artificiality

Watched A.I. yesterday, after years of wanting to watch but never having planted myself in front of the television when its showing, i finally caught the show. As a movie, it tended to give me feelings of sadness as the kid actor portrayed confusion, desperation and hopeless naivette convincingly enough to make me sympathize. Yet the ending seemed abit tacky, a little too sci-fi for my tastes despite showing the climatic end of david's deep yearning, but its stephen spielberg after all.

The show tells us that the discerning factor that makes david unique, a technological marvel in a time of human technological supremacy is that david loves, he dreams and pursues without stimuli or command. They call it the step towards true intelligence, the step towards humanity. However it is a step only, for humanity is more, we do not live on love alone, we hate, we despair, we contemplate, we philosophise, we theorize, we assume, we have no limits to our mental capactiy, no limits to the extent of imagination, no limits to behaviour other than the optional ones imposed by society.

With current technology of chips and silicon and wirings the capacity to create new pathways in logic and reasoning is severely limited, simply put, with the modern materials it is impossible to create a machine that "thinks" remotely similar to humans. They say love moves mountains and transcends oceans, that it can bring the moon down to kiss the earth and the valleys to touch the sun. Are these not creations from imagination? The ability to love pushes people to imagine, to create, contemplate and consider, it requires a level of awareness, a level of intelligence that is only reflected in the electrical synapses of nature's creations.

Without even having to question the existence of a soul i believe that artificial intelligence will never (with current developments) reach a point where it is comparable to that of humans, that it will never reach a point where it can advance itself through great efficiency. If all humans were to die off, leaving only such A.I. specimens behind, they would merely make production efficient, to make resources flow at optimum, cyclic levels that would ensure the continued survival of themselves, but would never advance. For without the simple ability to dream, to think of completely new ideas due to their own limitations they will eventually hit a brick wall.

In this way matrix is a perfect example if my point. The boss (or whatever) of the robots rotate between cycles of humanity, of multiple "the ones", all identical, living in identical worlds, continually repeating a struggle against the machines. The machines repeat a simple process of build, test, destroy and start-over again and again to obtain the most efficient, most rational outcome each time so as to"improve" itself. But it merely repeats and just as david asks the blue fairy to turn him into a real boy the process would continue until the world itself was drained dry and the machines stand as monuments, the only testament of their creator's genius.

Call me conceited, call me arrogant, but the simple human ability to dream is the reason why we are the conscious owners of the world now. And with the ability to dream comes the ability to turn away from darkness, and so we pursue our dreams recklessly, endangering ourself constantly with enviromental, social risks that we ignore. So dream and hope, for our dreams are the future, and hope is its mould, and they will either make or break us.

Now I'm off to bed, with dreams of tiberium wars and cataclysmic apocalypses.

hope is the dream of a waking man - aristotle