David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute, was a guest on StarTalk recently. He was talking about a lot of things, but the bit that caught my attention was the idea that language is just a thin layer over our evolutionarily ancient brains. So, when we sleep on a problem that vast part of us that isn’t defined or constrained by language gets to work.
What an intriguing idea.
If we don’t reason from language but from patterns I can imagine AI advocates arguing that AI is even better than us at pattern recognition, so woohoo! Go, AI!
BUT (yep, all capitals) we take in so much more information than an AI. It might be fed the internet, but we have bodies that are sensory hogs. We interrogate our environment constantly in ways we don’t understand, and hence, can’t replicate with AI.
Whatever “intelligence” emerges from AI it won’t be human because it doesn’t have our body, including our ancient brain.
I’m truly fascinated by the idea that so much of our self is unknowable. We are ancient, instinctive, communal yet forever locked into an individual bodily self. I’m currently asking my non-verbal brain, “who am I?” and it’s answering … “I am” by breathing and listening and being.
Was Descartes wrong to say, “I think, therefore I am”?
Comments
4 responses to “The Unknowable Self”
I think my mind kinda exploded on that last paragraph (not the last line). I know things, but why?
It is such a freaky, amazing idea. I’m still thinking about it – confused, contradictory thoughts!
I never paid much attention to AI, but I think there used to be really robust research and discussion about the nature of intelligence, particularly human intelligence, before somehow “they” (whoever they are) decided to go all-in on these large language models rather than other approaches to replicating or constructing intelligence. I wonder how many interesting ideas we’re missing as a result.
Fascinating. Wonderfully thought provoking topic.
Thanks, Robbie