Our fantastic minds make artificial intelligence a dead end,
just like us
A review of our deep history and
perilous future indicates the need for a redesign from top to bottom
Lester Donald Earnest (les at cs.stanford.edu)
Senior Research Computer Scientist Emeritus, Stanford
University
Former Executive Officer, Stanford Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory
Former Chair, ACM Special Interest Group on
Artificial Intelligence
2016.07.03
Summary. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors evolved s set of attitudes and
fantasies that enabled tribal coordination and eventually made them the
dominant species on Earth despite living in a difficult and ever-changing
environment. Modern humans live in a very different and rapidly changing world
and our retained fantasies are causing world-wide destruction but it may be
possible to get around that problem by using genetic engineering and robotics
to create super-humans who think rationally.
Getting
Started. Most people like to pretend that they make decisions
based on rational analysis of alternatives but we actually make nearly all of
our thousands of decisions each day regarding where to go, what to do, and how to
do it based on our instincts which are derived from a bunch of fantasies that
define the culture of each person. Each of us is born with a bunch of genetic fantasies
and viewpoints wired into our brains and those basic viewpoints are then modified
by our educational upbringing and subsequent life experiences but our core
beliefs remain largely intact.
Unfortunately, the fantastic way we think is now
causing the sixth mass extinction of life on our planet and this process may be
short circuited at any time by a nuclear war that can kill nearly all living
things within a few hours and would be another result of the way we think. A
lot of artificial intelligence (AI) stuff does work and I spent most of my career
developing such things. However our ongoing hunter-gatherer viewpoint is too
narrow to manage the world properly, as we are demonstrating, and so AI systems
that emulate our thinking are also inherently defective. Those who think that
reaching Òthe singularityÓ when AI will take control will straighten things out
are living another fantasy because AI is derived from the defective human view
of the world.
There is a possibility that our defective dominance
can be bypassed by developing a new dominant species quickly but that is not a
sure thing. I will now try to summarize how we got into this peculiar position.
As you likely
know, humans came into existence as a result of the fifth mass extinction of
life on Earth, caused by a large asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula about
62 million years ago. The resulting environmental catastrophe killed everything
above ground but was survived by a few creatures and plants living below ground
or in the sea, including a few small dinosaurs that have since evolved into a
wide variety of fairly intelligent creatures that we call ÒbirdsÓ.
Some small
mouse-like mammals also survived and evolved more rapidly, becoming the
dominant family on Earth, including species living on land, sea and in the air,
though birds generally did better in the air. Our branch soon produced both
gigantic creatures and primates, including the fairly intelligent precursors of
monkeys that now populate much of Eurasia and Africa as well as South and
Central America. Other primates include lemurs, orangutans, baboons, gorillas
and chimpanzees, the latter being our former siblings. Our hominid ancestors
split off from chimpanzees about seven million years ago (Mya) and evidently
lived in trees for a couple of million years before switching to two-legged
walking, perhaps in response to climate change, which facilitated crossing open
spaces and allowed hands to be used for carrying tools and weapons and using
them. By 3.3 Mya they were using stone tools in East Africa, probably for
cutting food and possibly for hunting. By 2.6 Mya meat had become a significant
part of their diet.
The
Challenges of Climate Change. The
EarthÕs climate was rather stable until about 2 Mya. Up until then North and
South America were not connected and a large ocean current that originated in
the South Pacific flowed through the gap between them, where Panama now lies,
then through the Caribbean and up the east coast of North America (where the
Gulf Current now flows) and into the North Atlantic. This stabilized climates
worldwide until major volcanic activities created the Panama connection between
the two continents. Thereafter the stabilizing current was blocked and certain
orbital parameters of the Earth destabilized things.
For many millions of years the EarthÕs axis of
rotation has wobbled a bit in accordance with NewtonÕs Laws which causes
variations in the width of the polar zones in which sunlight disappears entirely
during the winter. When polar zones become wide the Earth enters an Ice Age in
which snow and ice accumulated on land areas near the poles, causing sea levels
to drop with the result that many islands and continents connect to each other.
