Artificial human nature

2005

Copyright 2003. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Charles T. Rubin is a professor of political science at Duquesne University. An earlier version of this essay was presented at “The Ethical Dimensions of Biotechnology,” a conference organized by the Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, Claremont McKenna College. What awaits is not oblivion but rather a future which, from our present vantage point, is best described by the words “postbiological” or even “supernatural.” It is a world in which the human race has been swept away by a tide of cultural change, usurped by its own artificial progeny. –Hans Moravec, Mind Children

Imprint Academic, 2020

Becoming Artificial is a collection of essays about the nature of humanity, technology, artifice, and the irreducible connections between them. Is there something fundamental to being human or are humans simply biological computers?

Open Access Journal of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence , 2024

This article focuses on the interaction between man and machine, AI specifically, to analyse how these systems are slowly taking over roles that hitherto were thought ‘only’ for humans. More recent, as AI has stepped up in ability to learn without supervision, to recognize patterns, and to solve problems, it adopted characteristics like creativity, novelty, intentionality. These events take one to the heart of what it is to be human, and the emerging definitions of self that are increasingly central to post humanist discourses. The discussion in these two threads is in philosophy of AI and is concerned with issues of consciousness, intentionality and creativity. Al as a result of causing a shift in the current anthropocentric perceptions resulted in portrayal of humans as special beings. Secondly, this exploration responds to important questions related to AI application, such as ethical, social, and existential ones. The article emphasizes a necessity to define the role of the advent of AI and its influence on the interaction between people and technology as well as the role of the social individuality in the wake of intelligent machines that mimic thinking and creativity. It seeks to prompt more specific analysis of how or why AI reduces the differences between artificial and human intelligence or increases the prospects for options expanding the notion of consciousness beyond the human-centric one.

Alternation Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Aarts and Humanities in Southern Africa, 2021

This paper thematises the difference(s) between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and being-human, with a view to answering the question, whether it is enough to compare AI and human beings in terms of (a very narrow conception of) intelligence. First the question of human distinctiveness is raised, and a number of human attributes are enumerated, such as the singularity of every human being, the individual's capacity for rebellion or revoltas elaborated upon by Albert Camus and Julia Kristeva, and with historical as well as fictional examples of this. The significance of Kristeva's insight into the link between revolt and pleasure is also noted, before turning to David Gelernter's investigation into the true compass of the human mind, as compared to the 'computationalist' conception of mind, as it is used by AI research to measure the success of creating AI commensurate with human 'intelligence'. Finally, the issue of the capacity, on the part of AI such as robots, of mimicking human behaviour, for example deceiving, is examined with a view to demonstrating what AI research has to equal if it hopes to be successful in constructing a true android. This is explored through an interpretive analysis of the science fiction film, Ex Machina (Garland), which is carried out to demonstrate the true challenge to AI research, to produce a convincing human simulacrum.

This paper begins by focusing on the recent work of David Gelernter on artificial intelligence (AI), in which he argues against ‘computationalism’ – that conception of the mind which restricts it to functions of abstract reasoning and calculation. Such a notion of the human mind, he argues, is overly narrow, because the ‘tides of mind’ cover a larger and more variegated ‘spectrum’ than computationalism allows. The argument of Hubert Dreyfus is examined, that the AI research community concentrate its efforts on replacing its cognitivist approach with a Heideggerian one, a recognition that AI research cannot ignore the ‘embeddedness’ of human intelligence in a world, nor its ‘embodiment’. However, Gelernter and Dreyfus do not go far enough in their critique of AI research: what is truly human is not just a certain kind of intelligence; it is the capacity for ‘care’ and desire in the face of mortality, which no machine can simulate.

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

The main challenge of technology is to facilitate the tasks and to transfer the functions that are usually performed by the humans to the nonhumans. However, the pervasion of machines in everyday life requires that the non-humans are increasingly closer in their abilities to the ordinary thought, action and behaviour of the humans. This view merges the idea of the Humaniter, a longstanding myth in the history of technology: an artificial creature that thinks, acts and feels like a human to the point that one cannot make the difference between the two. In the wake of the opposition of Strong AI and Weak AI, this challenge can be expressed in terms of a shift from the performance of intelligence (reason, reasoning, cognition, judgment) to that of sentience (experience, sensation, emotion, consciousness). In other words, the challenge of technology if this possible shift is taken seriously is to move from the paradigm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to that of Artificial Sentience (AS). But for the Humaniter not to be regarded as a mere myth, any intelligent or sentient machine must pass through a Test of Humanity that refers to or that differs from the Turing Test. One can suggest several options for this kind of test and also point out some conditions and limits to the very idea of the Humaniter as an artificial human.

Discussing Borders, Escaping Traps: Transdisciplinary and Transspatial Approaches, 2019

Man is a peculiar being, but what are the boundaries between human beings and machines? Many attempts at demarcating humanity, and by that identifying what makes us special, have been made throughout history. These debates are important, because they have implications for questions of both morality and politics. Even more so, it is important today because artificial beings now imitate just about all facets of humanity. This chapter examines various candidates for criteria of demarcation, such as reason, understanding, emotions, etc., and evaluates their merit. In this process, old debates of a similar character are briefly examined – debates regarding the question of what sets man apart from animals.

2018

This paper presents an intriguing debate on artificial intelligence and the human person. Science has grown into an unpredictable parlance to the extent that its breakthroughs now re-make creation to reflect man’s desires. This has led, for example, to the attempt to create machines that could work like more competent persons, such that these machines could be equated with human persons or considered as the human counterpart. By implication, the project of artificial intelligence seeks but one thing, that is, to make a ‘prototype man’ or an ‘artificial man’. For, to grant the concept of artificial intelligence is to affirm, without any prejudice, the concept of artificial man. For this reason, this paper argues that there is nothing like artificial intelligence because it is too much of an exaggeration to think of machines that can do things men can do. It maintains that intelligence cannot be assigned to machines and machines do not possess intelligence. Rather, machines merely per...

Justin Nnaemeka Onyeukaziri, 2022

This paper argues that to negate the ontological difference between the natural and the artificial, is not plausible; nor is the reduction of the natural to the artificial or vice versa possible. Except if one intends to empty the semantic content of the terms and notions: "natural" and "artificial." Most philosophical discussions on Artificial Intelligence (AI) have always been in relation to the human person, especially as it relates to human intelligence, consciousness and/or mind in general. This paper, intends to broaden the conversation, by discussing AI in relation to the notions of "nature" and the "artificial." This intention is to more critically understand the artificiality in and of artificial intelligence. To achieve this, the notion of "nature" in Aristotle's Philosophy of Nature, has been employed as an epistemological tool in interrogating the notion of the artificial and the objectives of the science and technology of Artificial Intelligence.