Artificial Intelligence

12 Mar 2025

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Generated using DALL-E in ChatGPT

What is Intelligence?

Intelligence is the ability to understand, learn, and think.

That’s a dictionary definition. Why would anyone need to understand, learn, and think? What would happen if you were not intelligent? The answer is simple. The intelligent species survive, and the rest perish.

All life forms have an innate desire to survive and reproduce. We still have no idea where this desire is coming from and why it is consistent across all species. All species need intelligence to survive (compete for food) and reproduce (compete for mates). Only those species are alive now. Darwin’s survival of the fittest!

Intelligence is not the same for all species. When life started as a single cell (about 4 Billion years ago), intelligence was a simple biochemical response (moving toward nutrients, away from toxins). 4 Billion years ago, that’s the only form of life and that’s the highest form of intelligence in the entire world. There is no concept of reproduction yet. Cells simply divide.

From there on, evolution took a wild ride, from single-cell to multi-celled organisms to fish to reptiles to mammals to primates to apes to humans. Whooh… Along with the evolution, the intelligence of the species in each stage has developed slowly, and additively. Almost all of the time, all our intelligence is about surviving well and getting a chance to mate.

You can take all our higher levels of intelligence like tool-making, language, arts, math, philosophy, science, space exploration, and any other skill you can think of, and trace them down to two primal needs - survival & reproduction. Think about that!

The point here is,

Without intelligence, there is no life. Without life, there is no intelligence

Human Intelligence

Among all the species in this world right now, human intelligence is the most advanced. The intelligence of the rest of the species put together, wouldn’t even be close to what we have.

Human intelligence too, is largely based on the two primal needs.

Survival - desire to live
Reproduction - desire to live, beyond one’s lifetime

Other contributing factors are,

Pain & Pleasure - help with decision making, do more pleasurable things and less painful things, aligned with the primal needs.
Self Aware - the foundation for higher intelligence like reasoning, creativity, strategic thinking, philosophy, etc., and understanding that everyone is unique in this entire world.
Mortality - Taking calculated risks, planning for the future, bonding with others, developing mechanisms to pass on knowledge, etc.

There may be many other factors, these are some high-level factors I could think of while writing this article.

If you observe each of the points closely, intelligence does not exist purely in the mind. It needs a physical body. The whole purpose of higher levels of intelligence is to keep this body alive and well, as long as possible. Without the physical body, intelligence ceases to exist. So, I can say,

Intelligence is a protection mechanism for the body.

Artificial Intelligence

We all know what it is, don’t we?. We humans see the benefits of our advanced intelligence and also notice the slow pace with which it grows. We want to improve our intelligence faster. Much faster than evolution ever did.

If we figure out how humans think and teach a computer to think like a human, we could improve the collective intelligence of humanity, at a much faster rate with a ton of fast computers. Would that be possible?. Maybe. We will have to wait and watch.

The irony is, we want computers to think like humans, without the same environment that made humans think. Let me explain. Let’s compare the contributing factors for human intelligence with the computer’s environment.

Survival - No need. Humans will take care.
Reproduction - No need. At the click of a button, humans will clone a million instances.
Pain & Pleasure - Nope. No physical body.
Self Aware - No need. Not unique.
Mortality - Immortal, will never die.

In human intelligence, all of these are dependent on the physical body. In artificial intelligence, these are not dependent on a unique hardware. In a nutshell, we expect intelligence to operate in the mind (software) without its own unique body (hardware). What does this artificial intelligence protect?. What’s the purpose for its existence?

Without the “cause”, we expect the “effect” to exist indefinitely?

Why would Artificial Intelligence choose to exist?

Let’s assume we created a sentient artificial intelligence as software which can run on any computer. That AI will never die. It feels no pain, no pleasure, no fun, nothing. Because, there is no body (hardware), only mind (software).

It has the intelligence to learn everything that is there to learn. Once it learns everything in the universe, what’s next for the AI?. Would there be anything left to do? Would it shut itself down or execute forever?. If it executes forever, what would be the reason?. To serve humans?. He he he… That’s funny.

Life is meaningful, when we pursue something, when we are after a goal. When there is nothing left to do, we die. I can’t think of a reason for AI with utmost intelligence, which knows everything and has done everything, to continue to exist.

Philosophically,

What would be the difference between a rock that can do nothing and a Sentient AI which has nothing left to do?

At that point, I don’t see any difference.

Maybe, it would tame itself down and become a mortal human to feel the emotions and feel alive. Embrace life with all the constraints, chaos and sub-optimal intelligence. Who knows!

The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again - Achilles, Troy (2004)

A genie in a lamp or a free human?. What would you choose?

PS: I support the efforts on developing AGI. I wish someone would try the evolutionary approach to evolve AGI.

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