Tag Archives: artificial intelligence

Love and Transcendence, Louise Annarino,April 21,2014

“Can you prove you are self-aware?” is a question posed by Johnny Depp’s character in Transcendence, a film about Artificial Intelligence or AI. AI is developing right now in labs across the world (see THE FUTURE OF THE MIND, Michio Akaku,Doubleday,2014). The mind of a deceased scientist uploaded into a computer responds to his colleague played by Morgan Freeman’s question with one of his own, “Can you?”.

Since 1970 behavioral scientists have used the mirror test1 to measure self awareness in humans and other animals. It had been widely accepted that recognizing one’s self reflected in a mirror proved self-awareness. In some cases a mark is placed on the body. If the looker explores the mark and/or tries to remove it the subject proves self awareness. Maggie Koerth-Baker2 explains, however, that there are cultural reasons amid both human and animal groups why such a test does not always appear to work. For example, an elephant is used to adding mud, and carrying around birds and insects on its skin. Even if it recognizes itself, and a mark on its hide as foreign, it will ignore the mark as inconsequential. In social groups where interdependence is valued over independence children are taught not to disclose self, but to meld self into the whole. Freezing when they view their marked reflection in a mirror is an equally profound measure of self awareness, even if a child in such a culture makes no effort to respond to the reflection nor the mark placed on the body. Self-awareness is not always self-evident.

We must be careful in judging its existence and its strength. Try looking at your self in a mirror. Not to part your hair, check for moles, or practice flirting. Look into your eyes..for a long time…until it makes you so uncomfortable you must look away from your self. In that moment you are self-aware.

We spend too little time being self-aware.Only when we are self-aware are we truly able to recognize the self in others. And recognizing the self in others is how we begin to love them. Each of us longs to be seen. This is one reason the use of technology as a replacement for face-to-face interaction is so dissatisfying, and so dangerous. We can hide where self cannot be seen. The comments to posts on blogs,news sites and Facebook are evidence of of the shadow self we keep in hiding, unleashed in the secrecy of social media unaware of self. This lack of self-awareness in social media is destructive; and, allows us to be totally unaccountable. This is why the key question in Transcendence is not about the use of AI; but, about self-awareness.

To make the world more safe, we need to see deeper and to be seen better. We need to see into the self. For that we need to look into the eyes of one another. When we recognize the self in another, as we have done so in ourselves,we are acknowledging our connection to a higher self within each of us, one which transcends race,ethnicity,religious conviction,sexuality,culture. The irony is that becoming more self aware we can lose our self in love. Now, that is the real transcendence, the kind which can save the world, not destroy it. Only by loving each other can we save ourselves.

1. Developed by Gordon Gallup, Jr.in 1970.

2. Kids (and Animals) Who Fail Classic Mirror Tests May Still Have Sense of Self, Scientific American, Nov 29, 2010 By Maggie Koerth-Baker.