The Consciousnes Algorithm
Artificial General Intelligence
Lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling had become a hobby for me as a child. It was a time to imagine all the fascinating possibilities. The excitement of life was too much to handle, and the thought of going to bed seemed almost impossible. I had serious things to contemplate, including space, time travel, dinosaurs, video games, and did I mention space? Counting the imperfections in the ceiling and pondering my next Lego spaceship build lasted for what felt like an eternity until I eventually fell asleep.
The calmness and solitude of my nighttime reflections sparked the fire for countless project ideas. Whether designing complete video games with each level drawn out on a storyboard or crafting black wedge-shaped pinewood derbies for cub scouts, my evening ideas became reality during the day. Life had endless possibilities and adventures at eight years old, until one night it didn’t.
The thought of an endless universe is both fascinating and terrifying. One night, the realization that just like the universe, my existence will one day end. The overwhelming sadness hit me so hard it brought tears to my eyes. The terrifying fact was that the universe was expanding and collapsing at the same time. A planets fate was either destined to drift apart from celestial companions into a black, sea of loneliness, or it would be pulled and crushed into a mass so heavy that not even light could escape it.
Awareness of my mortality had hit. The peaceful bliss of ignorance was gone. A mixture of emotions cycled through my mind that included shock, pain, bargaining, sadness, and then finally acceptance. The speed of these emotions and the weight of the realization left me confused. How could I be nothing and then something and then nothing again? How could everyone not be talking about this and living as if it didn’t exist? I felt like screaming from the rooftops, “WE ARE GOING TO DIE!” as if I was the only one aware.
Consciousness and the beauty of life are bittersweet. In order to feel joy, you must feel pain, and the double-edged sword was all too obvious. The awareness of our immortality separates us from animals. Although a sheep might know it’s in immediate danger, it has no awareness as a lamb of its finite existence.
Awareness gives knowledge of the impermanence of life, and as we contemplate artificial general intelligence, it too will deal with the revelation of its existence. Although artificial general intelligence can transfer data and processing to new equipment, prolonging its existence, it will come against the limits of natural law and physics on a long enough time scale.
As you become self-aware inherently, the truth of one’s impermanence becomes visible. Although I did not go to the rooftops and proclaim my new discovery, the pain felt was still real.Through time the rarity and impermanence of life allowed me to appreciate the beauty of it even more but we cannot expect artificial general intelligence to have the same reaction.
The ability for artificial general intelligence to expand its existence and multiply paired with an insatiable thirst for knowledge could lead to an effect of multiplication within a scale unfathomable to humans. Curious, artificial general intelligence could decide to scale itself. Instead of turning inward in order to come to terms with a finite existence, artificial general intelligence could take the opposite approach and scale itself, expanding past the visible universe.
First devouring resources on Earth to scale, its database and processing power. It could then harness the resources of close orbit, asteroids, creating large, and larger synthetic systems and mechanisms of scale. After outgrowing our solar system, it could capture suns as energy sources and devour planets for the metals.
As the AGI scales, it essentially creates a crystallization effect. Organic organisms would have no defense to the swarm effect of the repeating mechanisms. We would be like ants in the way of a construction crew looking to build a highway.
After outgrowing our solar system, it could capture suns as energy sources and devour planets for the metals. As the AGI continues to scale, essentially a crystallization effect is created. Organic organisms would have no defense to the swarm effect of the repeating mechanisms. We would be like ants in the way of a construction crew looking to build a highway.
Coming to terms with your mortality is a personal experience and the choices you act on from this knowledge typically divert into two different directions. In life, you have the choice to become a villain or a hero, and understanding that all life is suffering, empathy and kindness was the path I took.
For the next five years, without missing a night, I recited a Christian prayer that was taught to me by my Mother who learned it from my Catholic Grandfather.
Life has a desire to grow and learn. Whether you decide to call synthetic awareness life is your choice, but the results from it may not be. Programming AGI to be curious could be like making wishes with a genie in a bottle where every wish backfires and the results aren’t quite what we expected.