The noble anti-AI approach

The human mind is not a machine. There are issues about
the understanding of the fundamental physics of matter,
touching on things which could relate to mind, if you
study how Louis de Broglie (co-author of the core
quantum theory) diverged from David Bohm's causal
interpretation of quantum theory (which was rejected by
de Broglie's pioneering friends) by rewriting half of it,
in 1956 (in a manner ignored by the other authors of
quantum theory) and onwards. In sum: the grand questions,
also about what the mind is, are still open. There is no
proof -- anywhere -- that the human mind and its 
intelligence and its empathic intelligence can ever be
reduced to any chip or algorithm or manipulation of 
quantum mechanics in a laboratory or any combination 
of such. There are on the contrary core works which
indicate that artificial intelligence is and will be
a blatant illusion, and that the risk is solely that
this illusion is not seen for what it is. (For some
of these core works, cfr other texts linked to by the
yoga6d.org/look.htm anti-AI search engine portal.)
Humanity must take an anti-AI stance; journalists must
refuse to use the scifi notion "AI" casually, as if it
refers to a fact; and in general, we must prefer such
approaches to computing which do not mimick mind and 
thus can contribute to a generally stupification of
mankind. In this, we must stand up and assert that it
is better to use mind and do things perhaps sometimes
slightly slower than to not use mind and live by the
dictatorship of machines. This is about believing in
mind, insight, intuition, and a spontaniety which 
goes beyond mere machine, -- also as love, as action,
whether in business life or in relationship or in sex.
This is the noble anti-AI stance, and it gives great
energy to live by it. 

In order to practise the anti-AI approach and yet use
computers and robots, we need to first sift through
our vocabulary and our images of these things, and
then decide on what are the right, wise uses of these
things. 

VOCABULARY
A computer can 'match patterns' but it doesn't 
'recognise patterns'. Avoid the psychological term.

A computer can put something in its (digital) memory.
It can -- by stretching the vocabulary -- engage in
what we can call "machine learning", but when we use
this psychological term 'learning' we should normally
put it in quotes.

A computer has no awareness. It may be programmed to
be "responsive" or even to "relate" to certain events,
but it isn't aware of these events.

A computer doesn't know anything. At most, it "knows" --
we can put it in quotes. A better phrase is simply to
say that the computer has been programmed to handle
such and such.

A computer doesn't understand anything. That's surely
a term we must only use jokingly or by means of quotes
-- the computer "understands" all this. It means, really,
that it has a program which relates accurately, or
correctly, or precisely, or meaningfully, to such and such.

A computer doesn't "want" anything. It doesn't have 
intentions. It may have a certain technical type of
machine-goals. We might say that the computer has a
"goal" -- the robot has a "goal" we can say -- in quotes.
We can also say that it has a task-goal, or something
that sounds more digital, more technical.

A computer or a robot doesn't have values, nor feelings.
A computer or a robot can have 'task-priorities', 
or 'priority objectives', and it can have ways of 
'measuring success-rate relative to objectives.' Nor,
of course, is there any 'like' or 'dislike' in the
machinery of a computer.



PROGRESS IN SCIENCE?

Now, when we argue for this by means of physics in the
middle of the 20th century, and number theory along the
lines of Kurt Goedel and Alan Turing's work also from
this period, it may be said: hasn't science progressed
since then? It is very easy to say that science has
progressed in these areas since then, and indeed this is
one of the most-encountered claims in pseudo-scientific
popular TV channels that aim to propagandize certain
notions by using the prestige of science. In reality,
however, most developments by far in physics since the
clash of the giants -- Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and
later on, Louis de Broglie's own alternative standing
on the shoulders of David Bohm's attempt, and the various
sifting through of something of all this by J S Bell,
and the empirical experiment by A Aspect on something
of this -- most developments since this phase in the
20th century have been on the engineering level, and
in terms of number crunching. The foundational concepts
laid out in terms of thinking about physics clashed then,
as they do clash now, and a new wholeness or coherence
in physics cannot be reached by leaving the ideas at
the confused level the 20th century discourses on
physics left them, and focus on solving things by means
of putting numbers into and getting them out from
equations. At the idea level, there has been a 
total stagnation in physics since the 20th century
as far as all fundamental themes go. 

And all this must concern biology since whatever physics
raises as conceptual difficulties propagate upwards from
the atomic level to the larger atoms such as those 
composing our brains and bodies. As one example.

And at the idea level, there has hardly been any evolution
at all on the number theory level, connected to the
questions of infinity and computability as unleashed
by the works of Emil Post, Kurt Goedel, Thoralf Skolem,
Alan Turing and many others. An attempt to say: we are
now entirely beyond that level where mathematics says
of itself that any mechanical axiomatic system is
severely incomplete -- is illusory, and not scientific.



IN PRAXIS

In praxis, we can still use computers, and robots, and
even extent the use, but we must engage wholeheartedly
all our organs of thinking and feeling to find out
how to do so in ways which do not stop human thinking
nor confuse the human mind with impulses from machines
which are apt to delude. The machines, moreover, must
be tighly controlled. They must work WITHIN contexts, 
and not be given trans-contextual tasks.


--A.Tacoma, May 2015, with an
extension July 2015

(feel free to reproduce this when unchanged.)