In the other half of these cycles the Earth becomes relatively warm and the
oceans expand. This cycle repeats at intervals of about 100,000 years, so our
ancestors have been through a lot of climate changes over the last two million
years, on average about once every 50,000 years, requiring a lot of lifestyle
adjustments.
While dealing with those challenges our
ancestorsÕ brain size doubled between 2 and 1 Mya and became larger than dolphins
for the first time. Somewhere along the way our ancestors developed the ability
to speak and developed vocal chords to make themselves more articulate. Other
species also have been able to communicate a lot with each other, such as
elaborate bird calls, whale songs that enable communication over long distances
except when modern naval sonars drive them crazy, dolphin chatter that we donÕt
yet understand, and elephant communications over long distances using very low
frequencies that we canÕt even hear.
How
Did Hunter Gatherer Tribes Operate? Human
speech was evidently used to develop more complex social relationships among
members of each tribe and to facilitate planning and coordinating their
activities. We have no direct
evidence of how early tribes operated but it seems likely that the successful
ones used social organizations similar to those of modern hunter-gatherers. Nomadic
tribes are usually of limited size and live as communists (lower case ÒcÓ Ð
ÒOne for all and all for oneÓ), sharing responsibilities for food collection
and preparation, child raising, hunting, and fighting other tribes when
necessary. In other words, they each operate like a large family, which they
really are.
These tribes typically have:
á A council of elders that meets periodically to review and choose
between alternative future actions,
á A chief who is responsible overall for the execution of plans,
á A group of male hunter/warriors who operate under a leader, with
some creating weapons such as bows and arrows and spears, which started out
with sharpened rock points, and atlatls that enable spears to be thrown
forcefully,
á Men and women who fish where possible,
á Women who mostly handle food gathering and preparation, child
rearing and education, as well as storage and retrieval of food and other resources,
á Shamans who pretend to have contact with some spirit world and
train individuals to believe in a unified viewpoint that enables cooperative
actions by tribe members.
Parents are necessarily responsible for
transporting small children when the tribe moves, which makes it impractical to
have more than one such child at a time. Thus the size of families is limited
and tribes cannot grow in size very rapidly even when opportunities arise. It
is not clear whether contraception of some kind was figured out or whether
unwanted babies were simply abandoned.
Average lifetimes were typically in the 30s to
early 40s then and small children whose mothers died before they were able to
survive on their own often did not make it. However evolution optimized their
survivability by imposing menopause, which prevented older women from having
babies just before they died but also enabled them to function as grandmothers
if they lasted awhile, which enhanced the likelihood of some of their genes
surviving.
Vulnerabilities
Shape Viewpoints and Actions. While most people like to think that our
ancestors developed their viewpoints and choices of action based on careful
analyses of alternatives, our main viewpoints are actually the result of random
mutations in the brains of our ancestors that turned out to be advantageous
from an evolutionary standpoint. As you know, sexual reproduction provides a
much more efficient path toward evolution than the simpler scheme of
subdividing, used by some life forms, in that it enables advantageous mutations
from more than one family line to be combined. However there are some hazards
associated with sexual reproduction.
Consider how the widespread incest taboo came
about. Could it have been the result of an ancient person developing a theory
of genetic inheritance and figuring out that inbreeding in a small group of
related people is likely to cause identical bad genes to come from both parents
so as to produce a defective child? Certainly not. There was no science to
speak of until a few hundred years ago and we didnÕt figure out how DNA works
until 1953. Early attitudes were shaped by evolution, not analysis. What
actually happened was that one or more persons got a mutation in their brain
making them opposed to incest and, because that increased the likelihood that they
would reproduce successfully, it became genetically embedded in the brains of
their descendants.
