Is Siri the New Socrates?

The world is complex.

We are complex.

               

Then why do most things we learn, study, or explain to ourselves don’t seem nearly as complex?

Because we are intelligent.

We decided to break things up into little pieces and explain each little piece, all the while hoping that the pieces will eventually complete the puzzle.

We have come an extraordinarily long way.

We have understood that physical existence reaches far beyond our planet.

We have understood that we may never be able to cope with the size of our universe.

We have understood the concept of zero.

We have even understood the concept of infinity.

The rapid progress we have made in the world of scientific discovery is mind-boggling.

We have accumulated a vast amount of knowledge about matter, energy, and the relationship between them through the field of physics.

Chemistry has led us to understand the composition, structure, properties, and change of matter.

Biology has enlightened our understanding of life, living organisms and everything that comes with it.

Throw in the social sciences with their insight into the nature of human interactions and we certainly have a mixture to be proud of.

However, I have noticed an interesting trend within science.

The less science has to do with us, the better it explains phenomena.

The more science tries to explain human nature, the less cohesive it becomes.

The natural sciences, after all, seem to offer far more coherent explanations of phenomena than the social sciences.

All in all, we have made immense progress in all things science.

But how much progress have we made in understanding human nature?

Surprisingly little.

It almost seems as if we understand the universe better than we do ourselves.

Is understanding the universe and all things in it important? Absolutely.

Is understanding human nature important? I certainly think so.

But guess who also thought so?

I’ll give you a hint: probably some ancient dudes with beards you heard or read about in some boring Philosophy or social science class.

Unfortunately, spending all your life contemplating open-ended questions to seemingly no real avail does not exactly seem desirable. I completely understand.

But what if understanding human nature did not require us to grow beards and contemplate open-ended questions to seemingly no real avail?

What if there was an easier and more efficient way of understanding human nature?

If that sounds too good to be true, think again.

Chances are, you are already using it.

Hint: Something embodied in the polite young lady that has been inhabiting your iPhone since October 4th, 2011.

Yes, I am talking about Artificial Intelligence, a term I was reluctant to use for various reasons.

I would like to make the argument that we will finally unravel the mystery of human nature through engineering Artificial Intelligence.

Now on what grounds do I dare make such a deviant claim?

I will attempt to explain compactly.

The human brain is the most intriguing entity in the universe.

To our knowledge, it is by far the most intelligent entity that has ever existed in the universe or beyond.

All scientific inquiry, discovery, or understanding about anything and everything existential and fictive is a product of the human brain.

Everything that we consider exclusively human is a product of the brain.

Emotion, poetry, science, reason, logic, art, and religion are all products of the brain.

Human nature starts and ends with the brain.

But what does this have to do with the allegedly monstrous evil that is Artificial Intelligence?

Everything.

Engineering an intelligent machine of human level intelligence requires us to re-engineer the human brain first.

The more Siri works like our brain, the more Siri is like our brain.

For us to be capable of engineering a machine of human-level intelligence, we must first figure out the human brain.

Ergo, by the time we have engineered machines of human-level intelligence, we will necessarily have figured out the human brain.

Understanding how the brain works will mean understanding how we work and understanding our nature – the human nature.

It will be a gradual awakening of understanding and the morning’s dawn is not far ahead.

As intelligent machines are starting to learn to understand our emotions and our thinking, we will start learning to understand what it truly means to be human, if anything at all.

After all, maybe being human means nothing other than having an Intelligence quotient somewhere within a bell-shaped curve with a mean of 100.