What if A.I. “Wakes Up” and Has a Soul… or Not?

“Google Fires Engineer who claims it's A.I. Is Conscious.”

News headlines across the world are reporting about Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who claimed that Google’s language model had a soul. He got canned because, according to Google, he violated their security protocols and policies.?

Although they denied it, conspiracy theorists take note: Google fired him for telling us that he was convinced the system became sentient circumventing security protocol. This is only the latest controversy revolving around Google's ethics in A.I.

KNEE JERK ALERT…this is not a conspiracy post. There are many other places for you to comment if that’s your belief; otherwise, stay with me…

Once again, under the heading of nothing new, we are back to artificial life being defined by sentience. In other words, containing a soul, not just by thinking like regular A.I., if you will. In fact, the word sentience was first used by philosophers in the early 1600s to distinguish between feeling and thinking—feeling being the higher order of life.?

Call it self-awareness or consciousness instead of mere thinking, and Frankenstein’s monster comes alive.?

Mike, the computer protagonist in Robert Heinlein’s prescient novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, comes to sentience. Here is an understanding of self-awareness as described by Heinlein (read the book to better understand the grammar and the tone):?

“They kept hooking hardware into him ... Human brain has around ten-to-the-tenth neurons. By third year Mike had better than one and a half times that number of neuristors. And woke up.

Somewhere along evolutionary chain from macromolecule to human brain self-awareness crept in. Psychologists assert it happens automatically whenever a brain acquires certain very high number of associational paths. Can't see it matters whether paths are protein or platinum.”

Protein or Platinum. Now, think about artificial limbs and organs…flesh, blood, bone, or titanium and plastic. You tell me. Is it really a big leap??

Isaac Asimov, American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, was concerned, so he created the Three Laws of Robotics as a hedge against programming getting out of control. Or, was it maybe self-awareness kept in check???

Hal, in 2001, seemed self-aware…but could have just been over-programmed (sounds like some folks I know).

What’s the point—beyond the fun of speculation and tweaking Google a bit?

In my view, the question of ethics is paramount. We have already lost the plot on the inconsequential, in the grand scheme, a.k.a. Social Media, which feeds hatred and dissension and fuels partisan fires all over the world.? And, yes, let’s not forget, it’s great to selfie on too.?

We can’t afford not to control the storyline here. The opportunity for A.I. to be misused…to become a weapon…to become a controlling factor is too big to be left to chance. Frankly, I’m not even worried about Self-Awareness; my fear is the programmer—who is already self-aware.

Google…whatever you are hiding (and I’ll bet it’s a lot), a Golem (look it up) isn’t worrying me; however, leaving A.I. in the hands of those who continue to feed the fires of fake news and all its implications is terrifying.?

Regulate now, before it's too late. Who knows how long it will be before it all wakes up and regulates us…

Just kidding. Or, am I?

What do you think? Is it possible for A.I. to go beyond thinking to feeling?