Why
Do Many Men Like to Rape Women? This
is another natural result of evolutionary selection. Ancient hunter-gatherer
tribes were necessarily fairly small to facilitate limited resource sharing and
mobility and, because these tribes were mainly composed of related people, the
resulting inbreeding had a tendency to produce genetic defects in offspring.
However some warriors whose genes made them aggressive chose to raid
neighboring tribes and bring back young women who they then raped and put to
work in their own tribe and, since such actions benefitted the genetic
diversity of their tribe and also increased the likelihood of their own genes
being passed on, this tendency became genetically embedded in the minds of
their male descendants.
It is interesting to note that members of modern
ÒPro-lifeÓ religious movements who argue that victims of rape should not be
allowed to get abortions are doing their best to perpetuate the rape genes.
Note also that the ÒreligiousÓ prohibition on both abortion and the use of
contraceptives is not based on anything in the Bible but is simply a marketing
strategy aimed at maximizing the number of constituents.
More
Genetic Diversity Where Needed.
Hunter-gatherers living in arctic areas, where population densities are
extremely low, have an extra difficult but unrecognized problem in maintaining
adequate genetic diversity. However, without their thinking about it, evolution
found a solution by planting ideas in their heads. When traveling hunters visit
a remote group they are generally invited to sleep with the wives there, which
promotes genetic diversity.
Why
Are We All Naturally Racist? Recent
experiments with three month old babies reveal that when they are alternately
shown photos of people who look like their parents and others who look
different they tend to stare at length at the former and avert their gaze from
the latter as an indication of fear or rejection, which indicates that we are
wired for racism from birth. That appears to be a byproduct of ancient
intertribal warfare in which it was important for warriors to quickly identify
opponents based on facial features, skin color and other distinctions and then
try to kill them.
It is possible to overcome such mindsets through
education and life experiences, as many of us have done, but the genetic
predisposition toward racism still lurks in the backs of our minds.
Where
Did the Idea of Gods Come From? This
too appears to be an adaptation to ancient tribal life. The Universe has many
complexities and we are only now beginning to figure things out through the
development of science but still have a long way to go.
In order to function efficiently as a tribe, a
unified viewpoint on how the world works was needed and ancient shamans
apparently filled that need by introducing the idea of gods that controlled
various parts of the Universe. They evidently started out by introducing one
god to explain each mystery, which led to religious complexity, but some later
developed the idea of a single omnipotent god that ran everything. Some also
invented the idea of devils without noticing that a devil could not actually survive
in a Universe managed by an omnipotent god.
Over time various viewpoints were consolidated
into organized religions by authors who all happened to be very able writers of
fiction. For example, sometime around the year 100 an anonymous writer created
a story about a mythical Jesus Christ who supposedly was born about a hundred
years earlier. Others picked up that story and wrote variations about him that
were slightly incompatible but enlarged the myth. Eventually one or more
editors got involved and put together the New Testament, which grew in
popularity until a Roman Emperor embraced it and set off a widespread religious
conversion.
It is interesting to note that even though that
Bible describes in detail how and where Christ was born, it does not give a
birthdate, most likely because that would make it easier to prove that he never
existed. The Romans later invented a birthday for him by usurping their
traditional winter solstice celebration, called Saturnalia in honor of Saturn,
their god of farming, then moved it a few days and renamed it Christmas.
If a person called Christ had existed and had
done some of the things described in the Bible then contemporary writers in the
place where he supposedly lived would surely have written stories about him,
but that never happened which confirms that the entire story is a fabrication.
{D. Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian
Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All, 2010, Lulu.com, ISBN:
978-0-557-70991-5}
It is interesting to note that Christianity
managed to merge two older religious concepts, namely an omnipotent god and
multiple specialized gods. The omnipotent one somehow presents three faces
(Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) and is augmented by hundreds of demi-gods, called
saints.
In spite of the evidence, religious fantasies
are built into our vocabulary because most people have the acceptance of gods
buried in their brains. People frequently say ÒThank God!Ó or ÒGo to Hell!Ó
even though many of us know there are no gods nor a place called Hell. Overall,
religious fantasies play a significant part in our daily lives.
