This article about the man who was one-upping Darwin interested me a lot, because of the question he asked – What qualifies something as alive or not. His paper, currently under peer review, explains theoretically how, under certain physical circumstances, life could emerge from nonlife. Arguably, consciousness is the factor that separates life from non life. However, there’s also a new theory that proposes that consciousness is far less powerful than people believe, serving as a passive conduit rather than an active force that exerts control. The article compares it to the internet, and says that just like the internet can be used to discover, share, buy etc, it’s actually the person on the web/mobile who is actually deciding. It even argues that consciousness is not made to study itself.
It made me think of artificial intelligence, especially since I also read, around the same time, about the first self aware robot. Its creator is now aiming for real time self awareness. I think we will have to cross the morality hurdle before that happens. (my post from sometime back, and a very pertinent article on the societal challenges) Our devices, and technology in general, are changing societal mores and behaviours. This very interesting article writes about ‘reorganising the world for living alone‘, as an on demand service economy based on apps increasingly replaces the humans in our lives. In fact, I’d written sometime back on how we will teach AI to fulfil lower, and then higher order needs. (as per Maslow’s hierarchy) Maybe then, as AI understands more and more about its creators, it will help us answer the question our consciousness seems incapable of answering – what is life? The handwriting is on the wall.
