Evolution, the process of adapting to a changing environment, has created a complex biosphere on Earth. Although not a necessary conseque...
Evolution, the process of adapting to a changing environment, has created a complex biosphere on Earth. Although not a necessary consequence of evolution, a self-conscious, intelligent, knowledge-accumulating species, humans, has evolved on Earth. With this step, evolution seems to have reached its highest level of development. In the case of the human race, due to the development of accumulated knowledge, the natural biological methods of evolution have become less and less important.
Because evolution necessarily involves the storage of information, evolution is able to create increasingly complex systems. The most complex system created by evolution is the human brain, but perhaps an even more complex system is human society, which also has the criteria of a living organism.
The increase in complexity is one of the necessary concomitants of evolution. However, the increase in complexity can continue even after the formation of humans, of the human brain, of human society. What can be the final purpose of evolution?
In the case of artificially created machines, there is no biological limit to the increase in complexity. In principle, machines of any complexity can be created. We are still making more and more complex machines with more and more functions. Artificial intelligence is already superior to human intelligence in many areas. We will certainly be able to make self-aware machines one day. This would take evolution out of its natural biological framework and continue in machines.
We already see with our knowledge today, that the process of formation of causal relationships created by machine intelligence is not fully understood, they behave like black boxes. It is today’s biggest problem of artificial intelligence. If machines will also have self-awareness, controlling them will not be an easier task than controlling another person.
Although there may be special methods to control self-conscious machines, even these tools do not directly affect and control artificial will and intention. It is likely, that even if we have methods to control and influence the machine brain, we will not be able to fully dominate self-conscious machines.
Obviously, the existence of self-awareness makes it difficult to control intelligent machines. It is better to make artificial intelligence that does not have self-awareness. However, self-awareness is almost certainly not an embedded quality, a deliberately created function, but a resultant, an emergent property of a suitably high level of intelligence. Therefore, the formation of self-awareness is not entirely based on the intention of the constructor of the structure. If we make a properly intelligent machine, self-awareness as a property is likely to appear on its own.
If consciousness is an emergent property, then it is almost certain that we will also build an intelligent machine that has self-awareness unnoticed in the development of artificial intelligence, since we will not know in advance what unintentionally created property the machine will have. And since consciousness can only be controlled indirectly, we have no choice to use machines of this kind other than artificially selecting the right ones. We, humans, who create these self-conscious machines will be able to classify these machines according to their behavior, retain those that behave appropriately and reconfigure those that do not. It will be an important profession to educate self-aware machines, and in some cases, it will be inevitable to reconfigure them.
Because of the difficulties, we will certainly try not to exceed the limit at which increasing intelligence creates self-awareness, or to artificially suppress this function. If self-awareness is an emergent property, we should stay far from this limit and thereby directly give up many of the useful traits of intelligent machines. Our self-limitation is doubtful.
Like in the case of humans, only the indirect method, influence, and selection will be the method to control self-conscious machines. Self-aware machines will be valuable if their self-intended will meet our expectations.
Knowing human nature, we will certainly choose selection over self-restriction, and we will play the role of god over the self-conscious intelligent machines we make. And if the self-conscious machines we have created will be their own creators, they will continue to develop without humans. The selection according to the intention and the arised will be a necessary machine-social task for them also.
The creation of self-conscious machines necessarily creates the secondary god level. In this way, natural, biological evolution can continue at a higher, more efficient level.
Natural evolution has no goal, only a task, it is to adapt to a changing environment. However, with the advent of the secondary divine role, evolution becomes a cycle, a cycle of creating life and self-consciousness, and thereby also receives an end goal. Evolution ultimately creates complex, self-conscious systems with the right intent and will. The final product and culmination of evolution is not the appearance of self-consciousness, nor the cognition of the existing world and the formation of new ones, but the selection of complex structures with the proper will and intention by the formation of the secondary divine level.
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