Thought Patterns Portfolio

I wrote this article and it was published in an Art Journal called Nowadays in 2021. I was reminded of its contents because of the broadcast session of the meeting between Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk last week. here is the article below.

The I in A I and I Am

Who are we? Do we know the answer? Scientists tell us we are a product of natural selection! That our genetic development is a continuing contest for the best selective abilities to dominate in relationship to our adaptability to our environment. That’s a very narrow definition of who we are but it describes the driving force behind the development of our species. But its not the full story of ‘US’. History is part of that story but although it records the outcome of our actions it doesn’t contain all the details of our lives. We also have imagination, we dream, we are creative, we have free will, we have awareness of ourselves and our human condition. This self awareness naturalists tell us sets us apart from other earthly species.

The societies we have created during this genetic journey have evolved with an ever greater need to produce and consume energy and to increasingly rely on external processes and systems to support our existence. Those societies have also been constrained by their genetic and epigenetic history, socialisation and culture.

In the 1960s, when I was a teenager, the dream was to have a future where labour saving devices would free us all from work so we would all have more leisure time. This dream both preceded and coincided with the democratisation of ‘white goods’, fridges, washing machines etc. which started to free up time for the then ‘average housewife’ in the home. It give woman the ability to work full time and have a family. No one questioned what more leisure time looked like, or what we would choose to do with it. It was taken for granted that the desirable social activities of the time, like frequenting the pub, going to the cinema, watching TV, sport and other forms of relaxation etc. would be the goal.

Fast forward to the 2000s, a very different world based on computing, computer applications and calculating systems, virtual reality gaming, virtual worlds, animation, virtual art, virtual currencies etc have moved that dream on to focus on the development of artificial intelligence systems. But the intention of the dream remains the same to relieve humans from basic tasks and save them ‘Time’. We are still living in our past dreams unfulfilled.

Meanwhile, in the half century since the dream of labour saving devices in the 60s we have collectively succeeded in creating a work environment that has resulted in all those in work, a sizeable majority, being ‘time poor’ not ‘time rich’. We have created a competitive global economy where everyone is replaceable, the winners have the best jobs albeit highly pressurised, maybe even more than one great job, the losers toil away in substandard and in certain countries slave conditions. We have created a rat race that no one can win at. A highly pressurised wheel that’s confining and voraciously consuming our time, energy and purpose. Whether this is driven by our mirroring our genetic survival predilection in our actions, we neither know nor speak of. We have created a trap of our own collective making. What is evident is that the awareness that sets us apart from other species doesn’t develop at the speed necessary for survival if our climate change challenges are to be overcome!

There is always a disaster scenario threatening the human race, usually one of our own making such as nuclear war and climate change, forcing us to retaliate in certain ways driven by the survival imperative alone.

So where are the great visions of a better way to live beyond our existential myopia. Well currently the dream of ‘free-time’ is still the front runner, and is almost wholly focussed on the development of articulation intelligence. That same idea that machines, in this case robots, will undertake the dross that humans don’t want to do is still the motivator. Except this time the understanding is that AI will replace both drudge jobs and intelligent ones from building work to surgery and solicitors, there is a current fear of humans being replaced by AI.

Silicon Valleys Elon Musk already views humans as being ‘cyborgs’ because the computer and iPhone have become extensions of ourselves so developing inserts for the brain to increase processing abilities (language translation, new knowledge and learning processing add on systems), are one strand of his thinking about AI.

Scientists reassure us that the concepts of AI are not motivated by the need to replace ‘You’ but instead are driven by the goal of developing better systems that can think autonomously and solve problems by utilising superior logic systems. These deep learning machines will use neural networks that develop as similar to the norms of logic used by our own brain. They say robots are not ‘Aware’ because they are basically sophisticated adding machines, al least in the short term future.

They say that if they develop awareness it will be irrelevant to us because we will not know their experience so it will have no meaning to us. So currently the goal is to build machines that can replicate our thought mechanisms and simulate our brains structure to a degree. But there are scientists who foresee that if the goal of humans currently is to build intelligent machines what happens long-term if machines develop the capability to also build other machines. A sort of robotic equivalent to free will. What would they look like? At this point do humans lose control? That’s when the ‘Terminator Scenario’ stokes our fears. When robots make their own world will their goals and objectives deviate from our needs and desires? Are we developing a separate species that live independently of us entirely.

