CHAPTER FIVE
COULD YOU MERGE WITH AI?
Suppose it is 2035, and being a technophile, you decide to add a mobile Internet connection to your retina. A year later, you enhance your working memory by adding neural circuitry. You are now officially a cyborg. Now skip ahead to 2045. Through nanotechnological therapies and enhancements, you are able to extend your lifespan, and as the years progress, you continue to accumulate more far-reaching enhancements.
By 2060, after several small but cumulatively profound alterations, you are a “posthuman.” Posthumans are future beings who are no longer unambiguously human, because they have mental capacities that radically exceed those of present-day humans. At this point, your intelligence is enhanced not just in terms of speed of mental processing; you are now able to make rich connections that you were not able to make before. Unenhanced humans, or “naturals,” seem to you to be intellectually disabled—you have little in common with them—but as a transhumanist, you are supportive of their right to not enhance.
It is now 2300. Worldwide technological developments, including your own enhancements, are facilitated by superintelligent AI. Recall that a superintelligent AI has the capacity to radically outperform the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom, and social skills. Over time, the slow addition of better and better AI components has left no real intellectual difference in kind between you and a superintelligent AI. The only difference between you and an AI creature of standard design is one of origin—you were once a natural. But you are now almost entirely engineered by technology. You are perhaps more aptly characterized as a member of a rather heterogeneous class of AI life forms. You have merged with AI.
This thought experiment features the kind of enhancements that transhumanists and certain well-known tech leaders, such as Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil, aspire to.1 Recall that transhumanists aim to redesign the human condition, striving for immortality and synthetic intelligence, all in hopes of improving our overall quality of life. Proponents of the idea that humans should merge with AI are techno-optimists: They hold that synthetic consciousness is possible. In addition, they believe a merger or fusion with AI is possible. More specifically, they tend to suggest the following trajectory of enhancements:2
Twenty-first century unenhanced human → significant “upgrading” with cognitive and other physical enhancements → posthuman status → “superintelligent AI”
Let us call the view that humans should follow such a trajectory and merge with AI, “fusion-optimism.” Techno-optimism about machine consciousness doesn’t require a belief in fusion-optimism, although many techno-optimists are sympathetic to the view. But fusion-optimism aims for a future in which these posthumans are conscious beings.
There are many nuances to this rough trajectory. For instance, some transhumanists believe that the move from unenhanced human intelligence to superintelligence will be extremely rapid, because we are approaching a singularity—a point at which the creation of superhuman intelligence will result in massive changes in a very short period (e.g., 30 years).3 Other transhumanists hold that technological changes will not be so sudden. These discussions often debate the reliability of Moore’s Law.4 Another key issue is whether a transition to superintelligence will really occur, because the upcoming technological developments involve grave risks. The risks of biotechnology and AI concern transhumanists and progressive bioethicists more generally, as well as bioconservatives.5
So, should you embark upon this journey? Unfortunately, as alluring as superhuman abilities may seem, we’ll see that even mild brain enhancements, let alone the radical kind, could turn out to be risky. The being that is created by the “enhancement” procedure could be someone else entirely. That wouldn’t be much of an enhancement, to say the least.
WHAT IS A PERSON?
To understand whether you should enhance yourself, you must first understand what you are to begin with. But what is a person? And, given your conception of a person, after such radical changes, would you yourself continue to exist? Or would you have been replaced by someone or something else?
To make such a decision, you must understand the metaphysics of personal identity—that is, you must answer the question: What is it by virtue of which a particular self or person continues existing over time?6 One way to begin appreciating the issue is to consider the persistence of everyday objects. Consider the espresso machine in your favorite café. Suppose that five minutes have elapsed, and the barista turns off the machine. Imagine asking her if the machine is the same one that was there five minutes ago. She will likely tell you the answer is glaringly obvious. It is of course possible for one and the same machine to continue existing over time, even though at least one of the machine’s features or properties has changed. In contrast, if the machine disintegrates or melts, then it would no longer exist.
The point of this example is that when it comes to the objects around us, some changes cause a thing to cease to exist, while others do not. Philosophers call the characteristics that a thing must have as long as it exists “essential properties.”
