Thoughts on Technology, AI & Ex Machina
Some thoughts following our original podcast on AI, our follow-up podcast and one on the film, Ex Machina
We've talked a lot (probably too much) about what an automated world might look like. Perhaps it would be only limited to an automated economy and, contrary to many people's initial thoughts, would be far from "boring" simply due to the lack of work. Granted, this is hard to imagine and borders on complete theoretical fantasy. Much of our identity is currently crafted through work, struggle and strife but vocations and employment are not the sum of our identity, nor the entirety of work. Its simply a matter of shifting the narrative of work away from employment and into personal pursuits like friendships, hobbies and personal development. People had to do this in on a large scale in 2020. I mean, look at all the busy retired people who still manage to pursue meaningful lives, tackle challenging projects and continue to grow. In one way it could be that we're still relying on an external force (our employer or society at large in this case) to inform our identity rather than having the moral courage and self-motivation to do this ourselves.
Many of us on the podcast have an issue with transhumanism. Some transhumanist ideas include things like uploading our consciousness into machines. This denies a fundamental part of the human experience and relates to something called the ontological ambiguity of being - that a fundamental part of lived experience as we know it is to be "embodied". For example I wouldn’t be me without my senses as a large part of how I relate to reality and myself is through them. Its also a strange psychological attitude to be obsessed with transcending our current existence (as if its so awful to be mortal and flawed). It seems to personify some of the worst parts of religious attitudes to existentialism including proselytization, waiting on eventual salvation and denying the human experience. Joe wrote an essay about all this.
People often mistakenly confuse a singularity (exponential learning and improvement) with consciousness (which is a whole other kettle of fish!). In fiction, they are often used simultaneously.
This is one of those fields where philosophy suddenly becomes very vocational very quickly… unfortunately there seems to be some conflict between academic philosophy and STEM fields and the two are often bizarrely painted as opponents. Its only since leaving academia that I've realised just how much analytic philosophy and science my studies ignored; crucial parts of the history and development of philosophy and an incredibly important crossover in terms of relevant work to be done in the world. Without science, philosophy is rendered almost useless when it comes to application to modern concerns. Without philosophy, science is ethically pointless, without direction and loses much of its nuances and sense of history. The lack of intersectionality here is down to ignorance on both sides.
The use of fictional AIs in storytelling is revelatory of the wider discussions and fears. Like many ideas, they are often presented as villainous when they are prevalent in the zeitgeist. Their use mainly as antagonists is largely due to how we tell stories - they ultimately need drama, conflict and an interesting dynamic. Maybe these stories have scared us too much and feed back into a societal concern?
Sexbots will probably spell doom for society.
I've gone back and forth on the idea of apotheosis (playing god). On some level it seems like a meaningless concept with an arbitrary line used by people who are fearfully out-of-touch or luddite. As a form of literal theology its is even more non-sensical to the atheist. But there are still some practical and meaningful benefits to this kind of humility, particularly as it impacts on our identities and notions of self-worth. For example, do advances in technology make human graft or skill obsolete?
Many of us on the podcast have an issue with transhumanism. Some transhumanist ideas include things like uploading our consciousness into machines. This denies a fundamental part of the human experience and relates to something called the ontological ambiguity of being - that a fundamental part of lived experience as we know it is to be "embodied". For example I wouldn’t be me without my senses as a large part of how I relate to reality and myself is through them. Its also a strange psychological attitude to be obsessed with transcending our current existence (as if its so awful to be mortal and flawed). It seems to personify some of the worst parts of religious attitudes to existentialism including proselytization, waiting on eventual salvation and denying the human experience. Joe wrote an essay about all this.
People often mistakenly confuse a singularity (exponential learning and improvement) with consciousness (which is a whole other kettle of fish!). In fiction, they are often used simultaneously.
