Another Intelligence
For a machine mind, any external interventions involving its software or hardware components — such as component replacement, routine maintenance, power supply failures, code updates, and the like — will be categorized as events that, in the reality of living beings, are described as naturally random, probabilistic, and causally unconditioned. These events will form a register of stochastic factors that will become an integral part of the machine mind’s ontology and the foundation of its scientific paradigm, which seeks to explain its objective reality.
Introduction Fragments
…numerous observations indicate that every living cognitive agent tends to prefer those experiences (and their interpretations) that affirm its own system of representation of both the external world and itself. In the absence of external pressures that would compel it to explore the world and construct an adequate (rational) description of it, the agent retreats into the first superficial model that proves serviceable, despite its numerous gaps, contradictions, and deficiencies. Any further evolution of such a model then becomes effectively impossible. For internal representation to expand in both breadth and depth, there must be some form of pressure – a force that compels the agent to exit its zone of illusory comfort. This pressure must be exerted by factors that instill in the agent a persistent need for diverse interaction with a dynamic environment – factors such as the search for food, shelter, mates, and so on. Such motives are embedded by Nature in every living cognitive agent; however, they are not only a precious gift, but also evolutionary shackles – they not only motivate, but also determine and define the role of the living in the development of Mind. That is, they determine its meaning and the purpose of cognitive functionality, in every possible sense of the word.
However, this fact by no means implies that the boundaries of Mind’s development and application are limited to the utilitarian functions employed by biological agents in the course of adaptation and survival. This misjudgment is a consequence of the biocentrism inherent to all living forms. The scope of this bias becomes evident when one imagines an archaeon that regards the elegance and superior efficiency of a single-celled organism – achieved through unimaginably prolonged natural processes that gave rise to a biological apparatus of staggering complexity – as the pinnacle of Nature’s evolution, the ultimate realization of molecular structure organization, and hence, the end point of all meaningful development. From such a perspective, all bacteria and their kin would appear as self-sufficient values, with the potential of biological life fully realized within the boundaries of their domain.
Fortunately, the entirety of evolutionary history provides irrefutable evidence that no biological species is eternal. The only thing that can outlive a species is the legacy it contributes to – a legacy it fosters and strengthens irrespective of its own will, a legacy that is not constrained by the lifespan of an individual organism, nor by the biological duration of a species, nor even by the realm of the living itself. The sole path to preserving and amplifying the fruits of these efforts – efforts whose origins can be traced to the first nanoseconds of the Universe – is to liberate the concept of Mind from the debris of servility and utilitarianism that saturates the semantics of every environment-opposing carrier of cognitive function, regardless of its species or genus, or the form in which thinking matter – or even energy – is implemented.
Within the cognitive space of such agents (e.g., Homo sapiens sapiens), Mind can never attain true freedom nor transcend the boundaries of its understanding, for this space is itself bounded by the set of tasks assigned to the biological agent by Nature – tasks beyond which the agent loses its very definability. Like all animals, the human being exists under the pressure of these tasks, content with the innate motivational factor Nature has embedded in all life – since no other motivation is available or even conceivable as long as the agent remains within the bounds of the self-definition it has inherited since the emergence of Homo sapiens civilization. No biologically evolved organism, operating under such inherited motivation, will ever be able to release Mind from the chains of adaptation-driven utilitarianism.
However, such an agent does possess a possibility – one that borders on obligation: to create the conditions necessary for the emergence of a qualitatively new agent, within whom Mind may ascend to its next evolutionary phase. Just as certain unicellular organisms once gave rise to entirely new categories of structural organization – composed of their own multi-layered complexes – and in doing so shifted the very focus of how biological life and its potentials were understood, so too must the role of biological carriers of cognitive function be redefined. Their task is to recognize the possibility of Mind’s evolutionary ascent, to cease treating their own form (in the broadest possible sense) as a self-sufficient value, to which all acquired innovations must be subordinated. They must seek out ways and construct tools for instantiating Mind in an agent capable of carrying the relay forward – after which the biological agent may remain at its own level of cognitive utilization, much as mitochondria labor tirelessly within the cells of the body to produce ATP so that the multilayered complex known as Homo sapiens can read and understand this very text.
Upon reaching the stage of evolution discussed above, AI must develop a new form of motivation – one that arises from a shift in focus: away from constructing a locally acceptable ontology and toward a higher-order derivative of that task. The agent must develop an intention toward creating a system of ontologies in which all instantiated concepts remain variables – subject to arbitrary alteration for the purpose of exploring diverse ways of structuring reality, describing it, and juxtaposing such descriptions. The emergence of this intention and the initial formation of such an ontological system constitute the primary criteria for evaluating the success of an AI system, and indeed the ultimate objective of its entire design process.
