Information Fascism

The view of human consciousness as mysterious and ineffable will soon be displaced by the view that this consciousness is an emergent property of the information-processing system of the human brain.

"It is important to note here that the view of the universe as an information-processing system is not an ad hoc assumption on the part of the advocates of the AI evolution-of-consciousness hypothesis - it is widely endorsed throughout theentire scientific community.

The notion that all complex life forms are information-processing systems was first advanced by Norbert Wiener in the early 1940's in an attempt to explain biological behavior using concepts like feedback and equilibrium. This view was greatly extended and reinforced about a decade later when James D. Watson and Francis Crick suggested in their model of DNA that the program for generating life was stored in a pattern of nucleic acids. More important, this view has been recently expanded by experts in systems theory, information theory, cybernetics, and modern theoretical physics to apply to all activities in the universe. The area of scientific study that has most substantively validated the claim that the human brain is an information processing system is neuroscience. The following comments by advocates of the hypothesis illustrate the extent to which their understanding of the character of evolution legislates over their view of AI technologies inexorable progress into existence as conscious beings.

According to John Kemeny, inventor of the programming language BASIC, what we will witness in the initial stages of the AI Revolution is a "symbiotic union of two living species," ourselves and AI computer systems, and "each will be dependent on the other for survival." When a machine with the average intelligence of a human being comes into existence, says Marvin Minsky, a pioneer and leading exponent of research in artificial intelligence at MIT, it "will begin to educate itself... in a few months it will be at the genius level... a few months after that its power will be incalculable."

When we look into the more distant future, according to physicist Robert Jastrow, we are obliged to come to an even more dramatic conclusion; "The era of carbon-chemistry life is drawing to a close on earth and a new era of silicon-based life - indestructible, immortal, infinitely expendable - is beginning." ...

There are, of course, many reputable AI experts who do not endorse the AI evolution-of-consciousness hypothesis, and who regard those who do as extremists. Although it might be tempting to dismiss the hypothesis by appealing to the authority of the experts, those who are concerned about the potential negative impacts of future AI systems on human life and consciousness should, in my view, resist this impulse. The first reason for doing so is that these alleged extremists have enormous reputations in AI research, and their advocacy of the hypothesis is anything but casual. ... If they succeed in their efforts to make the hypothesis an orthodox view in the AI community, which is clearly their intent, then the consequences could be graver that most of us could begin to imagine. If the planners and developers of AI systems come to view these systems as stages in an evolutionary process that is inexorably leading to the creation of conscious beings that will be superior to ourselves, it is reasonable to assume that they will not be terribly preoccupied with the potential negative impacts on ourselves." - Nadeau