This is one of those fields where philosophy suddenly becomes very vocational very quickly… unfortunately there seems to be some conflict between academic philosophy and STEM fields and the two are often bizarrely painted as opponents. Its only since leaving academia that I've realised just how much analytic philosophy and science my studies ignored; crucial parts of the history and development of philosophy and an incredibly important crossover in terms of relevant work to be done in the world. Without science, philosophy is rendered almost useless when it comes to application to modern concerns. Without philosophy, science is ethically pointless, without direction and loses much of its nuances and sense of history. The lack of intersectionality here is down to ignorance on both sides.
The use of fictional AIs in storytelling is revelatory of the wider discussions and fears. Like many ideas, they are often presented as villainous when they are prevalent in the zeitgeist. Their use mainly as antagonists is largely due to how we tell stories - they ultimately need drama, conflict and an interesting dynamic. Maybe these stories have scared us too much and feed back into a societal concern?
Sexbots will probably spell doom for society.
I've gone back and forth on the idea of apotheosis (playing god). On some level it seems like a meaningless concept with an arbitrary line used by people who are fearfully out-of-touch or luddite. As a form of literal theology its is even more non-sensical to the atheist. But there are still some practical and meaningful benefits to this kind of humility, particularly as it impacts on our identities and notions of self-worth. For example, do advances in technology make human graft or skill obsolete?
Ex Machina (spoilers)
Ex Machina is a banger of a film - go watch it. It uses AI to explore control and therefore power, through the use of a lot of biblical themes. It’s a small budget film with only three main characters and lots of interesting trivia and it won a fair few awards. Narratively it’s a very tight film and says what it wants to say very efficiently. AI themes aside it’s a masterclass in building tension, has great moody cinematography and plays out as an excellent character study of tech genius'.
Some of the biblical themes are direct but its worth noting that the bible is one of the oldest books and has a lot of psychological archetypes in it… its kind of hard not to rip it off since it comments on the human psyche. Ex Machina literally means "god from the machine" though and those god parallels are particularly strong. There's the problem of evil (and freedom), creation and the personality and qualities of god are all represented in the character of Nathan and his relationship with the other characters. Nye made the point that many people misread the principle characterisation of Nathan, not realising that much of his arrogance and clumsiness is a ruse to trick Caleb. Ultimately, Nathan's "true" arrogance is still a huge part of the narrative.
The character of Caleb is a great audience surrogate and his beliefs and revelations of a significance within a wider plan are analogous with the religious believer. Two outlooks are on display here: Nathan's is so hubristic he develops something he can't control, and Caleb, who is lost and manipulated. One idiotically tries to shape the void, the other fearfully can't comprehend it. This is what Kierkegaard might call the crisis of the finite and the crisis of the infinite respectively. Ultimately it holds a mirror to the audience, with reflections and mirrors being a big visual and metaphorical theme in the film.
The film has some discussion of consciousness with the theme of emergence looming in the background like the Jackson Pollock art we see. Automatic art of this nature is considered by some to be a stream directly from the unconscious mind and thus the meaning of the piece emerges from this unconscious state, paradoxically becoming an expression of true 'freedom'. This is why Pollock is often mentioned in discussions around the nature of consciousness. This theme is seen in the expressionism of Ava's drawings and her "wetware" (which is chaotic yet patterned) and are all likely trying to communicate the irreducible and ineffable phenomenology of being.
Objectively, the best scene in Ex Machina is when Oscar Isaac "tears up the dance floor".
The Turing Test is an idea that can be seen to start with Descartes and is the idea that influenced the Voight Kampf test in Blade Runner. Its essentially the question of whether a computer can fool a person into thinking its human. The classic idea from Alan Turing in 1950 is much more parameterised involving only written text and several other conditions. If one fails to distinguish between computer and machine then we can conclude that it has passed the Turing test and displays the appearance of kind of social intelligence. The film centres around an apparent Turing Test conducted by Caleb when in fact, the true test is whether Ava can manipulate Caleb.