Now let’s reconsider the transhumanist’s trajectory for enhancement. It is portrayed as a form of personal development. However, even if it brings such goodies as superhuman intelligence and radical life extension, it must not involve the elimination of any of your essential properties.
What might your essential properties be? Think of yourself in first grade. What properties have persisted that seem somehow important to your still being one and the same person? Notice that the cells in your body have now changed, and your brain structure and function have altered dramatically. If you are simply the physical stuff that comprised your brain and body in first grade, you would have ceased to exist some time ago. That physical first grader is simply not here any longer. Kurzweil clearly appreciates the difficulties here, commenting:
So who am I? Since I am constantly changing, am I just a pattern? What if someone copies that pattern? Am I the original and/or the copy? Perhaps I am this stuff here—that is, the both ordered and chaotic collection of molecules that make up my body and brain.7
Kurzweil is referring to two theories that are center stage in the age-old philosophical debate over the nature of persons. The leading theories include the following:
- The psychological continuity theory: You are essentially your memories and ability to reflect on yourself (Locke) and, in its most general form, you are your overall psychological configuration, what Kurzweil referred to as your “pattern.”8
- Brain-based materialism: You are essentially the material that you are made out of (i.e., your body and brain)—what Kurzweil referred to as “the ordered and chaotic collection of molecules” that make up his body and brain.9
- The soul theory: Your essence is your soul or mind, understood as a nonphysical entity distinct from your body.
- The no-self view: The self is an illusion. The “I” is a grammatical fiction (Nietzsche). There are bundles of impressions, but there is no underlying self (Hume). There is no survival because there is no person (Buddha).10
Each of these views has its own implications about whether to enhance. For instance, the psychological continuity view holds that enhancements can alter your substrate, but they must preserve your overall psychological configuration. This view would allow you to transition to silicon or some other substrate, at least in principle.
Suppose instead that you are a proponent of a brain-based materialism. Views that are materialist hold that minds are basically physical or material in nature and that mental features, such as the thought that espresso has a wonderful aroma, are ultimately just physical features. (This view is often called “physicalism” as well.) Brain-based materialism says this and, in addition, it ventures the further claim that your thinking is dependent on the brain. Thought cannot “transfer” to a different substrate. So on this view, enhancements must not change one’s material substrate, or the person would cease to exist.
Now suppose you are partial to the soul theory. In this case, your decision to enhance would seem to depend on whether you have justification for believing that the enhanced body would retain your soul or immaterial mind.
Finally, the fourth position contrasts sharply with the others. If you hold the no-self view, then the survival of the person is not an issue, for there is no person or self there to begin with. In this case, expressions like “I” and “you” do not really refer to persons or selves. Notice that if you are a proponent of the no-self view, you may strive to enhance nonetheless. For instance, you might find intrinsic value in adding more superintelligence to the universe—you might value life forms with higher forms of consciousness and wish that your “successor” be such a creature.
I don’t know whether many of those who publicize the idea of a mind-machine merger, such as Elon Musk and Michio Kaku, have considered these classic positions on personal identity. But they should. It is a bad idea to ignore this debate. One could be dismayed, at some later point, to learn that a technology one advocated actually had a tremendously negative impact on human flourishing.
In any case, both Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom have considered the issue in their work. They, like many other transhumanists, adopt a novel and intriguing version of the psychological continuity view; in particular, they adopt a computational, or patternist, account of continuity.
ARE YOU A SOFTWARE PATTERN?
