Questioning Intelligence

Someone asked me this question on Quora: If artificial intelligence developed to such an extent that it starts to consider itself aware, will we treat it as a person? I have already posted the translated version to Quora Hindi, but this is the original writing for this blog.

I want to understand what we should consider intelligence. Neuroscience and psychology dictate that there are different kinds of intelligence. There is cognitive intelligence: the ability to process information, learn, solve problems, and make decisions. A sophisticated computer software, nothing more than thousands and thousands of lines of properly defined code, has been doing this for the last 3 decades. You input data, they analyze it, make a proper assessment and solve the problem for you and show results on screen. So the simple question is: are these softwares Intelligent software? If through lines of code one can achieve intelligence, does this mean that CAD or any physics engines are intelligent by design or intelligent by nature?
So before we go any further, we should make a clear differentiation between intelligent by design and intelligent by nature. Intelligent by nature is simply how living organisms are learning from mistakes and using natural resources in an efficient manner to survive, adapt, and thrive. However, in our case, when we talk about this Intelligent by nature, we will be emphasizing that if something or someone is showing an enhanced level of a certain intelligence, does this mean that it is supposed to do this, or is it something that is an abomination?
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Similarly, when I say intelligent by design, it does not mean the argument intended to demonstrate that living organisms were created in more or less their present forms by an intelligent designer. That is intelligent design (ID), which is a pseudoscience. In our case, it’s simply the idea that any living organism or machine or software in itself is developed in such a way that it mimics human-like intelligence. There could have been chances that it is not supposed to do such a thing, but it eventually has evolved in such a way to do so, maybe or maybe not simply by learning more and more from the data given or learning experience.
Take chatbots, for example. In 1966, an MIT professor, Joseph Weizenbaum, created an elementary chatbot and assigned this chatbot the role of a psychotherapist. Answers are fed, and it just gave you one simply by asking the right question. So, when you ask a right question, the chatbot replies. Can you tell me what kind of intelligence that is? By nature or by design? Obviously, it's by design, and it has its limits. You ask anything which is not fed, and you halt the conversation or find yourself stuck in a loop.

Then there is Emotional Intelligence, known as emotional quotient, for which you have a huge market of self-help books I recommend no one to read. Why? Because these books give you a sense of accomplishment but eventually give you nothing but a few ideas on how to do things. You have to act upon them, but you cannot because the motivation you just had was external, and acting upon a tedious task requires intrinsic emotion to change your life.
Back to the topic, emotional intelligence is an ability that allows any individual to perceive emotions of self and others and analyze them; simply, you try to understand someone else’s emotional struggle through your lens of understanding. Imagine a dog just sitting in the middle of the road and doing nothing, suddenly brutally hit on the head by a brick by a pedestrian for fun. The dog is unconscious for 10 minutes, the dog wakes up unbalanced, cries, and leaves, while another dog licks the wound of the thrashed dog, the man went to live his life with no regrets, and others too who watched this incident. Who do you think has more emotional intelligence? The dog licking the wound? The human throwing the brick? Other humans watching and doing nothing? What level of human intelligence is this? Intelligence by nature or intelligence by design?
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Image Credit : Meta AI for WhatsApp©

Similarly, when you are in a depressing state and even your wife/girlfriend refuses to listen, but you can converse freely with an AI model. AI does not have more emotional intelligence by nature but has it by design. But does it automatically become superior to the people who have it by nature? Who do you think is more insane? The one who refuses to hear fellow humans, or the one who chooses an AI model over his human companion? This selection happened neither by nature nor by design but by the psychological necessity of a living brain. But was it biological? Because other mammals do not need this kind of company from any AI model. It’s only humans that require a partner to share, and we prefer the opposite gender too much over the same for this emotional support.
What about ravens or elephants and cows and monkeys? They show a heightened sense of emotional intelligence. Animals fear too, love too, and even abandon their own kid in face of certain death. Talk about sacrifices—the weak youngling from an eagle’s nest is often thrown out by a strong sibling to have more food, and cuckoos are infamous for their brood parasitism behavior. Is this intelligence by nature? Or design due to evolutionary reasons? Do you consider them human or human-like? What if you adopted a monkey because of his emotional intelligence, but he throws feces on you early in the morning? Or beats the hell out of your kid? Now the monkey is human-like or literally an animal? As soon as something aesthetically pleasing becomes a threat to your own survival, your primitive instinct kicks in.

If we talk about intelligence, what about Interpersonal or Intrapersonal Intelligence? What about understanding social hierarchy? Spatial Intelligence? Or musical intelligence? There is an elephant called Suda who draws, and I don’t even know how to stroke a brush. You won’t believe there is a group of music-playing elephants called the Thai Elephant Orchestra, and then there is Snowball, an Eleonora cockatoo, who can dance many, many times better than myself.
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So if I say if it is intelligent in every aspect, it’s not artificial anymore? In a manner, there are many types of intelligence, and to be a human or human-like, you do not need to possess all. There must be something more in intelligence to become human or even human-like. Or how can it be artificial if it’s intelligence? It’s artificial until its decision is influenced by design and not by nature? The moment it can show empathy—not artificial like a chatbot and not like a dog (human-like)—it’s not artificial anymore; it’s now intelligent by nature because the actions are now natural? However, in a true sense, humans also are not natural.
Consider ourselves a biological machine, and we are governed by biological lines of code, but not binary, rather hormonal. For every action, there is a biological switch, triggered by a chemical release or reaction, which performs a neurological stimulation to perform or act on something. Even our morality, ethics, language, skills, interpretation, logic, and reasoning. Everything is learned, which comprehensively creates our consciousness. Does this mean we are a conscious mammal? And that consciousness is artificial!
What does this imply—that we are not intelligent by nature but by design? Apply the same analogy to other biological characters, and we are nothing more than evolved monkeys who went bald.
So the question remains: What should we consider intelligence? If a machine has all kinds of intelligence that most humans do not possess, does this make the machine more than a human? Someone can say, well, it needs to have a distinct feature of knowing what’s wrong and what is right. Well, shut up! No moral and ethical bullcrap is needed in this piece of writing.

m.दिनेश© 

-Dinesh Mandora     

Dinesh Mandora All rights reserved ©

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