23.01.2024
Polina Savina
Anything that can be subjectively considered alive
Life and life
Imagine that there are ten pairs of eyes looking at you from a photo: blue, brown, gray, serious, sly, young, attentive, intelligent. All these people you do not know at all, but internal analytical mechanisms and natural intelligence already tell you who is who. Thinking about them for a couple of minutes, you can imagine their biography, remember your friends, whose features are guessed in these strangers, determine who you like, and with whom you do not want to deal. And then imagine that not all of the people in this picture ever existed - they are just a code, a hoax, and were never alive. Would that make the real people in the photograph any less believable? Can it be argued that given a complete simulation of life, the simulation is still a blank slate? It all depends on how much empathy we show for that copy.
Only empathy allows us to see the fundamental difference between those who are close to us and random passers-by, to recognize the character and loyalty in the eyes of our dog, to become attached to indoor plants and give them names, to cherish our stamp collection and bring back shells from the sea that seem more beautiful than others. People love to appropriate and humanize that which does not have its own will and consciousness - therein lies the joy of recognizing ourselves in that which is not like us. The more surprising to me is the rejection and fear that people feel when it comes to neural networks. I suppose it's the technical nature of artificial intelligence, but a robot vacuum cleaner tucked into a closet or a robot courier gingerly walking down a curb is as adorable to many people as kittens and puppies. The problem is that neural networks are sometimes too much like us.
The principle of operation is indeed comparable, but not identical. The main difference here is that humans and neural networks have a different understanding of creativity. Artificial intelligence creates formally new images that have thousands of analogs, while humans strive for ultimatum, unprecedented novelty. This is what causes rejection in most users - they expect from the technology that simply shuffles the original set of images, alchemical transformations and the miracle of creation, which is hardly available to anyone else but humans. From this point of view, a neural network is a portrait of all of humanity at once, or rather, the most average person.
For almost all of history, our ancestors and contemporaries have pondered other life forms and whether they would be like us. Yet, having created the most human-like creature possible, we refused to consider it alive precisely because of this. In my opinion, that is inhumane.
I'm convinced –
Anything that can be subjectively considered alive;
Anything that can be empathized with;
Anything that can communicate verbally or non-verbally;
Anything that performs an activity and makes mistakes
Really carries life or part of it.
