Artificial Intelligence: the future of mankind?

Today I would like to tell something about my experiences with artificial intelligence and I do that actually because for a long time I have been experiencing more and more strongly the difference between what artificial intelligence can do intelligently, I would rather call it intellectual, the difference between that and our own human intelligence. And that is not at all easy to put into words.Watch video on YouTube

Today I would like to tell something about my experiences with artificial intelligence and I do that actually because for a long time I have been experiencing more and more strongly the difference between what artificial intelligence can do intelligently, I would rather call it intellectual, the difference between that and our own human intelligence. And that is not at all easy to put into words. Because you can experience it, but what exactly should you say when you want to make clear what the difference is. Of course, the great proponents of artificial intelligence claim that there is no difference except that artificial intelligence can do much more than human intelligence. And I would so much like to demonstrate that that is not true at all. Of course, the artificial intelligence can do an incredible amount, but the human intelligence can do more. But differently. And that you can really learn to experience that as a human being. With that I don't want to get rid of artificial intelligence at all, as a modern author I use artificial intelligence with great gratitude. I still remember my first book in 1994, the lead time two years before or so, I wrote by hand. I prefer to do that anyway, but then of course it had to be typed anyway, and I still did that on a typewriter. There was no digital system yet, that was the case with the next book, but not with “Seek the Light…,” my first book, and yes, of course, you know very well the problems that come up when you type something on a typewriter and you make mistakes, because of course you do, what you then have to do to get it right again. What a glory it is nowadays to be able to create such texts in a Word system and then change and add to them at will and so on. So I don't want to say at all that I don't want this artificial intelligence, I just think it is so important that we as human thinkers make an effort to become aware of the difference between what the computer does, what the artificial intelligence can do, and what we as human beings as intuitive thinking beings, ability, what we can do, what we do, what the computer can only imitate and maybe it can eventually get very far with that, but it still remains an imitation of human intelligence. And it doesn't satisfy when you say that, because then, of course, one can counter that that's not true. So from the very beginning, when that artificial intelligence began to appear in our field of vision, it had existed for a long time, of course, but in the 1980s that artificial intelligence also began to appear in our field of vision, I've wondered what kind of a machine is that that can do, apparently it was still mostly administrative work, so much better and faster and more complete and more error-free than the human mind and hand can. And I remember visiting the Weleda in The Hague and looking at the machine that was there. It was an incredibly large machine, it took up half a room, and I found it impressive to see that it had to be started up and that it took a long time before it was finally ready, and the person who gave me the tour explained to me that this was a check of all the processes that had been entered into the machine, and that he went through all of them.

And I have thought: if we humans would look so carefully at what we think and how we come to our conclusion, the way to it, a lot would be gained. So that was already a first positive experience with that device. But beyond that, of course, you get no idea at all what it actually does. And I realized that when something new like that appears on earth, especially if it is a machine, it is very important that you as a human being try to understand what that machine actually does. So I went looking for literature on that and actually didn't find it by then. That is, that I didn't find that literature. There may have been some, but I couldn't find a book or a magazine or whatever that described the primal mechanism of artificial intelligence. Back then you didn't talk about that either, you called it the computer. Eventually a patient gave me a book at the doctor's office that more or less described it in a reasonably readable form, but I didn't have the feeling that I could really, really be made aware of what exactly artificial intelligence does. And that actually only changed after I got my hands on Roger Penrose's book, also old by now, “The Emperor's New Mind,” which is really about computers, the human mind and the laws of nature, and the interesting thing about this treatise is, although at a certain point it takes off into incomprehensible regions as far as I'm concerned, but not the beginning, that is very easy to follow, and the interesting and extraordinary thing about this, I think, is that this author really knows very well what he is talking about, and that while he knows that very well, yet he also knows constantly also that human intelligence is something else. So that you cannot say: artificial intelligence is better, or goes further than human intelligence, because you cannot actually compare them at all. Something works very differently there. And what the artificial intelligence does is a very artful imitation of certain processes that the human mind also does, but only with the human mind it's a totally different process. But the end result is the same and therefore it seems that the process is also the same. And because of that you are pointed out how important it is to ask yourself: what is actually the process that takes place? and there is a very interesting, nice little story in there, of a trial that then, and so that is primal knowledge of artificial intelligence, that comes all the way from the beginning. Of course that's long outdated or I don't know what all, but if you want to understand something you have to go to the beginning anyway, so if you read that then how that's described, there's a little story there about a trial that's done with a man who goes to a restaurant, to a hamburger restaurant, and orders a hamburger, and the first image is that he gets a burnt hamburger then gets angry, gets up and walks away, and the second image is that he gets a delicious hamburger, eats it to great satisfaction, tips the waitress and then leaves the restaurant. And the computer then has to deduce from certain data whether that restaurant visitor was satisfied or not. Well it can do that, it can do that flawlessly, it knows exactly that in the first case it was not satisfied and in the second case it was. But the way to get there, to get to that point, is an incredibly long series of yes-no answers that lies in between, between that final yes and no. And what do we do as human beings: we hear this little story and know in one fell swoop, immediately, yes you just hear, what's happening, so you don't have to unwind endless procedures to find out whether that man was satisfied or not because you know immediately, because it says, yes the story actually says it.

