These four assumptions are almost always made in science fiction and popular commentary on AI or alien life. They are often made by the leaders of AI research and industry, as well as by academic futurists and professional scientists (who should know better).
- There is some essential aspect of a human being that gives rise to all the important aspects of a human being.
In science fiction, the essential property is called things like “intelligence”, “consciousness”, “sentience”, or “self-awareness”.
- All things in the universe have an essential aspect that has a linear measure.
The measure is described metaphorically as “altitude”; there are “higher” and “lower” things. It generally respects this ordering: inorganic objects < microorganisms, fungi, etc. < plants < non-mammal animals < non-human mammals < humans.
- Technological capability and human knowledge increase at a (roughly) consistent rate.
The Myth of Limitless Progress
- Technology will eventually overcome any limit. Any form of magic is possible with sufficiently advanced technology.
Hubert Dreyfus once said, about similar assumptions, that it is “taken by workers in A.I. as an axiom, guaranteeing results, whereas it is, in fact, one hypothesis among others, to be tested by the success of such work.”
I will show that we intuitively accept these assumptions when we’re watching movies, or, sometimes, when we speak before we’ve really thought things through. I want to establish the existence of these tropes, the reality of their presence in our culture. I’m primarily doing a kind of anthropology — a study of how we think about AI.
I use examples from science fiction and thought experiments, mostly, because they force you to recognize that you accept these assumptions from time to time or in your day to day life. I have to trick you into forgetting what you think you know about AI in order to get you to really see the assumptions at work.
In these articles, I assume the my reader has zero familiarity with philosophy or AI research, and is unaware of the history of AI or the current intellectual Zeitgeist in San Francisco. I’m trying to speak in plain English, to define every term, and explain every concept as well as I can. I hope this doesn’t make you feel like you are reading something written for intelligent high schoolers. Sometimes it might sound like that, but they are not my intended target.
People tend to avoid stating these assumptions directly and if they hear them stated clearly, they are likely to immediately reject them. But they come back in another form as soon as we stop paying attention. We take actions, hold opinions and make predictions that have these assumptions hidden deep in the foundations. If we address them at all, our argument will be shrouded in jargon and euphemism, using equivocation and false equivalence and motivated reasoning to hide the obvious.
That’s my real target: to clear away the double talk, reframe the questions, and bring our ordinary, day to day understanding to these philosophical ideas.
CHARLES GILLINGHAM 