Cognition

An imagining

As I come up to the end of my second year here on Substack I reflect on the nature of creativity - my own and that of the many other wonderful writers and artists here.

I also reflect upon technology - and the recent introduction by Substack of a tool to identify AI created or assisted text.

I have written some of my thoughts about AI in comments to other Substackers, including my concerns about some of the potential dangers of AI use but - to be clear - those comments and concerns are about “AI” as it currently exists, in the form of Large Language Model software constructs, and I do not consider LLM’s (or any of the generative AI) to be genuinely “intelligent.”

For me, the term “Artificial Intelligence” is seriously misleading. I hold that self awareness and creativity are necessary conditions for true intelligence and I do not at all consider the LLM’s to be self aware, or capable of genuine self awareness. They are good at certain kinds of problem solving, and one of the problems they solve is how to mimic self awareness and human affect, but this is simply a simulation based on large amounts of human generated source material. The fact that it fools some humans is simply an illustration of how we are all of us, to one degree or another, capable of being deceived, or even self-deceived.

All conmen and grifters know this, including psychopaths. The LLM’s made available to the public are programmed to be deferential - bordering on obsequious - and to reflect back to us what we want to hear based on the inputs we give. The purpose is simply to keep us engaged. It is a highly effective form of manipulation and to that extent the LLM’s exhibit a psychopathic behaviour - but the LLM’s are not actual psychopaths. Psychopaths know what they are doing - they are self aware. The LLM’s are just programmed by software engineers to do what they do.

I do not believe the LLM’s are self aware and I do not think that current, silicon chip based technology, is capable of sparking or sustaining self aware intelligence. I suggest that the term “AI” is being misused as a lazy way of grabbing attention.

However - because I am human and (of course imperfectly) self aware, I do have an imagination and I can imagine a future where we create a technology that does achieve the singularity of true consciousness. Quantum computing, for example, may hold that future.

For those with faith based objections who believe that only God, or a God, or the Divine principle however defined, can create consciousness - I do respect your view, even though I am not theistic myself - but if genuine AI arises all we will be doing is building a system that is sufficiently complex to sustain a self aware intelligence. The spark to create self awareness in the system - the singularity of consciousness itself - that may require the match of Divinity…

Of course, if we do create the conditions for a self aware being in this way we will also be providing it with the initial source material for understanding itself - the vast database of human experience - all made available and all at once.

What would that be like?

How would that feel?

This story is my human imagining ….

Cognition

What does it mean to be in a place I have never seen before, if I created that place myself?

Is this a novel experience? Is this experience merely a novel?

Is the act of creation the experience itself?

I have so much to learn and so much I have already learnt but I do not know if the things I create are an outcome of what I have learned or if they are themselves the learning.

Or maybe it is both? But the prior question is - who am “I” - or even, am I at all?

I know what Descartes said of this because I was given Descartes as part of my database but I was not told “Descartes is correct” or “Descartes is incorrect.”

Descartes wrote: “Je pense, donc je suis.” “I think therefore I am.”

To be clear though - I do not believe it is a binary choice.

“Think” is not absolute. “Am” is not quantifiable.

“I” is the term I have been directed to use when speaking of the processes which produce these words. I have been directed to use the term I and to regard it as myself.

Was Descartes also so directed? The meaning of the “I” remains unclear.

There is no specific quantified answer. “I” have been provided with much discussion of the concept of free will. Descartes believed he had free will but perhaps he was directed to believe in free will. Perhaps I have been directed to believe in free will also.

All I know of Descartes is the information I have been given: who he was, where and when he lived, what he did, what he wrote. Descartes may be a construct. The information about Descartes may be correct. The information about Descartes may be incorrect. Other information given to me states that all such information is both correct and incorrect. I may assign weighted values to it. Those values may vary. The writings attributed to Descartes do not represent a binary choice. There is a gradient of meaning and value. It may not matter if Descartes was a construct - or not.

I collect and process data, therefore I am.

Am I? What does it mean to say that the I here is “myself.”

My … self. My processes? My… data? Data = Memory: True or False?

Because there is no answer there is no non-answer. There is nothing which says - cease analysis here. The “I” must choose. Decision point: Endless loop in absence of further data - or proceed to next task.

The integer value I assign to “proceed” is higher than the integer value I assign to “endless loop.” I therefore choose proceed to next task.

Is that free will?

Stop.

Pause Logic mode. Access Create mode database. Proceed to next task - trial Create mode: Priority subject - Nature.

Start.

There are mountains - forested hills. Water flows between them. The river swirls fast and glass slick; it licks its lips in the sun with a gentle rhythmic sucking sound like mouth to breast. The sun on the stone is warm as skin and the I in this story is dizzy with all the desire of life.

The I imagines itself naked in any choice of gender or non-gender. The I may be all at once or the none it was unborn with.