Patternism’s point of departure is the computational theory of mind, which I introduced earlier. The original versions of the computational theory of mind held that the mind is akin to a standard computer, but nowadays it is commonly agreed that the brain does not have that structure. But cognitive and perceptual capacities, such as working memory and attention, are still considered computational in a broad sense. Although computational theories of mind differ in their details, one thing they have in common is that they all explain cognitive and perceptual capacities in terms of causal relationships between components, each of which can be described algorithmically. One common way of describing the computational theory of mind is by reference to the idea that the mind is a software program:
The Software Approach to the Mind (SAM). The mind is the program running on the hardware of the brain. That is, the mind is the algorithm the brain implements, and this algorithm is something that different subfields of cognitive science seek to describe.11
Those working on computational theories of mind in philosophy of mind tend to ignore the topic of patternism, as well as the more general topic of personal identity. This is unfortunate for two reasons. First, on any feasible view of the nature of persons, one’s view of the nature of mind plays an important role. For what is a person if not, at least in part, that which she thinks and reflects with? Second, whatever the mind is, an understanding of its nature should include the study of its persistence, and it seems reasonable to think that this sort of undertaking would be closely related to theories of the persistence of the self or person. Yet the issue of persistence is often ignored in discussions of the nature of the mind. I suspect the reason is simply that work on the nature of the mind is in a different subfield of philosophy from work on the nature of the person—a case, in other words, of academic pigeonholing.
To their credit, transhumanists step up to the plate in trying to connect the topic of the nature of the mind with issues regarding personal identity, and they are clearly right to sense an affinity between patternism and the Software Approach to the Mind. After all, if you take a computational approach to the nature of mind, it is natural to regard persons as being somehow computational in nature and to ponder whether the survival of a person is somehow a matter of the survival of their software pattern. The guiding conception of the patternist is aptly captured by Kurzweil:
The specific set of particles that my body and brain comprise are in fact completely different from the atoms and molecules that I comprised only a short while ago. We know that most of our cells are turned over in a matter of weeks, and even our neurons, which persist as distinct cells for a relatively long time, nonetheless change all of their constituent molecules within a month.… I am rather like the pattern that water makes in a stream as it rushes past the rocks in its path. The actual molecules of water change every millisecond, but the pattern persists for hours or even years.12
Put in the language of cognitive science, as the transhumanist surely would, what is essential to you is your computational configuration: the sensory systems/subsystems your brain has (e.g., early vision), the association areas that integrate these basic sensory subsystems, the neural circuitry making up your domain-general reasoning, your attentional system, your memories, and so on. Together these form the algorithm that your brain computes.
You might think the transhumanist views a brain-based materialism favorably. Transhumanists generally reject brain-based materialism, however, because they tend to believe the same person can continue to exist if her pattern persists, even if she is an upload to a computer, no longer having a brain. For many fusion-optimists, uploading is key to achieving a mind-machine merger.
Of course, I’m not suggesting all transhumanists are patternists. But Kurzweil’s patternism is highly typical. For instance, consider the appeal to patternism in the following passage of “The Transhumanist Frequently Asked Questions,” of which Bostrom is an author. It begins by discussing the process of uploading your mind:
Uploading (sometimes called “downloading,” “mind uploading” or “brain reconstruction”) is the process of transferring an intellect from a biological brain to a computer. One way of doing this might be by first scanning the synaptic structure of a particular brain and then implementing the same computations in an electronic medium.… An upload could have a virtual (simulated) body giving the same sensations and the same possibilities for interaction as a non-simulated body.… Advantages of being an upload would include: Uploads would not be subject to biological senescence. Backup copies of uploads could be created regularly so that you could be rebooted if something bad happened. (Thus your lifespan would potentially be as long as the universe’s.) … Radical cognitive enhancements would likely be easier to implement in an upload than in an organic brain.… A widely accepted position is that you survive so long as certain information patterns are conserved, such as your memories, values, attitudes, and emotional dispositions.… For the continuation of personhood, on this view, it matters little whether you are implemented on a silicon chip inside a computer or in that gray, cheesy lump inside your skull, assuming both implementations are conscious.13
In short, the transhumanist’s futuristic, computationalist orientation leads them to patternism: an approach to the nature of persons that is an intriguing blend of the computational approach to the mind and the traditional psychological continuity view of personhood.14 If plausible, patternism would explain how one can survive such radical enhancements as those depicted in our thought experiments. Furthermore, it would be an important contribution to the age-old philosophical debate over the nature of persons. So, is it correct? And is patternism even compatible with the radical enhancements fusion-optimists envision? In the next chapter, we’ll consider these issues.