John Searle devised the Chinese Room thought experiment after determining that the Turing Test wasn't an effective way to decide whether a machine could think or appear convincing. It argues that the output of a machine (i.e. The answers to questions that are asked of it) is just a simulation of understanding, by following a step by step process, as opposed to actual comprehension. This is a refutation of our ability to create general thinking 'Strong AI' rather than increasingly optimised and specialised AI. Essentially, giving a desired answer isn’t the same as comprehending it.
Another thought experiment the film mentions is Mary's Room, otherwise known as Mary the Colour Scientist or Mary and the Black and White Room, a variant of the knowledge argument. Its about qualia (the ineffable substance of stuff, like the redness of a jumper). Qualia is the irreducible and experiential phenomena of the world or the non-physical bollocks that have to be experienced. You can know all about the physical properties of a particular thing through indirect study but the imagery, empathies and feeling associated by interacting with it categorically isn’t possible from description alone. This gets into deeper issues about consciousness more generally and lots of philosophers have competing ideas regarding this. Its author, Frank Jackson offers the scenario that a scientist called Mary studies colour from a black and white room her whole life. She specialises in neurophysiology of vision. She knows the wavelengths of that form the colour of the sky; that it is blue. In short, she knows everything a person could know about the qualities of colour without ever seeing it. The questions is that once she steps out of the room and truly experiences colour, has she learned anything new? Is there knowledge in qualia? If so, then this seems to lend itself to epiphenomenalism - that knowledge kind of jumps in from somewhere unseen. Its the view that mental events (maybe consciousness itself) are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events.
Human ethics is infinitely complicated under a microscope. It’s a conceptual can of worms, especially when the conversation veers into meta-ethics so it remains to be seen if even a working functional morality can be programmed into any kind of machine, yet alone self-comprehended in any way comparable to humans. That's assuming that we self-comprehend our behaviour of course! Some basic form of utilitarianism is perhaps the most ideal candidate for things like self-driving vehicles and one of the few instances where trolley problems actually become applicable to real life. Philosopher Daniel Dennett was a big fan of how this was portrayed in Ex Machina. What starts out as a Pinocchio story becomes something much more poignant and interesting. Many viewers mistake the ending for callousness or some change of heart but the question remains whether Ava could even distinguish from benevolence and malevolence. What benchmark would she even use to determine a moral action? Would it be interested in those questions or even comprehend our apparent sense of ethics beyond how to utilise it as a point of fact for its own benefit. What we get is a good shout at something purely theoretical and unknown. It’s a good depiction of something seemingly utterly alien that is simply manipulating variables in order to fulfil a utility function. This explorative speculation and chilling warning is what makes this great science fiction.
Ex Machina is a banger of a film - go watch it. It uses AI to explore control and therefore power, through the use of a lot of biblical themes. It’s a small budget film with only three main characters and lots of interesting trivia and it won a fair few awards. Narratively it’s a very tight film and says what it wants to say very efficiently. AI themes aside it’s a masterclass in building tension, has great moody cinematography and plays out as an excellent character study of tech genius'.
Some of the biblical themes are direct but its worth noting that the bible is one of the oldest books and has a lot of psychological archetypes in it… its kind of hard not to rip it off since it comments on the human psyche. Ex Machina literally means "god from the machine" though and those god parallels are particularly strong. There's the problem of evil (and freedom), creation and the personality and qualities of god are all represented in the character of Nathan and his relationship with the other characters. Nye made the point that many people misread the principle characterisation of Nathan, not realising that much of his arrogance and clumsiness is a ruse to trick Caleb. Ultimately, Nathan's "true" arrogance is still a huge part of the narrative.
The character of Caleb is a great audience surrogate and his beliefs and revelations of a significance within a wider plan are analogous with the religious believer. Two outlooks are on display here: Nathan's is so hubristic he develops something he can't control, and Caleb, who is lost and manipulated. One idiotically tries to shape the void, the other fearfully can't comprehend it. This is what Kierkegaard might call the crisis of the finite and the crisis of the infinite respectively. Ultimately it holds a mirror to the audience, with reflections and mirrors being a big visual and metaphorical theme in the film.
