The Best Day of My Life

The day didn't start like any other day. I awoke at half past six in the morning, about four hours earlier than my usual wake up time. I had to meet Prof. Navjyoti Singh and we were to go to a temple nearby. To me he looks a lot like a wide-eyed Albert Einstein. We had to meet and go to a place nearby called Nanakramguda. We met at the mess, we being Prof. Navjyoti, two of my colleagues, a wise man who was visiting us- Ravindra Sharma (affectionately known as guruji) and myself. We set off after breakfast.

Prof. Navjyoti and guruji went together on my colleague's bike and me and my two colleagues were to get there, the three of us on my bike, Thumpy. Thumpy is more than capable of carrying three people but the problem was that all 3 of us were fairly big built so I had to make two trips to take both of them there. Once all of us were there, we proceeded to enter the temple. I usually do not enter temples, this time I don't know why I felt compelled to enter. And we had a chat with the head priest. He told us that the temple we were standing in now was the new one, they had to change it cos the old one had gone into disrepair. And the new structure was approximately 400 years old. We got blessings and we put on our footwear and walked into the temple garden adjacent to the well. There we sat, lit up and talked about society and the caste system and the problem of untouchability.

The place was serene, and full of greenery. Here and there through the trees we could see the glass and chrome of these really tall buildings that housed multi-national corporations- software companies. The contrast was bordering on irony. Here we had this sanctuary of serenity, spirituality and sanity amid this hustle and bustle of “modernity”. This was the first time I had been to a temple that my family was not connected to. Even the famous Tirupati temple had on its board of trustees a member of my extended family. All these factors, my being an outsider to this temple, it being more than 400 years old, my being there with two men of great wisdom and the contrast between this temple and its surroundings, made it feel really surreal to me.

When the clock struck 10, we decided we had to leave as Prof. Navjyoti had a class to take and I had a class to prepare for. At half past eleven, I headed off for my class. A friend of mine, Devansh was to make a presentation on Searle's Chinese Room Experiment, an experiment in artificial intelligence. The presentation was under the auspices of my professor and research guide Prof. Bipin Indurkhya.

The night before, I had a conversation with Devansh about the presentation and suggested a minor change that would enable him to get his point across slightly more lucidly. That did help to a certain extent, but a point after that again let the class descend into a non-terminating loop of question and answers, to me the questions that prevented the loop from terminating seemed naïve. For some reason I glanced back from my position in the front row of the class and I saw that the director of our university Prof. Rajeev Sangal had also come to listen to what Devansh had to say. I would like to think I had a premonition of what was to come.

Seeing that the class had entered a non-terminating loop, Prof. Bipin came forward and pointed out a few lacunae in our arguments and our understanding of certain things. He split the class into two groups- the Dualists (those who believe that the mind and body are two separate things , and some of them believe that the mind can never be understood), and the Monists (those who believe that the mind and body are indistinguishable and inseparable from each other, I belonged to this group). During his talk, Prof. Rajeev said he wanted to bring a point up, he took Prof. Bipin's place at the chalkboard and started speaking about the gap that sometimes exists between theory and observation.

We observe phenomena, and based on our observations, we formulate a theory. But if we ever encounter an observation that does not fit into our theory, he said that if we choose to ignore the observation for the sake of maintaining our theory we would be acting unscientifically. To elucidate, Prof. Sangal talked about seeing the external world and understanding it and that external data comes from our senses and that data is used to observe the world. At this point, Prof. Bipin countered by saying that there is no seeing and that there is not external world, it is all a representation within our own minds, furthermore it is not the sense organs that perceive the world but it is our brain that does all the perceiving.

This argument sparked of a scientific-philosophical debate of a magnitude that dwarfed my premonition like a planet dwarfs a person. I was watching two philosophies collide. Prof. Bipin is a monist, and Prof. Rajeev's talk was leaning towards dualism. I had become unaware of every other person in that class. Even their attire, Prof. Rajeev in a traditional kurta and trousers and Prof. Bipin in his usual shirt and shorts had an effect on my perception of this debate

Prof. Rajeev then talked about a hypothetical robot that can feel pain. And then he asked that when the robot's limb was pricked or subjected to some other stimulus, and the robot felt pain, which part of the robot felt it? This added a whole new dimension to the philosophical argument.For some reason, I felt that this was in invalid question.

Imagine watching a tennis match between Roger Federer and Bjorn Borg (the two greatest tennis players in my opinion). Only they were not human sized, they were super giants of astronomical size with unlimited reserves of energy and stamina, and instead of a ball, they were hitting at each other the 10 dimensional multi-verse. That was what this debate was like.

It was a clash between what seemed to be the sum of the classical theories in AI and the radical new theories championed by Cognitive Science. The class started at half past 11 and was to end at 1 but it overshot that time by half an hour and only that much because the professors said that the time is up. We wanted it to continue. We were hungry, some of us were tired, but we wanted to continue listening to this debate.

