Page 77 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

The Machine in the Ghost

“I know you’ve already heard about a mind creation or takeover
here tonight,” said Izzy Azimuth, nodding at Fred Feghootsky.
“That one was what we might call a straight brain-to-brain mind
transfer, retaining the distinction comprehensible to our generation
between software and hardware. That has somewhat replaced the
older mind-control trope of a charismatic hypnotist merely
paralyzing his victim’s mental control and imposing his own will
upon the weaker brain, either through extrasensory brain waves or
verbal suggestion. A second type of tale, also using the model of a
computer, treats the cerebral organ as no more than a mass of
circuitry upon which a complete intelligence and personality may be
uploaded, like programming into a general-purpose processor. That
analogy at least gains some credibility or resonance with our times
in its anthropological aspect: humans are indeed malleable, their
brains able to learn a vast number of languages, technical skills and
cultural practices. That gives us the cookie-cutter or tabula rasa
means of producing robots with identical imprinted circuitry
enabling them to carry out the same predefined range of tasks like
ants or so-called ‘smart’ appliances. We already fear swarms of
autonomous weapons turned loose with their single-minded
execution of military missions, like the broom bucket brigade in The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”
“The third type, just coming into vogue, is artificial intelligence,
in the form of self-teaching algorithms mimicking our natural
behavior of drawing conclusions by analogy. That is not a merely
human trait; all higher organisms have survived preferentially by
means of that independent learning. Whether or not it is always
appropriate in organisms subject to deception and delusion is
another question, of course! But silicon chips can process a vastly
greater quantity of data at a higher speed than our brains. Thus the
fear of AI overtaking and overcoming us; that fear is tinged often
with guilt for the rather poor showing we have made on this planet
as the most intelligent species. Perhaps a more rational being would
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