Who or what will drive the Man-Machine?

Man, like nature, seems to have acquired the power and – more or less - mastered the skill to create entities that can imitate several functions of both man and nature, with incredible speed and accuracy. It seems realistic to say that more functions will be added in the near future, which could quickly bring us into the age of ‘Singularity’. This could either be considered as a next Renaissance or even as the next quantum leap in evolution.

But can these entities think? This question refers to both physical machines and robots as well as to digital machines, algorithms, models or artificial intelligence (AI) entities. This is – more than anything else - a peculiar question, since thinking is a trait that is only found in living beings with a consciousness, like homo sapiens. 

It’s clear, however, that we will quickly need to re-think the relation between man and machine. This is because of the exponential growth of capabilities of machines and the growing need of many people to offload activities and responsibilities to these powerful machines. This is a major trend with a big impact on everything we know and do and even on what we are. It has created an increasing dependency combined with a decreasing will to stay in control or turn things around. More and more people seem to be stricken by either blind faith or by self-indulgent apathy, which even seems to accelerate this trend. The fact that consciousness and intelligence are still missing in machines didn't stop people from transferring things. This provides much food for thought.

There are however many serious issues that demand our attention. For example, a big data driven ‘black-box’ or ‘AI’ judge, bank or doctor may seem a ‘convenient’ innovation, but this will quickly backfire and create collateral damage because of ‘context collapse’; the lack of accountability and transparency and the lack of follow-up innovations in the designated context of processes, policies, regulatory, laws and politics. Clearly, we need a new ideology in this next Renaissance, to re-align the relation between man, machine and nature. This will provide a context in which the numerous ‘backfiring’ issues can be properly understood and prevented.

There’s already an immersive symbiotic relationship between man and machine. Some say that machines are ‘eating the world’, which suggests that valuable time has already been lost to properly think things through. It also seems to imply that man is accepting the role of ‘underdog’ in this relationship. So who’s the boss? And who wants to be the boss?

Historically, machines are engineered to serve man and the passions of man. The Slavic word ‘robot’ literally means ‘forced labor’. However, the immense capabilities of machines have triggered a delegation of authority, identity, morality, ideology and power, from man to machine. This implies that machines have implicitly been promoted to a position where they are apparently capable, eligible and ‘trustworthy’ enough to lead man. A better question could therefore be: is man ready to let machines lead and have machines ‘think’ for man? Or alternatively: is man ready to (properly) ‘think’ for machines? 

These are apparently tough questions, because they haven’t been raised yet, it seems. It sure enough hasn’t triggered a fundamental and material discussion in either science or media. Some suggest that machines should be emancipated first in order to clarify their legal stature, to formalize their role in society, but also to mitigate the implied risk of (near) autonomous machine-driven activities. Such initiatives, like OpenAI, could be a first step to re-align things, because it will trigger all the important implied questions, which should be answered first, before we are ready to answer the big question mentioned above.

One of the few key initial questions could be: what exactly is human consciousness and how was this capability bootstrapped in evolution? Is it possible to conceive and develop consciousness for machines and is that feasible and/or even required? Considering the context of the Julian Jaynes’ theory of the ‘bicameral mind’: will man provide the consciousness and ‘voice’ to guide machine activities or will it be the other way around?

Please check Roland Sassen's interesting and thought-provoking ‘one-pager’ on consciousness. This helps people to raise fundamental questions, have discussions and seek for pragmatic answers. This is a must read for everybody who is currently thinking or working man-machine challenges.