Artificial Intelligence? AI is A1 (Ewan). I Go For Human Genius

MANILA: Today, we are going to play the Board game Go intellectually, in both a cerebral and creative manner. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t played it before, not once. With the image above, BoardGameGeek describes Go thus (boardgamegeek.com):

By all appearances, it's just two players taking turns laying stones on a 19x19 (or smaller) grid of intersections. But once its basic rules are understood, Go shows its staggering depth. One can see why many people say it's one of the most elegant brain-burning abstract games in history, with players trying to claim territory by walling off sections of the board and surrounding each other's stones. The game doesn't end until the board fills up, or, more often, when both players agree to end it, at which time whoever controls the most territory wins.

Brain-burning? As the image shows, in Go you are playing with squares and circles. That’s the basic logic. In fact, it is all logic. Staggering depth? In logic. You burn your brain in logic.

"In Two Moves, AlphaGo and Lee Sedol Redefined The Future" – Cade Metz (16 March 2016, WIRED, wired.com). AlphaGo is a computer taught by Google programmers to play Go and Lee Sedol is a world champion, a Korean. Metz is ecstatic in reporting the results of that game:

In Game Two, the Google machine made a move that no human ever would (have). And it was beautiful. As the world looked on, the move so perfectly demonstrated the enormously powerful and rather mysterious talents of modern artificial intelligence.

Redefined the future? That's going agog over AlphaGo or gaga over artificial intelligence. If you are Filipino, you know that gaga is also a Tagalog word that means insane.

There are no mysterious talents of artificial intelligence (AI). What’s mysterious about logic? AI is A1 (Ewan). Ewan is a Tagalog word that means it's not that important, or I don’t know; at best, it means maybe.

But in Game Four, the human made a move that no machine would ever expect. And it was beautiful too. Indeed, it was just as beautiful as the move from the Google machine – no less and no more. It showed that although machines are now capable of moments of genius, humans have hardly lost the ability to generate their own transcendent moments. And it seems that in the years to come, as we humans work with these machines, our genius will only grow in tandem with our creations.

Machines are now capable of moments of genius? Definitely not! Artificial intelligence is exactly that, artificial. Playing a game like Go is just following strict rules – you cannot make a move that is against the rules. Transcendent moments? There is no genius in logic, only a calculating mind.

I repeat: All that AI is is logic, no matter that it looks mysterious to the one who does not realize that the computer mind AlphaGo is just calculating moves with the speed of nanoseconds using built-in logic by programmers thinking logic. AlphaGo cannot by itself create a move that defies its own programming, unlike a human, which can make an illogical, seemingly crazy insight – and that would be brilliant as it would be genius. And outside of logic.

Just because geniuses who become billionaires are into AI doesn't make it adorable. Let’s see.

Elon Musk, who is lately into AI, is a genius and a billionaire. He was born in South Africa in 1971. This is what biography.com says of him:

Elon Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers. He achieved more success by founding X.com in 1999, SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. Musk made headlines in May 2012 when SpaceX launched a rocket that would send the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station.

Musk is into producing an all-electric mass-market car, the Tesla. In August 2016, a $2.6 billion deal was sealed combining his electric car company and solar energy company. "As one company, Tesla (storage) and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed" (biography.com, as cited).

Still on AI, according to Wikipedia:

In January 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and dozens of artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter on artificial intelligence calling for research on the societal impacts of AI. The letter affirmed that society can reap great potential benefits from artificial intelligence, but called for concrete research on how to prevent certain potential "pitfalls": artificial intelligence has the potential to eradicate disease and poverty, but researchers must not create something which cannot be controlled.

Ha! This is not the first time that man has created something which cannot be controlled. Like war. Like the atomic bomb. Like pollution by nuclear power plants. Like the stock market.

Brain-burning? Elon Musk thinks that at some point in time, because of AI, "one day machines will become smarter than humans" (William Hoffman, 04 June 2016, INVERSE, inverse.com). So, we humans must "achieve symbiosis with machines," Musk says. Hoffman says:

It all ties back to his theories about AI and how he believes one day machines will become smarter than humans. At a benign level, he says, machines could come to think of humans as house pets, or simply come to destroy all of humanity, as numerous movies have depicted.

No. It cannot never be that machines will be smarter than humans. Machines employ artificial intelligence, which comes from man. Even if man teaches the AI machine to "think," it can only think logically, not think creatively, and therefore can never arrive at any insight, can never think asymmetrically, can never think with foresight, can never think out of the box. The AI machine's box is AI; AI cannot surmount itself, bound by its own rules. In AI, the territory for thinking is defined, and the AI machine cannot venture beyond those borders – in fact, it does not know that there is intelligence beyond its own territory.

What about Isaac Asimov's intelligent robots? George Dvorsky asked Louie Helm, Deputy Director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Executive Editor of Rockstar Research Magazine, and he said ("Why Asimov's Three Laws Of Robotics Can't Protect Us," io9, io9.gizmodo.com):

The main issue I expect to be important for humanity is not the moral regulation of a large number of semi-smart humanoid robots, but the eventual development of advanced forms of artificial intelligence (whether embodied or not) that function at far greater than human levels. This development of superintelligence is a filter that humanity has to pass through eventually. That's why developing a safety strategy for this transition is so important. I guess I see it as largely irrelevant that robots, androids, or "emulations" may exists for a decade or two before humans have to deal with the real problem of developing machine ethics for superintelligence.

Brain-burning? Superintelligence? Yes, it is all possible, as Elon Musk and Helm think, that a crazed mind will build an AI machine meant to destroy the world in whatever manner or means. Machine ethics, my eye! If God cannot stop Man from his horrible sins, can Horrible Man stop Horrible Machine from destroying the world Man has built?

But I'm not the worrying kind. Otherwise I would not be so creative. I believe in the genius of the human race and if destruction of the world is brought about by an AI maniac, singular or plural, if there is just one other human being left, he will be able to think his way out of doom. That is the power of creative thinking and/or faith; natural intelligence will always be more powerful than the brute force of artificial intelligence.

Here's to the creative genius of man!

What is the basis of your humanity? Reason is not enough. Why should I idolize artificial intelligence? AI does not admit of faith, or inspiration, or love. It is merely conforming to the rules set by Man. I would all the time seek true wisdom. Man cannot live by logic alone. We need a power greater than ourselves, greater than all of humanity.

I Go For God.

“As we humans work with these machines, our genius will only grow in tandem with our creations” – No. Our creations can never raise our genius; they can only make us productive. Our genius will grow if we make it, but not with artificial intelligence.

Finally, I am instructed and comforted right in the beginning by Romans 12 (NRSV):

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.

At the moment, as artificial intelligence is imperfect, creativity is perfect for me.

31 August 2016. Essay word count, excluding this line: 1484