The AI & humanity of waking up to realise who you are
One of the most fascinating realizations I’ve had as an AI researcher, starting perhaps more than 25 years ago, was that at any one point in time, the AI we’re building knows nothing but ONE SINGLE FACT, maybe only one entity/attribute/value set.
guy.location = bed
Or just one entity/action/object.
guy:go to = bathroom
It’s only as the AI loops over the representations that it knits them together into the current context and world knowledge.
Like, oh, the guy’s got a name.
guy.name = Paul
And he’s late for work. Or whatever. (And what’s work entail anyway? I’ve forgotten).
And, as for symbolic AI, it’s arguably also true for neural networks, for which knowledge is nevertheless distributed, that it only really knows one thing at any one time.
Booting-up humans
And of course that makes us wonder about ourselves.
Taken to an extreme, it’s a minor miracle we even know who we are most of the time.
Frequently when I wake up in the morning I have fun trying to remember what order I understood my own identity and scenario.
How long does it take to know who I am? Where? Why? What? When? Plans?
It’s fascinating.
If I’ve ever been awoken in a strange place it’s fascinating figuring out where am I? Why am I here?
That’s why the ‘Innies’ of the AppleTV show Severance (2022), from Ben Stiller (now wearing a producer’s hat) and Dan Erickson (creator), are so fascinating. They don’t know who they are. Ever. Because of a chip that strips them of their identity as soon as they step into the work elevator.
Dreams
The ‘Innie’ characters in Severance have lost much of their memory – they know nothing about their home lives or upbringing or much about the world.
At one point Helly sees a drawing of houses and she says ‘those are houses, that’s what houses look like’.
So in Innie persona they have a kind of generic, washed out knowledge. They can still talk and use computers but can’t list more than a few US states. It’s like non-office knowledge is compressed.
But our dreams are like this.
It’s like dreams are going on in sub-sections of our brains.
In some of my dreams I know who I am, and in others I don’t.
In some dreams everything is incredibly logical.
And then they can turn bizarre.
I had a very vivid dream I was on an Apollo mission as LM pilot. Apart from the fact I couldn’t remember training for the mission and wished I’d swatted up more, it all made sense. I was very surprised to be on the mission but hugely proud to have piloted a LM to the surface of the moon.
It was the realist feeling dream I’ve ever had.
But soon the realization dawned on me that something was awry.
After the touchdown, it turned out we were literally camping on the lunar surface in tents.
I was still fine with this. But there was now a hint of suspicion.
Nevertheless, I was pleasingly admiring the rolling hills of lunar regolith through the mosquito netting of the 3-man A-frame tent door.
A fellow astronaut turned up outside and started unzipping the tent to come in.
Suddenly I started crying out that my helmet wasn’t on yet.
LOL.
The dream collapsed. Like in Inception. I realized I was dreaming. A tenuous connection broke through to the more reasoning part of my brain. Why that forces a wake up is itself fascinating.
I’m convinced we dream in only parts of our brains at any one time.
Much of our brain during dreaming is fully inaccessible, just like in Severance.
The Illusion of the whole
But for us, being awoken, asleep in front of the TV when a family member comes home and disturbs you – particularly during the late afternoon during a weekend siesta I’ve noticed – is the closest most of us get to a mind-boggling re-boot when not dreaming.
Is it the morning?
Or late in the afternoon?
Or is it the next day?
Did I sleep here all night?
Am I supposed to be somewhere else?
LOL.
Jamais vu
In psychology they refer to this phenomena of not knowing something familiar as jamais vu. Like the opposite of deja vu.
Point is.
We never know more than a limited set of facts at any one time.
It’s incredible that normally we have this sense of having it all together. That is truly amazing.
And taken for granted.
That’s the illusion we’re trying to create with AI.