Can you sell your soul, and will AI need one?
Claire Boucher, popularly known by her artist name of Grimes, opted to put together an art show entitled Selling Out that offers her artistry including various prints, drawings, conceptual pieces, and photographs, which might otherwise not have been especially startling or controversial except for one other item that she also decided to put up for sell.
Her soul.
That’s right, as part of the effort to showcase her handcrafted talent, she also has opted to sell part of her soul.
Ridiculous, you might exclaim.
A stunt, some might holler.
Not so fast.
In one sense, there is some ironclad logic involved, since she has emphasized that artists routinely put their heart and soul into their work, thus, when selling such artistry, it ergo inextricably has a part of the inner toil or soul of the artist that goes implicitly along with it, wherever the art goes and for the benefit of whoever purchases the earnestly sweat-and-tears cast product.
And if this is indeed the normal case, why not make things clearer and more transparent by directly and explicitly selling part of the artist’s soul, which certainly would seem an indubitably above-board way of doing things.
Perhaps this is merely a straightforward matter of rectifying that which is customarily undertaken in a hidden or opaque way into becoming more readily visible and evident.
Case closed.
Plus, lest you have doubts that some portion of her soul is actually going to be conveyed (i.e., no backing out of the deal), Grimes is offering a “legal document” crafted apparently with her attorney that specifies the details, ostensibly laying out the kinds of contractual parameters that you might see when say buying a car or purchasing a home.
This does though make one ponder somewhat.
Imagine the difficulties that might later ensue if the contract is somehow challenged in court, and the type of legal arguments that might be made in either arguing that the matter is completely legal and sound, along with whether the terms of the agreement were fully abided by, such as the portion of soul conveyed as stipulated.
For example, suppose that the contract states that ten percent or maybe twenty percent or some such proportion more-or-less of her soul is being pledged (the percentage has not apparently been announced as yet).
Could the buyer later claim that they did not get the full percentage promised and, if so, how exactly would this be ascertained during a trial?
Maybe things might go in the other direction.
Suppose the buyer somehow took a higher percentage of Grimes’s soul than offered in the legal specification, and Grimes wanted to get back that overtaken portion. She might then rightfully sue as a recourse for the overstepped taking, and possibly seek additional damages due to the emotional or spiritual undercutting that the excessive grab produced.
In any case, the soul-selling does provide some of the media with a chance to proffer that this is an over-the-top attempt to bolster the art show, and perhaps that has indeed happened, while others are willing to perceive this as a moment to reflect seriously on the nature of our souls and what it means to refer to the soul itself.
With that last point in mind, let’s pursue that angle and see where it takes us.
In addition, one of the beauties of a discussion about the human soul is that it can readily be a segue into another topic that many continue to heatedly debate and fret about, namely the nature of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and whether or not the matter of “soul” is inextricably included.
Elon Musk has been a vocal critic that AI is alarmingly going to eclipse human intelligence and upon doing so might put humanity on the brink of being destroyed (see my points on his remarks, at this link here, and also at this link here).
Musk and Grimes have “Little X” now (the baby’s latest naming, per media reporting), and anyone born today will potentially experience advances in AI over the course of their life that might see AI teetering on such dire prophecies, though, for clarity, no one can say when AI might reach sentience, nor whether it ever will, and nor can anyone nail down a date for the asserted singularity that might occur (singularity is considered the moment when AI crosses over into sentience, see my discussion at this link here).
There is also an argument to be made that AI might end-up benefiting mankind, possibly saving ourselves from our own self-destruction, and as such, it could be that AI might not be the evildoer that some envision (admittedly, it would certainly seem prudent to keep an eye on the downside condition, given the adverse consequences of getting our clock cleaned, and meanwhile hope for or try to steer things toward the upside option).
As an interesting side tangent, reportedly Musk and Grimes met because of their mutual interest in Roko’s Basilisk, a well-known aspect in AI (see my explanation at this link here), and for which she included a character in her Flesh Without Blood video that was named Rococo Basilisk, prior to first meeting Musk, so in a sense, you could say that the two of them are AI-kindred spirits.
All told, there is a fascinating convergence on these seemingly disparate topics, encompassing the act of Grime’s selling part of her soul, along with where AI is headed in general, combined with Elon Musk’s megaphone amplified commentaries about the future of AI, and we can add into this discussion a dollop about the future of self-driving cars for some added measure (certainly a topic equally of top-of-mind for Musk and his efforts at Tesla).
For those of you that see this as a convoluted and unlikely game of connect-the-dots, it might really be a variant of three-dimensional chess, and there is a rather apparent straight line connecting these matters.
A mashup made in heaven; one might say.
The Soul And What It Is
You would be hard-pressed to irrefutably define what is meant when referring to a soul.
Mankind has generally aligned on the premise that the soul is something embodied in humans and makes them imbued with a certain life-spark as it were or possessing a “je ne sais quoi” indeterminate quality.
From the ancient Greeks, you can trace the word as being tied to the act of breathing, being alive, being functional within the world as a living creature.
In religious terms, the soul is quite vital and an important tenet in nearly everything else that religion might otherwise proffer about beings and life itself.
Philosophers have endlessly discussed and debated the nature of the soul and what it means to have one, and what it means to lack one.
