Abstract
The topic of AI continues in this chapter, this time looking at how we may regard AI as having intelligence, consciousness, and possibly a soul. The notion of an android soul is explored through science fiction series like Caprica and Black Mirror, and raises questions as to whether one is born with a soul, or does a soul develop over time? To explore this line of inquiry, I refer to Gurdjieff and Ouspensky’s work in the field of philosophy, as well as how Indic religions, like Buddhism, have begun to think about AI and consciousness.
God didn’t create the Cylons. Man did. And I’m pretty sure we didn’t include a soul in the programming.
—William Adama, Battlestar Galactica (Miniseries)
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Notes
- 1.
Writers categorize AI in different ways. One way is “soft AI” or “weak AI,” which is more commonly being called “narrow AI” now. Narrow AI means that artificial intelligence is limited to a particular task. An example of this is Alexa, the Amazon “virtual assistant” that responds to a range of voice commands. Alexa can set alarms, give weather updates, play audiobooks and music, relay news, and answer questions by accessing the encyclopedia of information on the Web. “Strong AI” or “full AI” does not yet exist, but in theory would perform much as a human brain would, with a full range of cognition and adaptation. In other words, it would be capable of achieving consciousness.
- 2.
- 3.
Again the Media Equation theory claims that people often treat computers as if they were other people, particularly if the computer is polite, friendly, and (as the study shows, preference for) female. It is categorized as a subconscious or reflexive response that relies on social cues (see Horstmann et al. 2018).
- 4.
This is based on actual technology that is being developed. Hossein Rahnama of Ryerson University, in conjunction with the MIT Media Lab, has been working on chatbots which are created from personal data. The article “New technology is forcing us to confront the ethics of bringing people back from the dead” (Matei 2017) discusses programs that allow one to text-chat with a ghost, and the benefits (and ethical concerns) of such technology.
- 5.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer (s5e17, 2001) Dawn uses a spell to resurrect their newly deceased mother. In Practical Magic (1998) the abusive boyfriend is brought back with dark magic. In Supernatural (s5e15, 2010), Death casts a spell on a town and makes Bobby’s dead wife rise up from the grave. The story within a story of the “Deathly Hallows” (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2007) tells of a man whose dead fiancée comes back to life, as a wish granted. And in W.W. Jacobs’ famous short story, The Monkey’s Paw (1948), a wish to bring a dead son back to life is granted. All of these stories have gruesome and tragic consequences.
- 6.
Ray Kurzweil asks a similar question, not just regarding the data that make us who we are, but if we create a copy of the existing brain. “For example, if a person scans his brain through a noninvasive scanning technology of the twenty-first century (such as an advanced magnetic resonance imaging), and downloads his mind to his personal computer, is the ‘person’ who emerges in the machine the same consciousness as the person who was scanned?” (2000, 6).
- 7.
“A person with restricted movement is still a person,” Graystone notes, addressing the initial inability of V-Zoe to leave the virtual world.
- 8.
This quote is generally attributed to philosopher and psychologist William James.
- 9.
Gurdjieff uses the word “man” instead of “person.” My choice of gender neutrality throughout this section does not change his meaning, however.
- 10.
“Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small I’s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. […] Man is a plurality” (Gurdjieff , cited in Ouspensky 2001, 59).
- 11.
Because Gurdjieff uses the word “machine” to denote the state in which ensoulment is not achieved, then being a human or robot seems irrelevant as both are lacking true free will, and thus, responsibility for their actions. This would seem to present a moral conundrum, but if one does claim to have a soul, then they simultaneously claim moral responsibility for their actions.
- 12.
Buddhist thought suggests that sense data, through interaction with the physical world, gives our minds the ability to distinguish between self and other, which is a primary step toward consciousness.
- 13.
He even jokes at one point that a scientist might be reincarnated as a robot: “Yes, that’s right. [laughs] There is a possibility that a scientist who is very much involved his whole life [with computers], then the next life… [he would be reborn in a computer], same process! [laughter] Then this machine which is half-human and half-machine has been reincarnated” (Hayward and Varela 1992, 152–153).
