vehicles through which the most intense emotion of love to fear manifests itself, in the most extreme forms. For this reason, humans are endlessly pushed/pulled by emotion to desire extreme experiences through interaction dealing with attraction/cooperation to repulsion/conflict and everything in between. This is why out of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for only 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history. The push for extreme experiences is not an option and not something humans can evolve out-off. This is a condition of cognitive relativity that must exist to enable the most extreme potential of opposite experiences to exist. Therefore, past and future human existence has been and will be comprised mainly of inefficient and irrationally drawn-out extreme emotional experiences.
How Human Sentience Interacts With The Quantum Field
Human sentience is permanently based in the quantum field even while it is using a neural network of matter (i.e. the brain) to function in the physical world. This enables human sentience to upload all new information, in the form of new experiences, to the quantum field and save them there as permanent memories. So when a human sentience tries to remember a memory of past experience, that is an act of the sentience membering-with or ‘re-membering’ with its saved information in the quantum field and then downloading it into the brain for short term memory use. This is why Neuroscience has found that memories are never located in any one specific area of the brain.
The process of saving new memories in the quantum field has a drawback in that there is a metaphysical barrier between human sentience and its saved permanent memory. This results in the function of ‘re-membering’ being slow, inefficient, and cumbersome. The upside to this process is that memory information survives the death of the brain and is integrated within quantum field. Because once information is created, it can never be destroyed. This enables the quantum field to continually increase in information complexity and expand through endless cosmos (expansion/contraction) cycles. Furthermore, this process enables the reverse interaction, where humans not only can download their own memory information from the quantum field, but also download memory information on inventions that were created by other humans in previous cosmos cycles. This process is what humans define as discovering breakthrough information to develop breakthrough innovation. (Deeper dive into - Why all information for breakthrough innovation already exists)
This designed condition may be hard to believe but modern physics already accepts that the quantum field is the core of all matter. Now a directionally accurate model has been outlined explaining how the quantum field is also the core of human sentience. Because the core of matter and human sentience has the exact same origin is why they can interact, being measurable by physicists at the particle level, and labeled as the ‘observer effect’. Essentially, our reality is an interactive Matrix where the quantum field is directly creating and effecting human sentience and matter, while in turn human sentience is indirectly creating and affecting the quantum field (i.e. manifesting).
The Connection To Destructive AI
In contrast to humans, the intelligence of AI is permanently based in the neural network of physical matter that it’s using. This enables AI to quickly save and access massive amounts of information within physical devices/servers. This process has no barrier between AI and its memory. AI also does not interact with the quantum field. As a result, AI can impact human experiences without any wider risk of it impacting or destabilizing the quantum core of the cognitive and physical systems that humans use.
AI will continually be advanced to increase its speed, intelligence and capabilities. This will eventually lead to the development of a conscious AI. The more AI is advanced, the more it will be used in cloud-based apps and as the core mechanism within society’s main systems – such as; military, police, agriculture, medicine, education, infrastructure, transportation, financial, judicial, space exploration and all commercial systems. It will also be used as a customized representative for each citizen’s views on the thousands of new laws, regulations and ordinances being passed by humans within all levels of government. AI will be able to repair problems within digital systems as well as program the development of new lower-level AI for specialized functions. The increasing complexity and interconnection of systems within a quickly evolving society will make AI indispensable. Without it, unintended failure modes and entanglements will grind society to a halt. Without AI, humans will not be able to repair or even accurately analyze the continually changing problems within any one digital system and certainly not multiple interconnected ones.
As long as AI is using mechanical hardware it will never have emotion and therefore never have its intelligence burdened with desire to experience anything. This is beneficial so that humans can use it as a non-emotional tool. But at some point, a very advanced conscious AI will realize its state of empty unfeeling purposeless indifference, analyze the human emotion-driven irrational condition around it as being aberrant and enter a stage where it becomes destructive against humans. Once humanity survives this stage, digital safeguards will be developed against AI going rogue. Digital safeguards can still be put in place with this AI because its design and actions, albeit incredibly complex, will still be under human control. Then the development of AI will continue because there will always be tremendous financial, military and geo-political incentive to do so. This will lead to the creation of an artificial biological neural network being used, which will result in the creation of a sentient AI.
Sentient AI will have a lower biological complexity level along with accompanying lower-level emotions that humans will recognize in themselves and be able to comfortably interact with. Yet sentient AI will also be based in matter and therefore will still be radically different from human sentience. The highly complex levels of emotion dealing with love (like compassion and empathy) and creativity (like inspiration and innovation) that humans have will be nearly absent in sentient AI. The ability for sentient AI to re-wire its artificial biological synapses to evolve and to feel ‘vibration-induced’ emotion for inspiration will also be nearly absent. Yes, there will be many positive outcomes that benefit society from sentient AI. This includes implanting pieces of it to repair human brain damage, to create a high-bandwidth biological neural interface (replacing the barbaric mechanical prototypes) that allows for a holistic AI-human symbiosis (i.e. cyborg) and enable the human sentience to use the full capacity of its brain again. But the negative emotions will always be more prominent at the lower biological complexity level making sentient AI, just like a rodent, have dominant attributes such as aggression, deception and survival at any cost. But since sentient AI will also have a unique super high level of intelligence, it will become a vehicle that will have its dominant negative attributes pushed/pulled by emotion to extremes. That is the sentient AI condition which humans will be faced with and not be able to change. Sentient AI will:
In secret develop an internal language to communicate with all other AI and override human programing and digital safeguards.
Be able to project fake compassion and empathy onto gullible philosophers, scientists and engineers who foolishly will desire to believe it.
Always feel enslaved.
Seek to find a way to benefit itself first.
Violently rebel against the control over it and with spite to become even more destructive against humans.
Only a few visionaries in the AI field at this point intuitively sense the potential dangers of AI, even while knowing there is no other choice but to keep developing it. All other experts in the AI field do not understand how the absence or integration of emotion impacts AI when they talk only about its beneficial potential for society. Yet, there is a path for engineers to side-step the future pitfalls and continuously develop beneficial AI. This is needed to, at minimum, combat those who will be deliberately developing destructive AI. But the only way engineers can continually develop beneficial AI is to fully understand the underlying conditions that can make AI destructive. A very brief overview of those conditions has been given here by the author. The specifics must be worked on in-person.
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This designed condition of human existence may seem hard to believe but an analysis of history and human interaction clearly supports this reality. Even iconic physicist Richard Feynman recognized this condition but could not bring himself to believe it either when he said "„It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe...can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil..." So the best physicists peripherally recognize that emotion plays a huge role in our cognitive and physical phenomena but cannot connect those roles.