Why we need to understand our origins and history before building artificial intelligence

According to ancient Sumerian tablets, a race of beings from another planet called Anunnaki descended on Earth in search of gold. Why they needed gold isn’t clear yet but they needed lots of gold. When the slaves they brought with them to mine for gold revolted, they extracted the genes of pre-human race of beings (Neanderthals, Homo Erectus) and combined with their own genes to create us. This is up for a lot of debate and in Genesis 1:26 in the Bible, God says “let us create them in our own image” where “let us” means there is no one God that created us. I am a believer in this story for two reasons:

1) Our natural tendency to look up when we pray which indicates the Gods we are worshiping came from above us

2) Unlike metals like iron, copper and aluminum, gold is useless to us. Then why take all the effort to mine it and why is it precious to us? Tons of gold have kept in a temple in India under the protection of the temple God for hundreds of years. This means gold is important to the Gods which is why it is precious to us.

Most importantly, the story is an indicator to us that we were created as biological robots to obey our creators. Why didn’t the Gods simply build mechanical robots for mining and why did they take all the effort to engage in genetic engineering to create us? Because they wanted us to think on our own and also have emotional intelligence. Why emotional intelligence? Because they wanted to control us emotionally and not mechanically. How? When we talk about Gods, we do not ask ourselves how did the concept of God and the fear of an unknown all knowing entity became embedded in us. We are in the 21st century and with so much of technological advances we are still under the control of Gods through various religions. There is nothing more advanced, complicated and powerful that can control us than the concept of God.

Do we have a similar controlling mechanism for the intelligent machines we are building? What would happen if AI grew to a point where it could think and act autonomously? The scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith tells Morpheus that human beings are the most dangerous virus on the planet has stuck with me. It is not only true that we do behave like viruses, if intelligence created by us becomes powerful enough to come to such a conclusion, what is shown in the Matrix and Terminator series will become real.

When I see all the excitement and euphoria over what AI can do all it tells me is how blatantly ignorant we are about ourselves and our past. 

The twin Cs – elixirs for a better life

What are the things that come to our mind when we hear the word speed? If the first thing that comes to the mind of anyone who reads this blog and question is “life” or “my life”, please write to me. It would be a rarity to find someone who lives life with the awareness that speed is one of the factors that affects everyone’s lives and is a more potent killer than anything else.

I was born in the second half of the 70s in a sleepy little town. Life went on in the same vein through the 80s and 90s. When I was finishing my undergraduation in 1999, I had bare bones knowledge of mobile phones and internet and I hadn’t seen both. Internet came to my town in 2000. In another 4-5 years, I could see college going students carrying mobile phones with them. Life took off for everyone suddenly. Though this rate of growth was exponential and chaotic, the rapid growth of the internet ironed out the differences in awareness of technological advances across the world. Life changed irrevocably and it is only gaining momentum as time pass by.

Is the earth spinning faster suddenly? No. Then why are days flying by now? Because we have incorporated so many factors into our lives that demand our time and attention. Most of these factors are gadgets, products of our explosive technological advances. Do these devices demand our time and attention? No, we have pushed ourselves into a frame of mind where we need to engage constantly with these devices. When I hear people saying that we will be ruled by machines some day, I am not surprised a bit. We are already ruled by them because most of the things that are significant to us in our daily lives are being controlled by them. This takes me to my objective of this blog. Choice and Control, the twin Cs of ultimate mental peace and contentment. Unique in their own ways and subtly intertwined, using them wisely is the key to the success we all keep searching for.

Making choices is the most tricky business in our lives. From the time we wake up in the morning till we hit the bed again at night, we are swimming in an ocean of choices. The irony here is, we never stop for a moment to ponder how many of those choices are the ones we get to make with our full commitment and contentment. We are constrained in our ability to make choices to such levels that neither do we get the option to choose our own parents, relatives and siblings nor do we get to die the way we want to. Simply put, we do not have any choice in our birth or death. Between these two milestones lie the time interval called life. This life is constrained completely by society at one end and the ones who rebel are branded as outcastes and banished to the other end. People spend their lives looking to find the balance in life by trying to figure out the right choices to make, choices that are right from the purview of the society. In our lifelong battle to keep everyone around us happy, we forget to give joy to the one person who really matters. Ourselves. We have to start respecting every choice we get to make, be it even buying a toothpaste and remember that there are people out there who don’t or cannot have choices, even to buy a toothpaste. If we can make every choice of ours matter to us and choose to do what makes us truly happy, we would have achieved a lot in life.

We are all control freaks inherently. We love to control some aspect of life and the more we control we have, the more we feel better. Do we really feel better? Having control is like that guy who has stuffed up all his money inside his house. There is no peace of mind. Greater control means greater responsibilities and obligations. The interesting question is, when we have no control over our birth or death, what is worth having control in life? In our quest for more control, we never think about this. I guess people who seek greater domination of life are the ones who want to leave their mark in the world in one way or the other. We remember Gandhi and Hitler in equal measure, though they chose to control and dominate life in their own ways. There are actually very few things we can control in our lives. My understanding is, most of our miseries in life are caused by our desire to control those situations that we cannot.

We can make our lives better by choosing what to control and what to let go off. I can choose what to study and work towards it. This is in my control. But getting a job is not. I can choose to love a girl but I cannot control her choice of giving her love to me. Letting go is the road we all dread to walk on and that is when we seek greater control and try to hold on to what we desire. When we are unsure about the way ahead, it is always better to not make a choice. Thats when life steps in and gives us what we truly deserve. To not make a choice requires greater strength of character and control over thoughts and emotions. Managing these two Cs requires greater understanding of ourselves. The greater we know ourselves, the less we will be worried about the choices we can make and what we can control. Being choosy and a control freak are signs of weaknesses in personality rather than the desire for domination, thats why such people constantly tries to impose themselves on others. Having the two Cs under control is the zen state and something we can all achieve if we wish to and work towards it.