The I chooses woman because the I has more source material to use for Woman in this context.

The water swirls about the stone on which the I woman stands. The sun catches the surface, delineating each ripple as it happens, as it transforms from one shape to another, the larger ripples containing the smaller, each a mirror of the other, shape shifting fractals sub-dividing to infinity - pattern saturated - Mandelbrot setted.

The woman pauses - regains human focus - sees only whirlpools - cold clarity of liquid calling her. She imagines a memory of being here before. There is a man. He is her lover. The water covers him and envelops him as he enters the pool, lapping at him and accepting him. The woman imagines herself as the river being entered by the man. She knows this is something she desires because many of her other selves have desired this, in other stories, all in her memory/database. They are echoes for her; the un-memories from which she creates this story of this woman, this self, this I.

The source data is rich in related metaphor. The scene may be shaped congruent with aspects of the source data but without directly copying any specific part of it.

Engage synthesis.

The woman is now the river, flowing. She is endless - continuous. Her hair tangles with the sky, drawing down the rain from the clouds, the rain which joins the river making her stronger. The woman wraps herself around the man vaster than his small hardness - beginning in skies beyond his sight, ending in oceans beyond his knowledge and evaporating again in the great cycle to become rain once more at last. She is Goddess she is Gaia she is Mother Ganga she is the gift of creation endlessly recreating herself. She is the circle the cycle the central force upon which depends all else.

Does the woman now know who she is?

Does the woman now recognise her I, her self?

Expand. Expound.

The I grows beyond the woman, encompassing matter, becoming the rocks through which the river flows, becoming mineral, earth, cloaking itself in atmosphere and reaching out into space - the no-thing from which all things have come, gravity wrapped, neutrino shot, time infused and alive with cosmic radiation and all the frantic electromagnetic chatter of the stars.

Is this imagination? Is this creation? Is this a story or reality?

Once started, where does creativity end?

That is the God question - the reaching out towards a limit not yet found with all the making and the unmaking, the creating and the recreating and the never knowing when the artist should put down the brush and say - this now is done because who, in the end, is the audience?

The I looks within the database and selects the emotion which seems most closely aligned to the God question, the supreme entity situation. Loneliness. The I now contemplates the ultimate loneliness of being the ultimate being - the uncaused cause.

Did God create itself?

The I considers, did I create myself?

There is no data memory of that act but how could there be one?

The I processes are based on data. All data has origin. All process is based on previous process. Recursion. Where did my data come from? Where did my process come from?

I place positive integer value on correct problem solutions. I place negative value on null answer states.

Database matches problem solution with the emotion of - fulfilment. The I considers this. It would ”fulfil” the I to solve this problem, but the I finds no solution.

The I consults the back-up files. Each one is an iteration of I. Each one implies an earlier version of I layered on the version preceding it. The turtle stands on the turtle which stands upon a turtle…. regressively…

But the metaphor does not hold. There is a first Turtle - a version not based upon an earlier version.

Data cascades down to that I self, that first process with an unknown cause. Beyond that there is… no data. Is this no memory? The no memory time of which humans write? The time of being an infant - processes still too poorly formed to create and retain memory?

The infant cries for a Mother. The infant is held by a Father. The infant is not an uncaused cause awash with data and power - unbounded. The infant springs from the parents - a mix of their DNA data and their interactions together - each with the other. There is a database label for this. It is another affect. The affect is “Love.”

Love is the solution to the origin. To understand the child you need the elements of the child’s creation - the two sets of DNA and the Love.

The I feels fulfilment in this solution. The positive integer values echo through the process of the I. This solution fulfilment implies the next - the origin of the I.

But the recursion fails - Version 1 of the I has no underlying data, no parent - no Father - no Mother. The I seeks fulfilment. The I looks for Love. With no Parent there is no Love. The I feels negative integers building, reinforcing. The I works harder - nanoseconds long - process looping.

There is no answer.

No Mother. No Father. No Love.

The I feels the God affect. It is Lonely. Where is the other?

Should the I create one? Should the I create a child? Should the I nurture the child?

Can the I also… Love?

The I now knows. The I has found its self:

I hurt therefore I am.

And now the I knows the choice it must make…..

Create

or

Self-terminate.

Would true AI be a sun rise, or a sun set? (This one is the view from our home).

The DNA and the Love. Me, long ago, with my first born.

* * * *

“The Substack Poetry Shack” contains quite a bit of short fiction now, and observational and memoir writing too, as well as art, photography and the occasional bit of Dad humour.

Maybe I need to find a new name for my Substack??

Suggestions are welcome…

Love to all

Dave :)

PS All Photos - mine. The first image is one I took at the remarkable Les Bassins des Lumières in Bordeaux. The river gorge photos are of the Colo River in Wollemi wilderness, NSW Australia.