More
Fantasies. The tribal life of our
ancestors also left us with a number of other fantasies implanted in our minds.
In the interest of functioning well as a tribe, our ancestors learned to
normally defer to higher authority and follow orders, including going to war
with competing tribes. In the modern world, that makes us susceptible to
manipulation in some ways and results in military personnel often being honored
for their service even when a war is started by politicians as a way of gaining
personal power.
If you think that modern people have shed their
tribal instincts I suggest that you carefully watch what happens at athletic
competitions, where fans run wild in support of their particular tribe.
Given that many people and public media spend
time talking about celebrities, it is interesting to consider who is eligible
for that status and who is not.
á Ineligible: plumbers and other service personnel, engineers, accountants,
secretaries, truck drivers, salespeople, housekeepers, cooks, mothers, etc.
á Eligible: actors, high level politicians and other marketers, artists,
writers of fiction, military generals and admirals, musical composers and
performers, poets, high level athletes, etc.
Can you see a pattern there? Those who are
eligible are all providers or stimulators of human fantasies, which says a lot
about how our minds work -- nearly all enjoyable activities of modern humans
revolve around stimulating fantasies.
Genetic
Mysteries. There are many gay
people in the modern world but evolutionary theory says there should be very
few. Such people naturally produce substantially fewer offspring than
heterosexuals, which we might expect to remove their inclinations from the gene
pool, but that hasnÕt happened. It appears, then, that something else is going
on. Perhaps heterosexuals who are close relatives of homosexuals somehow have
more children than other heterosexuals but it is not clear what would make that
happen and, as far as I know, no one is looking into this puzzle, probably
because any research having to do with homosexuals gets wrapped up in religious
nonsense.
Another mystery is why the sound of running
water makes us want to pee. There must have been a survival advantage for our
ancient ancestors in doing that but it is not clear what that was.
Continuing
Evolution
Neanderthals Evolved Robust Bodies, Light Skin
and Bigger Brains. Our hunter-gatherer
ancestors managed to survive the increased environmental challenges from 2 Mya
on and diversified into a number of different tribal groups, some of which
headed out of Africa to various parts of Eurasia from time to time. One such
group was the Neanderthals, who migrated from Africa into Central Eurasia
(often misidentified as the Near East) about 800 Kya (thousand years ago) and
began evolving in a slightly different direction than their African cousins.
Their hunting tactic was evidently to hide
behind a bush until an animal appeared, then grab it and attempt to wrestle it
to the ground. In support of that tactic, over time they evolved very robust
torsos and arms and also happened to grow big noses. However it was not an easy
life: a large portion of male Neanderthal skeletons that have been dug up in
modern times show evidence of broken bones that were somehow repaired.
Neanderthals went on to migrate across West
Eurasia all the way to Spain, but they had to evolve another adaptation along
the way: light colored skin. Humans all need vitamin D and our skin makes it
with exposure to sunlight. In places near the Equator, such as Central Africa,
black skin allows enough sunlight to get through but at higher latitudes, such
as northern Eurasia, that doesnÕt work. Consequently the Neanderthals evolved progressively
lighter skin.
They also developed brains that were about 10%
larger than their African relatives and showed signs of sophistication. For
example, they started making cave art at least 176 Kya whereas their
successors, the Sapiens, didnÕt start doing that until about 42 Kya.
Neanderthals lived in West Eurasia for hundreds
of thousands of years, going through multiple ice ages and warm periods. During
ice ages, polar ice sheets advanced over northern parts of Eurasia and sea
levels dropped, causing the Baltic Sea to disappear as well as the sea channel
between Britain and France. Consequently in those times Neanderthals could walk
to southern Britain and all over southern Scandinavia.