Were were talking about robots and computers, programs and circuits, but the real issue on the table was whether it is possible to understand what it means to be human. Whether it is possible to understand the human condition. Whether we are justified in approximating the function of the human brain to that of a highly complex computer. This was a debate on whether it was possible to understand the nature of the ultimate truth about ourselves.

I left the class shell-shocked. I had just been witness to a once in a lifetime event and I was reeling from the effect. I headed to lunch, where I met Prof. Navjyoti. I told him that he should have been part of the debate, as he is a professor of philosophy. The next class, after lunch was creative writing, I usually enjoy this class but today, because of the magnitude of the events that I had been through, was unable to involve myself in the class.

In the evening I only remember taking bath because my mind was wandering. I had had only 2.5 hours of sleep the previous night, I was not fatigued but I was totally mentally preoccupied. I was completely unaware of what I did till dinner time. This was the first time I had a lapse in memory without having to take marijuana.

After dinner, there was yet another meeting with guruji, I was waiting for 2030 when the meeting would begin. The first people there were Prof. Rajeev and his daughter Sapna, a good friend of mine. While I was trying to recount to her the events that transpired in the class today, Prof. Rajeev asked me what I liked about the class. I remember saying that I liked the philosophical nature of the debate and also that it showed us how people argue in academic circles regarding theories and philosophies.

Prof. Navjyoti, Prof. Sangal, guruji, two other professors, and five or six of us research scholars were part of the discussion that evening. It was mostly about society and how modernization is not always good and how traditionalism is not always bad. We talked about a few cases where certain tribal societies had been ruined because of modernization and how how traditionalism had helped keep the society intact, safe and vibrant. And how certain traditions are in place only to make sure that all members of a society have a sense of belonging and involvement.

An evening spent in the company of wise learned men, in conversation about the matters affecting today's society and life in general. We also talked a little about how the resources afforded us by modernity (technology, knowledge, etc.) could be used to make a better society.

The conversation on sociology, and the philosophical debate earlier that day and the visit to the temple at the start of the day, all three of those events are sure to leave lasting events in my mind. Each of these events enabled me to understand each other event in a way I have never seen them before.

The meeting began at 2030 and ended close to 2300. However towards the end of the meeting my sleep deprivation caught up with me and I dozed off for a while. But all in all that day the 28th of October, 2009, yesterday, was the best day of my life so far.

Truth?

The science of cognition. Cognition, as far as my analysis of the word goes, shares its root word with the words recognition and precognition. Following this line of reasoning and analysis, I have defined cognition for myself as: “the act of realizing that the observed object (it could be tangible or intangible), and the model in my mind, are the same thing”. This observed object could be something that can be touched and felt like a chair or a computer or a person, or it could be intangible like an idea or a thought or a concept or a spoken word.

I wouldn't use the word “know” to describe cognition, since I feel that it is an overloaded and ill-defined word and I am not comfortable using it to define something else.

We can argue that “to know” implies a notion of truth, and that it is not really possible to know truth. This sounds to me like another version of Meno's paradox in which Meno asks Socrates how he can know when he has arrived at the truth when he does not already know what the truth is? (Courtesy Wikipedia) In other words, in order to know anything, one must know everything.

I find that I can neither agree nor disagree with this stand. One one hand, I can see the logic and rationale behind that statement, whereas on the other hand, I can also see that no one ever tries to know everything. It is more like a progression. Our method of cognition is more like a progressive series of theories. When we don't know much, we observe the world around us and formulate a theory or a belief set T₁, then we observe something or discover something that contradicts something within this belief set and we incorporate that new knowledge into T₂: a new theory, world view, belief set, call it what you like. Carrying on like this, we continue to form a long series of theories: T₁, T₂, T₃... and it is our hope that this series will converge one fine day somewhere in the future onto the truth (if such a thing exists).

The funny thing about this process is, an intermediate theory T{T₁, T₂, T₃...} satisfies all the requirements of the believers in that epoch. They are able to interact meaningfully with the relevant environment (whatever subset of the environment their life depends on). For example, at our current belief state, we are able to do everything that our autopoietic instinct commands. Our theories about the far reaches of space may be grossly incorrect, but those reaches of space and our theories about it have little effect on our lives.

Among the various phenomena discussed in class were the interesting cutaneous rabbit illusion , the blinking dots thing, the phantom arm thing and things of this sort. I have not learned enough about them to make any comment other than that to me they are mysteries pertaining to the way our brain processes information. My best guess right now is that those phenomena are the result of the brain's mechanism of compensation for the faultiness of our sense organs. The brain knows that our senses are imperfect and prone to missing out information, hence tries to figure out what was missed even when there was nothing missed out.

As far as the concept of consciousness goes, I have an emergentistic or holistic view of the concept. I do not believe there is a consciousness center in the brain or heart or spleen or any other organ. I believe it emerges out of the various interactions that various parts of our body have with each other. No doubt, the brain is the main information processing organ in the body, but I do not believe that it alone is responsible for consciousness, it is partly responsible in the sense that it has a certain degree of control or governing ability over the interactions of our body parts with each other.