The film has some discussion of consciousness with the theme of emergence looming in the background like the Jackson Pollock art we see. Automatic art of this nature is considered by some to be a stream directly from the unconscious mind and thus the meaning of the piece emerges from this unconscious state, paradoxically becoming an expression of true 'freedom'. This is why Pollock is often mentioned in discussions around the nature of consciousness. This theme is seen in the expressionism of Ava's drawings and her "wetware" (which is chaotic yet patterned) and are all likely trying to communicate the irreducible and ineffable phenomenology of being.
Objectively, the best scene in Ex Machina is when Oscar Isaac "tears up the dance floor".
The Turing Test is an idea that can be seen to start with Descartes and is the idea that influenced the Voight Kampf test in Blade Runner. Its essentially the question of whether a computer can fool a person into thinking its human. The classic idea from Alan Turing in 1950 is much more parameterised involving only written text and several other conditions. If one fails to distinguish between computer and machine then we can conclude that it has passed the Turing test and displays the appearance of kind of social intelligence. The film centres around an apparent Turing Test conducted by Caleb when in fact, the true test is whether Ava can manipulate Caleb.
John Searle devised the Chinese Room thought experiment after determining that the Turing Test wasn't an effective way to decide whether a machine could think or appear convincing. It argues that the output of a machine (i.e. The answers to questions that are asked of it) is just a simulation of understanding, by following a step by step process, as opposed to actual comprehension. This is a refutation of our ability to create general thinking 'Strong AI' rather than increasingly optimised and specialised AI. Essentially, giving a desired answer isn’t the same as comprehending it.
Another thought experiment the film mentions is Mary's Room, otherwise known as Mary the Colour Scientist or Mary and the Black and White Room, a variant of the knowledge argument. Its about qualia (the ineffable substance of stuff, like the redness of a jumper). Qualia is the irreducible and experiential phenomena of the world or the non-physical bollocks that have to be experienced. You can know all about the physical properties of a particular thing through indirect study but the imagery, empathies and feeling associated by interacting with it categorically isn’t possible from description alone. This gets into deeper issues about consciousness more generally and lots of philosophers have competing ideas regarding this. Its author, Frank Jackson offers the scenario that a scientist called Mary studies colour from a black and white room her whole life. She specialises in neurophysiology of vision. She knows the wavelengths of that form the colour of the sky; that it is blue. In short, she knows everything a person could know about the qualities of colour without ever seeing it. The questions is that once she steps out of the room and truly experiences colour, has she learned anything new? Is there knowledge in qualia? If so, then this seems to lend itself to epiphenomenalism - that knowledge kind of jumps in from somewhere unseen. Its the view that mental events (maybe consciousness itself) are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events.
Human ethics is infinitely complicated under a microscope. It’s a conceptual can of worms, especially when the conversation veers into meta-ethics so it remains to be seen if even a working functional morality can be programmed into any kind of machine, yet alone self-comprehended in any way comparable to humans. That's assuming that we self-comprehend our behaviour of course! Some basic form of utilitarianism is perhaps the most ideal candidate for things like self-driving vehicles and one of the few instances where trolley problems actually become applicable to real life. Philosopher Daniel Dennett was a big fan of how this was portrayed in Ex Machina. What starts out as a Pinocchio story becomes something much more poignant and interesting. Many viewers mistake the ending for callousness or some change of heart but the question remains whether Ava could even distinguish from benevolence and malevolence. What benchmark would she even use to determine a moral action? Would it be interested in those questions or even comprehend our apparent sense of ethics beyond how to utilise it as a point of fact for its own benefit. What we get is a good shout at something purely theoretical and unknown. It’s a good depiction of something seemingly utterly alien that is simply manipulating variables in order to fulfil a utility function. This explorative speculation and chilling warning is what makes this great science fiction.