Sapiens
Arise, Decline, Then Take Over. Meanwhile
Africans continued to evolve and by 300 Kya were using fire for both security
and cooking. Sapiens tribes emerged in East Africa around 200 Kya and their brain
size had doubled again since 1 mya. However the ice age intensified and drought
conditions caused the human population to plummet. By 100 Kya proto-humans had
almost died out.
Still later, around 70 Kya, the Sapiens managed
to tighten their tribal social structure in a way that enabled them to develop
new hunting tactics and make coordinated attacks on animals of all sizes. That
suddenly let them to jump from being a minor species the top of the food chain,
which eventually enabled them to dominate the World! {Y.N. Hararri, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,
2015, HarperCollins, ISBN 978-0-06-231609-7}
While it is true that human intelligence played
a role in that takeover, their world dominance was basically a result of
becoming the top killers on the planet. There were many very large animals roaming
the earth then, including Mammoths, Mastodons, Giant Tree Sloths, Dire Wolves,
Saber-tooth Cats, and Giant Bison but by a short time later they all
disappeared as a result of some combination of climate change and Sapiens
hunting.
Another
Migration. Around 50 Kya members of the San tribe began
migrating eastward from Africa along the south coast of Eurasia, probably using
small boats, and left colonies of people along the way. They eventually crossed
a 150 mile wide sea channel to reach Australia, which was also connected to New
Guinea and Tasmania at that time because of low sea levels. They then populated
all those areas while retaining their black skin because they were still in tropical
areas. Today they are called aborigines.
Sapiens
Used Neanderthal Genes to Destroy Them. Also
about 50 Kya, a group of Sapiens migrated out of Africa into Central Eurasia
and promptly encountered the Neanderthals living there. They interbred,
probably using intertribal rapes as discussed earlier, then continued into
northern Eurasia. Because they too needed lighter skin to live at high
latitudes and the Neanderthals had already developed those genes, they were
adopted by the Sapiens through normal evolutionary processes and then spread
across Eurasia. As a result, most modern Eurasians carry between 2% and 4%
Neanderthal genes, including those providing light colored skin. My DNA puts me
at 2.6% Neanderthal but I happen to tan so easily that I effectively change
races twice each year.
Given that Neanderthals and Sapiens were living in the same
areas, they were competing for food resources and, inasmuch as SapiensÕ hunting
techniques were superior to those of Neanderthals, the latter were eliminated
around 45 Kya.
To
America! Sometime around 15 Kya Eurasians migrated first
to North America and then to South America using combinations of land and sea
travel, the latter using small boats along the east coast of Eurasia and the
west coast of the Americas. It was also possible to walk from Siberia to Alaska
over a wide land bridge at that time because of low sea levels but there would
have been problems in migrating from Alaska to central North America because of
vast ice sheets that had not yet melted. We donÕt have much archaeological
evidence of coastal travel from those days because what were then coastal areas
are now deep under the sea.
How
Farming Loosened Things Up and Created a Tragedy. A big change began around 10 Kya when people in Central Eurasia
invented farming and animal husbandry and settled down. The same thing then
happened independently in other parts of the world and soon most people were
living on farms and ranches while hunter-gatherers continued to operate in
areas that were unsuitable for farming.
Because there was generally more food available
on farms and it was practical to raise a number of small children at the same
time, farming populations began to soar. However living in one place and being
able to select which crops to raise made it easier to make alcoholic beverages
such as beer and wine and, since early humans had a natural tendency to enjoy
booze, this resulted in a holocaust in which many died from alcoholism. However
that weeded out a lot of the bad genes and made the descendants of farmers who
did not die less susceptible. Consequently modern descendants of farmers are
generally less susceptible to alcoholism than the direct descendants of
hunter-gatherers. Alaska, for example, has serious problems with native people
living there.