I believe that thought experiments do work, but they will work if and only if the conceptual model we have (of whatever we are contemplating) is precise or as close to precise as humanly possible. Only then will we be able to predict the outcomes of our contemplated actions with a certain degree of accuracy. But when there is a situation which we know precious little about, thought experiments will most likely fail. The best thing about thought experiments is that when conducted in tandem with physical experiments, they can lead to a much better understanding of the world.

The Robots of Asimov

I plan to make a career for myself as a scientific researcher (I have already embarked on that endeavor). The domain I chose for myself is Artificial Intelligence. Many people have had many interesting things to say to me. The most disconcerting fact is that most people I have come across have said negative things to me in this connection. They did not insult me or do anything of that sort; they expressed their fears (some of them quite justifiable) about the act of empowering a machine with intelligence. They have given examples of movies like “Terminator”, “The Matrix”, “I, Robot”, etc as what could go wrong if we did (empower machines with intelligence). I myself can think of a far better example which is easier to imagine than the examples they put forth.

The story of HAL the computer from the Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” comes to mind where a computer which is in charge of a space ship kills the crew because it calculates that the crew would be a hindrance in its functions. This to me is easier to imagine because I do not see the possibility of being able to replicate the human body using mechanical devices in the near future.

When faced with these facts and the (silent) accusation that I might be working to bring about the “end of man” or the “extinction of humans”, I turn to the works of Isaac Asimov for solace. He, in his books had formulated the 3 laws of robotics to prevent the confrontation between humans and robots. The three (slightly altered) laws are:

1. No robot shall ever harm a human being;

2. No robot shall, through action or inaction allow a human being to come to harm, except where
doing so conflicts with rule #1;

3. A robot shall protect itself from damage, except where doing so conflicts with rule #1 and
rule #2.

These 3 laws effectively prevent a robot from “hurting” its human “owners”. Then Isaac Asimov wrote two other books; one was called “Bicentennial Man” where he explores the possibility that an intelligent robot would acquire a certain level of sentience that would allow it to experiment with the ideas of “freedom”, “family” and “society”. This is depicted at many points in the novel where Andrew Martin the intelligent and sentient robot tries to buy his freedom from his master. In yet another scene, he embarks on a mission to seek out others of his kind.

The other book of by Asimov, “I, Robot”, explores the darker aspect of his “Three Laws of Robotics”. In this book, one super computer which controls all the intelligent robots uses them to stage a coup and “take over the world”. When confronted by the principal protagonist, the computer “VICI” explains that “she” decided to stage the coup because that is where a series of logical deductions starting from the 3 laws of robotics ended. I do not remember her deductions, but I definitely do remember my deductions based on my inferences from that movie. Her deductions, were because of the ambiguity of the word “harm” in rule #1. It seems that in his first rule, Asimov took the word “harm” to mean only physical harm and not emotional, psychological, mental and (maybe) spiritual harm. If all these are taken into consideration, I believe that the situation that arose in the book would not arise in real life.

Let’s say that these three laws are enforced and hard coded into the brains of each and every robot ever created. The truly pessimistic will still argue using the “what if” clause or stay just plain adamant that the events that folded out in “Terminator” and or “The Matrix” will also fold out in real life. I have the following to say to them. The hand that started the war would be human. Western philosophy is a philosophy of control. And what cannot be controlled should be feared according to western philosophy, and thanks to the proliferation of western media in the form of movies and songs and the like this ideology is spreading all over the world.

The act of empowering a machine (a robot or some other device) with intelligence is the result of an endeavor to take some responsibilities off the shoulders of humans. In other words, the creation of artificial intelligence is an act (either explicit or implicit, depending on your perspective) of relinquishing control.

Furthermore, the act of creating and AI, is the result of an endeavor to create an entity equal in intelligence to us. And once we create it as our equal, expecting it to acknowledge us as its superiors would be immoral to the point of being hypocritical. The poet Khalil Gibran once said:

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you…”

Though he said this about the way parents should treat their children, this can be extended to pertain to AI if we humans are prepared to treat AI as the child of human intellect. AI will be created, whether we humans like it or not, we can either accept it and live with it (and I can assure you that life will be enriched beyond anyone’s wildest dreams). Or we can reject it and live a sub-standard life. There is a good chance that AI will not drive us to extinction. No truly intelligent being will cause the extinction of a species. But our lives will be filled with so much regret, hatred, animosity and depression that they will just not be worth living.

We humans definitely need a change in ideology. The concept of war is obsolete; weapons should cease being an instrument of war and start being an instrument of peace. The sooner we realize that, the better it will be for our whole race. AI is just the next step in our intellectual evolution, preventing its invention for fear of its consequences would be akin to advocating that a child should commit suicide for fear of puberty and the complications it would introduce in life.

The ramifications of AI depend heavily if not solely on the way we humans perceive it and the extent to which we are prepared to accept it.