We humans are great innovators and this century is seeing the greatest amount and speed of innovations of all time. Mostly these innovations are to free us from the traps that our own collective and individual behaviour bestows on us. But why does our consciousness not prove powerful enough to foresee or calculate the risks accurately before the traps emerge. Do we ourselves possess the power to develop our consciousness to a superior level to enable this foresight to both emerge, collectively influence and converge on an implementation plan? Must we rely on the superior processing power of machines to save us from our own nihilistic behaviour? Well the human brain clearly can’t cope with processing the large amounts of data strings that computers can which is why the vision of ‘humans as cyborgs’ who use add on brain applications is one current strand of developing our abilities. But it is becoming clearer through research from neuroscience that consciousness and brain power are not the same thing.

There seems to be a consensus emerging that consciousness and the energy surrounding it is independent of the brain although it pervades it. The brain which is a superior processing unit and power source from the combination of consciousness flowing through it and energy created by our bodies. The brains job is to take impulses of power and energy at the neurological level to create thoughts and capture and store memory. The brain splices the stream of consciousness into thought forms or memory that are lodged in the neural pathways of the brain.

Remember the consciousness and awareness that sets us apart from other earthly species, well physicists now acknowledge that consciousness exists in all things (panpsychism). Even a stone has a level of consciousness albeit a limited one because everything is made up of constantly vibrating molecules which collect within them atoms which in turn resonate at differing frequencies of light. Vibrational frequency levels draws similar molecules together through resonance. Therefore although we perceive we are separate from each other and all things, at a vibrational level we are all interconnected to everything we perceive around us. This is resonance theory.

Consciousness therefore is evolving to be viewed as an all pervasive energy system and as an entity is harder for scientists to replicate or emulate. However in the area of hard data science there are those that conceive of ‘human consciousness’ as a series of patterns that layer our experience, thoughts etc within the organ of the brain. For data scientists the concept is ‘probable’ but the ability to observe, understand and begin to create these patterns is limited in scope. The patterns are thought to be unique, numerous and unlimited and the formation of them is currently unknown. Also to create it may require a biological rather than a software solution. So there is a theory about these patterns only. Pattern Theory. As an artist I take inspiration from the imaginative freedom pattern theory gives me, enabling my ‘Thought Pattern’ series of work, based on my own patterns of consciousness to emerge.

This makes the replication of human consciousness currently an impossibility from a hard systems data perspective. Current talk of ‘Robotic Awareness’ and ‘Human Consciousness’ are not an equivalence in terms.

The mind ‘is’ the ability to develop thoughts, imagination, self control and interpret reality. Neuroscientists think the way we interpret the world around us is subjective because we can only view the world from within our own minds, each a different adaptation of the view of the reality we see depending on our personality.

Imagination is the ‘dreaming consciousness’ and source of our creativity as humans. Do we know the real power of our own consciousness and our ability to create? Mostly it’s under-utilised! Do we need to build robots to understand ourselves? Perhaps it’s the only way we can achieve this at a collective, communal, lived experience level.

Why do our dreams about the circumstances of our existence revolve around ‘saving time’ and currently labour. What are we saving the time for?.

Are humans merely self replicating reproductive systems our biggest singular motivation at a biological level being only the selfish gene?

When we no longer toil and have time to ourselves what are we going to do? Is there more to life than our current social systems have developed? For many holidays, children, family, pubs, night clubs, shopping, some community activities, sex and drugs are the recreational objectives just as they were in the 60s. What is our vision for our future and how do we start to build it tomorrow?

The societies we have created so far particularly at the high end of capitalism have been ‘community light’ in scope. The disruptive change from the introduction of artificial intelligence to our economies and social structures gives us the opportunity to rethink the way we live and how we develop our real potential as humans. How do we learn, grow develop and challenge ourselves in this new world. There must be more to life than the way we envision it now which was historically developed on the predilection of physical ‘Labour’ supplanted by white collar, administrative and managerial labour in the 20 century. Will the term ‘Labour’ be in use long term say in thirty years from now, when AI intelligence will have reshaped its meaning and we will be cyborgs living with robots.

Perhaps the Artificial Intelligence intervention in economic and social change will help us build a better life and way of being for ourselves.

But Aren’t we greater than all that currently is and shouldn’t we strive to know the power of our consciousness and come to know what we can create with it, before we entirely gift it to machines?