REFLECTIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: ARISTOTLE

 

In the 21st century, people rely on a vast database --- the internet --- of so-called reliable information. People can make verbal or written queries to acquire answers.

Well over 3,300 years ago, in and around Athens, Greece, a man named Aristotle assembled a huge database of knowledge. He and his assistants recorded on papyri everything they could. This included topics such as logic, linguistics, botany, metaphysics, philosophy, among other subjects. For well over a thousand years after his death, Medieval and Renaissance scholars and students relied on Aristotle’s database to provide education and guidance. Such was the depth of the Ancient Greek’s database, which was encyclopedic.

The database of knowledge we are beginning to use today is based on information from the internet. Our new relationship with it is called Artificial Intelligence.

Aristotle’ database was natural, not artificial.

For centuries, people relied on his database. Today we rely on ours: the internet and Artificial Intelligence and its complex algorithms.

However, Aristotle was way ahead of his time.

REFLECTIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: THE PRINTING PRESS

 

In the 21st century, people use the internet and Artificial Intelligence as a basis for learning about the world and interacting with it. This interaction uses hardware.

For centuries leading up to the end of the 20th century, widespread knowledge was based on books. Printed books came about because of the invention of the printing press in Europe in the 1400s. People interacted with books. These books were made with thick paper, animal skins, and heavy twine to hold them together. This “hardware” of books and the “software” of ideas within them were relatively portable. Such portability is similar with our phones, tablets and ultra-small computers.

Could these books be called Artificial Intelligence? That is, the books were produced by a kind of machine --- a printing press --- and people interacted with the books. The wide-spread use of manufactured books was the embryo of our internet. And Artificial Intelligence?

REFLECTIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: ANCIENT EGYPT

 

In the early 21st century, Artificial Intelligence is still in its infancy --- its ultimate purpose and direction unknown. Nevertheless, people are grappling to interact with A.I. to provide guidance and insight. This is a complex relationship.

Well over 3,000 years ago, the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt had their own kind of “Artificial Intelligence,” but there was nothing artificial about it. The Pharaohs used their dreams to help them with answering questions, providing help with decisions, and showing guidance. Priests would help to interpret the dreams. In that long ago  era, the Egyptian elite kept “dream books.” We call these books but were actually rolls of papyri. The Pharaohs wanted and needed the dreams and priests to help the Pharaohs acquire the best foundation for their rule.

The human mind and subconscious are a powerful means, a secure gateway to creativity and intuitive understanding. There is nothing “artificial” about this.

In the early 21^st century, people use the power of complex algorithms of “artificial” intelligence.

From ancient Pharaohs to “modern” people, the search for answers and guidance is eerily similar.

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REFLECTIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: THE ORACLE AT DELPHI

 

Artificial Intelligence in the 21^st century is a complex interaction among algorithms, hardware, and humans. People ask the computers about their situations and concerns and get some kind of answer. Their situations could be about the present or the future. Is this a science and technology basis for astrology and horoscopes? People exhort A.I. to provide false talents to provide a simple drawing or simple writing --- providing vague guidance.

Over 2,000 years ago, the Greeks had Artificial Intelligence: The Oracle at Delphi. The Greeks and others would pose questions to the Oracle, who was a kind of Articifial Intelligence, to get answers to important matters to the present and the future. Sometimes the answers were welcome, sometimes not. The Oracle at Delphi was a kind of ancient Artificial Intelligence.

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REFLECTIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: THE BIBLE

 

In the 21st century, people use Artificial Intelligence without a full understanding of its ultimate power and direction. The evolution of A.I. is just beginning.

For over 2,000 years, however, there has been a kind of “artificial” intelligence --- but there is nothing “artificial” about it. This “intelligence” is the Bible. Ask the Bible a question and it will provide an answer. The answers illuminate the present human condition and, perhaps, even its future.

However, do some people believe that the Bible, like Artificial Intelligence of the 21^st century, to be an “existential threat” of some kind? Not to livelihood or wages but to someone’s idea of “being” or “meaning”? I leave that answer to others. The Bible is a kind of Natural or Generative  Intelligence --- not artificial. Afterall, the Bible has been in constant use for over 2,000 years, while the Artificial Intelligence of the 21^st century is just beginning.

The written word of God, the Bible, in direct contrast of the algorithms of computer Artificial Intelligence. What a difference!

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REFLECTIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: ISSAC NEWTON

 

In the 21^st century, people are beginning to rely on Artificial Intelligence. To what extent eventually for logic and reasoning no one knows.

In the late 17^th century and early 20th century, Issac Newton lived. Through his mathematics, he made clear the past, present and future. Because of his calculations, humankind finally could know where a celestial object had been in the deep past, where it would in the present, and where it would be no matter how far in the future. Newton had unlocked knowledge that humankind since it began had lacked until him. Issac Newton’s mind was a kind of “artificial intelligence,” but there was nothing artificial about it. Yet, for his time, his way of thinking was what is now in the 21st century is called Artificial Intelligence.

People in the 21st century now take his intellectual accomplishments casually and for granted. Yet, in his time and for centuries thereafter, the results of his work were and are supremely powerful. There was nothing artificial about his thinking --- it was completely natural. His thinking was akin to a computer --- what we might describe today as “artificial” intelligence.

REFELCTIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: THE LUDDITES

 

Artificial Intelligence in the 21^st century threatens people who feel their livelihoods will become extinct. This is because they fear that A.I. is “taking over” the creative and administrative tasks that people rely on for wages. They feel insecure that A.I. can do their jobs more efficiently and precisely.

In the early 19^th century, there were people in England and elsewhere who feared the same with regard to clothmaking (textiles). They believed that their livelihoods would be erased because of new machinery. The Luddites did not want this new machinery from “taking over.” To that end, they used threats and violence against the threat.

The feelings and thoughts of the Luddites are not so far removed, perhaps, from how people in the 21st century are reacting to how Artificial Intelligence is “taking over.”

Of course, the Luddites or anyone could not talk to the new machine inventions as 21st century people can talk to A.I. But, alas, this lack of talking machinery was the reality of “technology” of the early 19th century.

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