Echoes of myth and magic in the language of Artificial Intelligence
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Echoes of myth and magic in the language of Artificial Intelligence Roberto Musa Giuliano1 Received: 7 June 2019 / Accepted: 27 February 2020 © Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract To a greater extent than in other technical domains, research and progress in Artificial Intelligence has always been entwined with the fictional. Its language echoes strongly with other forms of cultural narratives, such as fairytales, myth and religion. In this essay we present varied examples that illustrate how these analogies have guided not only readings of the AI enterprise by commentators outside the community but also inspired AI researchers themselves. Owing to their influence, we pay particular attention to the similarities between religious language and the way in which the potential advent of greater than human intelligence is presented contemporarily. We then move on to the role that fiction, science fiction most of all, has historically played and is still playing in the discussion of AI by influencing researchers and the public, shifting the weights of different scenarios in our collectively perceived probability space. We sum up by arguing that the lore surrounding AI research, ancient and modern, points to the ancestral and shared human motivations that drive researchers in their pursuit and fascinate humanity at large. These points of narrative entanglement where AI meets the wider culture should serve to amplify the call to engage ourselves with the discussion of the potential destination of this technology. Keywords Artificial Intelligence · Religion · Science fiction · Existential risk · Philosophy of science · Technological singularity “We have lived so long with the conviction that robots are possible, even just around the corner, that we can’t help hastening their arrival with magic incantations.” Drew McDermott, (1981, p. 145).
1 Introduction Questions about AI inextricably lead to wondering what it means to be human and where exactly the boundaries lie of that which defines us. After all, the computer is “the most complex technology ever devised by man, and we hold it up as a mirror to our own souls”1 (Fellows 1995, p. 85). When considering what could have possibly motivated the participants and organizers of the Dartmouth Conference (where first the field got its moniker) to “devote their
* Roberto Musa Giuliano [email protected]; [email protected] 1
School of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, Chile
professional lives […] to building machines either to mimic the human brain or to behave intelligently, by hook or by crook” (McCorduck 1979, p. 134), Pamela McCorduck, celebrated chronicler of the dawn of AI, reports several alternatives “offered by armchair psychologists” (p. 134), counting such variegated possibilities as “the desire to be as gods”, being able “to have offspring without the help or interference of a woman”, the Freudians’ suggestions of “a yearning to desexualize or cleanse procreation, c
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