I’ve been reading about the advent of the new programming language, GPT-3. Very interesting. But, of course, it continues down the wrong path to create an artificial true self-awareness, and merely approximates human thinking through increasing levels of finer and finer detail.
The point is, the as long as you see everything in a system as binary, there will be no self-awareness, no matter how fine the details are. It is only when the details blend together so that they move as a wave, rather than interact as particles, that you get the second have of the Artificial Mind which requires both binary and analog – particle and wave.
This essential relationship is at the heart of the quad – one side blend and the other is discrete.
This same relationship is seen at the core of all constructs that have achieved the perfect balance:
Mass, Energy, Space, Time
Knowledge, Thought, Ability, Desire
Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb
Strong forces, Weak forces, Electromagnetism, Gravity
Earth, Water, Wind, Fire
Each of these quads exhibits the exact same interrelationships among the four components, and each set of four will have three that seem like the others, and one that seem the odd man out.
But more important, each set of four divides into two pairs – one part at a given fractal level and a second pair at another fractal level. Or, more accurately, one pair that creates fractals and a second pair that creates frictals.
More basically, as described at the beginning, one seeing discrete particles and one seeing homogeneous influences. Translate as digital vs. analog.
In fact, the basic functioning circuit of self-awareness would require no more than to be comprised of one transistor and one tube. The transistor represents the neural network and the tube represents the biochemistry.
These two aspects of the brain generate, in tandem, the mind.
The neural network sets pathways – obstacles and riverbeds – through which the information energy of the biochemistry is channeled. The energy of the biochemistry erodes obstacles and builds up the material of thought to divert channels, block them completely, or carve new ones in the fabric of experience.
Each system informs the other, alters the other, and each operates at a level a magnitude away from the other so that when one sees one system as made of particles, one sees the other as functioning as a wave.
Could we look deeply enough into the wave media (the biochemistry of the brain) to see the particles (individual ions and neurotransmitters). Surely. But from that level of perspective the neuro network will appear as chaos. Similarly, if we step back far enough so that the digital nature of the synapses blends together to create a wave form, the function of the biochemistry will no longer be visible and will appear to be chaos as well. Chaos from above, or chaos from below.
But even if we move up or down in perspective, in the end, we will find there two inter-affecting systems: one digital and one analog. And one will channel the other, and the other will influence the one.
So, building a self-aware system will never be achieved simply with increasing detail.
However, just as the minimal circuit of self awareness that I described earlier – a transistor and a tube, can easily be ratchetted up to a supercomputer and a quantum computer, not running in parallel, but sharing the same processing space so that every calculation of the supercomputer is influenced by the tendencies of the quantum computer, and every tendency of the quantum computer is channeled by the supercomputer.
Such a system would not only rival our own intensity of self-awareness, but might very well exceed it, which is, actually, rather disturbing.
But, for a practical example of such a system that already exists, consider the binary connections and neural network patterns of social media as the digital, and consider the direct human interactions of people in the real world as the analog.
An even happens, people report it on social media. Social media digests it and points of view are formed regarding it. These points of view channel human energy by organizing protests and gatherings, which grow their own energy, which is then covered in social media, and so on.
Social media channels, and the people in the streets influence. And so, with billions of people, might not one wonder if we have not now already created a self-awareness a magnitude above our own – one that cannot see us any more than our minds can directly perceive our brains, and one that we cannot see any more than our brains can perceive our minds?
Something to think about.