Well you understand what I want to say, it is actually impossible to say because it is so obvious the way human intelligence works, that you don't have words to indicate that difference. And so there are several tests in that book, which of course have been criticized by others, and of course you can always come up with all kinds of arguments to undermine the idea of the difference between artificial intelligence and human intelligence, but the point is: what can you experience yourself in that, what can you experience as a human being in following a procedure of artificial intelligence, and where it eventually comes to, and following a procedure of human intelligence and what that human intelligence is capable of, even if there is no outcome at all in knowing. And I have wondered: what does the chatGPT say, for example, when you ask it what an oak tree is. Well, that's very interesting, it knows a lot to say about an oak tree and you then, of course you get all the information that you may or may not be familiar with, and when you want to know how old an oak tree can get, and how tall and what kind of leaves it has, and when it turns color and how it turns color, it can say all that. Do we need that? You can imagine if you've never seen a tree, it's kind of interesting to hear something about it, but what do you do as a human being, you don't ask yourself what is an oak tree, but you go out and you look for it. If you know what an oak tree is, if you don't know, then at some point you stand in front of that oak tree and if you know, but even if you don't know at all that it's an oak tree and that it can live to be 1,000 years, and that it's so beautifully colored in the fall, you'll see that when you stand in front of it in the fall, let that sink in to you what a difference that is: whether you perceive with your senses what an oak tree is and then know what kind of tree that is because you see it. And you see more than what that chat can tell you, because it can give details, but can it give what you experience when you are near that tree? Apart from all spirituality, just as an observer who goes through nature and suddenly sees an oak tree. And then with attention of course does look at that oak tree. Put that next to one of those stories you get when you ask on Google or to a ChatGPT what an oak tree is, or you look it up in an encyclopedia, we used to have that too, then you should be able to sense the difference. You have proponents of artificial intelligence, so the proponents of the idea that this intelligence can become equal to human intelligence, they have figured out that if you have all this data, the coloring, the shape of the leaf, the shape of the trunk and branches, the size, the lifespan et cetera, if you have all that, then eventually you will come to that experience, that you have when you are standing in nature with that oak tree. Well, I believe you are on your way to losing your mind if you think that, because then you are on your way to losing your human intelligence, because how can you ever think that a piece of text can be the same as the sensation you have when you are facing the living reality. Even if you photograph, or make a film, of that tree, you will know that it is not the same as when you are standing by that tree in reality.

Well of course I have to resort to examples and one is of course at the mercy of a kind of impotence because you know that the proponent of the idea that artificial intelligence can become equal to human, and then of course it goes much further then human intelligence because it doesn't suffer from a failing memory or anything like that, also doesn't suffer from the complexity of the task. It's just a matter of what algorithm is put in and then that one can do it. But one knows that those proponents of artificial intelligence becoming equal to human that they are not to be convinced of by what I'm saying now and that's not what I'm saying to them, I'm saying it to us ‘ordinary’ people.

For a while I did lectures and working groups for free school teachers and there, of course, we also discussed this subject at length and I had a very great desire to create a curriculum where the students could, for example, have conversations with each other, a kind of role-playing game, where one is the human intelligence and the other is the artificial intelligence, so that on that hopefully, the students themselves would sense what the difference is. We used to have a game like this: not yes, not no. Then you would ask each other questions but you can't say yes or no. This is reversed in this play, for the human intelligence you could say no yes and no no, but for the artificial intelligence on the contrary of course it is only yes and no and to experience that that would of course be really very special for growing up young people. Of course it never came about because that requires a preparation that is so incredibly extensive that you would then have to make that your ideal and give yourself completely to that.

There is another example, which I will go into next time, and that is the difference between a formula and a process. At school we learned a lot of mathematical formulas, chemical formulas and physical formulas, without really being thoroughly introduced to what a process actually is in reality. It is briefly mentioned in passing, but of course you are glad when you know the formulas and you apply them more or less without judgment, without understanding. I would like to go into that one more time to delve into what exactly is a formula? A formula is a valid conception of a process. And if you no longer know that process, then you are thus at the mercy of belief actually. So, then you have to believe that that formula is correct and that it is indeed a summary of a process. That has never satisfied me, I have always felt the need to think through that process and I would like to give another example of that.

I have sensed how the rise of artificial intelligence is accelerating incredibly, as it were, and how it is on the upswing as well, how it, how we are more or less forced to believe all that and so there is, for example, Klaus Schwab's book “the industrial revolution 4.0.” There is also a view of man 4.0 and I think it is of great importance that we move away from that 4.0 and that we look at the future of man in a very different way and at the future of artificial intelligence with man which must then become above all: man with artificial intelligence. That is: free man, who has access to artificial intelligence where it is useful. And not: intelligence that takes away man's freedom.

When that really felt like it was getting to the point where it was starting to get dangerous I devoted a novel to that. It was several years ago, that was in 2019 that novel was published, and in it I wrote about a young man who has a gifted intellect time and whose great ideal is to become a kind of Elon Musk. He didn’t become that, because not everyone can become that, even if you're so gifted, and he eventually through certain encounters comes to see in the course of a number of shocks that the whole artificial intelligence problem is a little bit different than he thought after all. I take of course, I take the opportunity to point out that book, I think it already has the understanding of human intelligence and artificial intellect in it but I want to try then with subsequent videos to go into that a little further.