- 14.
One of the therapy methods for PTSD is narrative writing treatment, where patients are encouraged to write down their stories and eventually share them with others (Sloan 2015). Narrative exposure therapy (NET) is another storytelling method in which the patient narrates their life story, including all traumatic experiences (Grech and Grech 2018). The autobiographical account is believed to not only reconcile traumatic events, but to understand and redefine the events in the context of their entire life. “By engaging in narrating their whole life story, the patient does not need to choose one particular traumatic occurrence from numerous ones experienced across the lifespan. Rather, NET grants the patient the freedom to reflect on their entire life, cultivating a feeling of personal identity” (APA). NET has been of particular use for Veterans suffering from PTSD.
- 15.
Daniel Dennett defines qualia as “the way things seem to us” (1988).
- 16.
The Black Mirror episode “Crocodile” (2017) is a good example of how memory works and how its authenticity is always questioned. In this story, an insurance claims agent is able to visit witnesses to an accident and use a technology that allows her to “see” the mental images the witness can recall about any given time. She notes that she needs several eye witnesses (not just one) because everyone’s memory is subjective, and only through gathering a multitude of views can she find the most likely truth. Details such as the color of a jacket or the speed of the car vary from respondent to respondent, however.
- 17.
Darwin’s The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872) radically theorized that development of emotions was part of the evolutionary process in human beings as well as in animals.
- 18.
The distinct move away from “humanity” is what allows them to be dehumanized in the show. See Chap. 3.
- 19.
For a really excellent and in-depth analysis of the character Data, see “Much Ado About Data” in Graham (2002).
- 20.
As a Vulcan, he is of another race and culture which eschews the irrational quality of emotion. Yet he has many “human” qualities such as empathy, loyalty, sacrifice, and doubt.
- 21.
“The needs of the many outweigh the need of the few…or the one.” The Wrath of Khan (1982).
- 22.
Conversely, the Borg raises different issues. If each being that is assimilated was an individual with consciousness and a soul, then what happens to those souls when they become part of the Borg collective? (It should be noted that the notion of a soul is not unique to humans of Earth. Among Vulcans, it can be likened to the katra; in Klingon the soul is called the qa’.) There are examples in the Star Trek canon of Borg recovering their individuality and personalities once fully extricated from the collective and its hive mind (e.g. Hugh and Seven of Nine from Voyager, and crew members like B’Elanna Torres, Tuvok, and even Captain Picard recover fully after being assimilated for a time as well). In these instances, however, it is memory of their pre-Borg lives that allows their humanity to return.
It could be speculated that as consciousness is united in the collective, so are souls. In many religious traditions, the ideal afterlife is not a destination such as Heaven, but rather a state in which the soul is united with the divine. Sikhism, Hinduism, and Jainism all understand the afterlife to be such perfected states. Therefore, it would not be a far stretch to think of Borg perfection not merely in terms of perfect knowledge, but perfection of existence, as one with the divine or sublime. This would explain the trauma a Borg drone experiences when initially severed from the collective. No longer able to hear the voices of the collective is like no longer hearing God’s voice; no longer being connected to trillions of other entities feels like being banished from Eden.
- 23.
David Greven has a fascinating analysis of the Borg Queen as taking both the phallic role and the role of the siren/seductress. See Greven (2009, 152–156).
- 24.
Though this story is often taken by Christians as an account of “original sin,” the word “sin” never occurs in it. Instead, it describes how the maturing of humans into civilized life involved damage of connections established in Genesis 2.4–25 between the Lord God, man, woman, and earth (NSRV with annotation, footnote 3.1–24).
- 25.
Again, moral personhood is defined as having the following traits: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, communication, and self-awareness (Warren 1996).
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Gittinger, J.L. (2019). Artificial Consciousness and Synthetic Souls. In: Personhood in Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30062-3_6
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