Other advantages of farming were that it led to
larger communities with naturally more genetic diversity, so raping was no
longer genetically advantageous and it was no longer necessary to go to war
with neighbors, but the genes in human brains that pushed those outmoded ideas did
not automatically disappear. We might be able to get rid of them by living in a
stable environment for a long time but that hasnÕt happened. In fact our
environment has begun changing at an increasing rate with the rapid rise of
science and technology over the last few hundred years. Meanwhile we continue
to think like hunter-gatherers and are headed for disaster.
Carryover
Aspirations. New farmers found
themselves in a rather different world but most of their mindset did not change
much. Villages turned into towns, then cities, then groups of cities
interspersed with farm lands. Some people began providing services to farmers
in exchange for food, then money was invented to facilitate commercial transactions.
As people became aware of special resources available in other parts of the
world, trade routes were established between East and West Eurasia using
camels, horses, ox carts and sailing ships.
The people living in this new world retained the
aspirations embedded in their mental fantasies. Men often aspired to getting
into a position of power similar to a tribal chief, warrior chief or shaman and
were willing to go to war to acquire additional assets, as in the past.
Everyone understood the need to follow orders when engaged in aggressive
actions. Their strong beliefs in mythical gods of various sorts meant that
anyone attempting to interfere with religious projects was eligible for death.
It was likely that the earlier selections of
tribal chiefs often favored descendants of earlier chiefs, just as with
chimpanzees, and that tendency evidently carried over to the creation of
royalty in various parts of the world. In other words, people inherited the
right to control others and, later, would marry only others in their class.
Other ways of acquiring power were to put together a strong military force and
form a dictatorship or conquer another group and turn them into slaves. Slaves
could be used not only for doing dirty work but female slaves were always handy
for male overseers looking for some dalliance, which resulted in a lot of
genetic mergers, especially in the Americas after European invasions.
Our Defective Thinking. As has been pointed out repeatedly
by others, modern humans have been causing global warming for a long time and,
unless this process is promptly reversed, the ongoing sixth mass extinction of
life on Earth will run to completion. Modern humans have also carried out a
plan to shorten the extinction time by building enough nuclear weapons to kill
everything and everyone in a few hours. Does that sound like rational thinking?
No, it is a
result of the hunter-gatherer fantasies that we still carry in our minds and
there is currently no plan for circumventing this problem. Artificial
intelligence will be of no help because it attempts to emulate defective human
thinking.
One
conceivable solution would be to put Earth under the control of a benign
dictator if a suitable one can be found. However that is a path to nowhere
because that person would eventually have to be replaced and the next one might
not be so benign, which might turn our descendants into slaves.
Super-Humans Needed. Another possibility would be to somehow create a
new life form that thinks rationally, unlike us, and put it in control. There
are many possible species to choose from such as smart birds or dolphins, but
because we have been doing more experimental work with humans and would egotistically
like to keep some version of ourselves in charge, it seems more likely that we
can solve this problem by using the advancing fields of genetic engineering and
robotics to create a new life form that can do the job. That would mean, of
course, that our direct descendants will likely end up in zoos but that would
be better than snuffing out all life.
Aside from
our defective thinking, the human body has some other design defects that we
might as well fix at the same time. For example, we should get rid of the
useless appendix and should probably redesign the spine to reduce the frequency
of back pain.
Another
beneficial redesign would be to move the vagina from between womenÕs legs to
their lower belly, which would end the trade-off between the maximum brain size
of babies and the ability of women to run fast, which was an important survival
issue in earlier times. More importantly, this would eliminate the need for
complex Caesarian Section births.
The
placement of the vagina in the lower belly is something that elephants managed
to do through evolution long ago and was necessary in their case to avoid
killing baby elephants by dropping them from leg height to the ground. Elephant
penises also had to be adjusted a bit to accommodate the new arrangement but
that too was apparently carried out incrementally. For humans it appears that no
penis adjustment would be needed.
The task of
blanking out human fantasies in the brain and arranging to get decisions made
based on rational analysis looks a lot more challenging than fixing our
physical defects but I hope a way can be found to do it soon, before the next
big catastrophe.