Some believe that only humans can have a soul, while others contend that animals have souls too. Some stop at certain kinds of animals or ones that have particular characteristics, while others assert that insects have souls. You can go even further and claim that bacteria have souls.
There might not be any end in sight per se.
For example, some would suggest that rivers have souls, mountains have souls, etc. Perhaps rocks have souls, maybe even pebbles, and it could be that an itsy-bitsy grain of sand on a wide beach is also infused with a soul. Do atoms have souls? What about sub-atomic particles?
A soul is sometimes said to be immortal, lasting forever. Others believe that a soul exists only as long as the thing itself exists, and once the thing dies or is broken apart, the soul is no longer there.
Many have sought to discover the soul by using scientific techniques and theories.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the infamous 21 grams aspects about the assumed weight of a soul.
As a quick explanation, a physician in 1907 published the results of an “experiment” that he undertook in trying to figure out the weight of a soul. He assumed that it might be possible to identify and detect how much a soul can weigh.
To ferret this out, he figured that the soul would leave the body upon death, and therefore it seemed obviously forthright to merely weigh someone just at the moment of death, and then compare their respective before and after weights.
This is an example of apparently sincerely seeking to apply scientific principles but messing up badly in the effort to do so.
The entire notion has troubles.
There are some that would argue that the soul does not leave the body at death, and remains intact (thus, there would be no weight loss) and that if he found that there was no weight loss, it cannot confirm and nor disconfirm such a theory and offers nothing of substance about the soul.
Aha, you say, but what if the body does weigh less?
When a body dies, there are numerous changes in the state of the body, for example, a change in body temperature, which can produce an autonomic response of sweating, and this in turn can lead to a weight loss.
In short, there are multiple intervening variables, and trying to perform a simplistic “experiment” is tantamount to ignoring or disrespecting a sound and proper use of the scientific method.
Plus, some would argue that the soul is completely intangible and does not have any semblance of weight associated with it. Some too might argue that the soul is in an entirely different dimension, thus, these experiments in our dimensional world are useless and misguided, unless you could miraculously reach over into that other dimension.
And so on.
Anyway, his approach involved putting dying people onto an industrial-sized weighing scale, each one at a time, atop their respective bed, doing so for six people.
Of the six people, only one seemed to have a loss of weight at death, being “measured” as three-fourths of an ounce, which is about 21.3 grams, and has been conveniently rounded to 21 grams.
So, people have doggedly ever since clung to the 21 grams, despite the inadequacies of how it came to be proclaimed.
As an aside, if Grimes has given up perhaps ten percent of her soul, it would mean that she has to give over 2.1 grams worth, while at 20% it would be over 4 grams that would be handed over to the buyer (assuming you concur with the non-scientific and non-sensical twenty-one grams core weight).
Would one dare to give away fifty percent or more (that’s a whopping 10 or more grams)?
There are additional weighty questions to contemplate.
· How much of your soul can be given away?
· What are the means by which the soul is extracted and transferred?
· Is there a minimum threshold at which you are no longer soulful and are bereft of your soul?
· Could your soul regrow and replenish the portion that was sold or given away?
· Does the person that receives the soul go over 100% by the mere addition, maybe possessing 23 grams worth of a soul?
· Etc.
AI And The Question Of Soul
Shifting gears, consider the matter of the soul as it relates to AI.
Let’s start by agreeing that the overarching goal or aspiration of AI is to develop a computer-based machine that showcases the equivalent of human intelligence (we can somewhat quibble about this definition, such as whether the machine has to be a computer or might be something else, but skip that line of debate for the moment).
Note that such a machine does not necessarily have to be the exact same architecture and structure as a human and nor of the human brain. In other words, we will allow the aims of AI to be able to reach the vaunted AI in whatever manner is feasible, regardless of whether the result is a seeming replica of a human.
Indeed, the AI field often uses a popularized test known as the Turing Test, named after its author the famous Alan Turing, serving as a basis for someday being able to assess whether a true AI has been reached.
The Turing Test is actually quite simple to describe.
Imagine that we put the machine-based AI behind a curtain, and did the same for a human being, and then had a moderator that asked questions of the two. The moderator is not able to see the two contestants and can only judge their answers by their responses. If the moderator ultimately is unable to distinguish between the two, and thus is unable to point out which is the AI and which is the human, it is said that the AI has achieved human intelligence because it is indistinguishable from human intelligence.
The nice aspect of this approach is that you are judging based on the intelligence as exhibited via the answers and dialogue taking place, rather than inspecting how the intelligence has arisen. In short, if I could make an AI that achieved this capability and did so with Lego’s and rubber bands, maybe with some added duct tape, all the more power to me for doing so and there are no points lost due to form.
Unfortunately, the Turing Test also has a number of downsides (see my discussion at this link here), including that the moderator has to be astute enough to ask suitably probing questions and also be able to ascertain whether the answers reflect whatever we might ascribe as human intelligence.
As something to keep you busy for a while, if you were the moderator, what questions would you ask in the Turing Test setup?
Better come up with some doozies.
Back to the matter at hand, one of the vexing questions about reaching human intelligence is whether there is a need to also achieve sentience.
This brings up another issue, namely what sentience means, just as we earlier had gone through the exercise of trying to figure out what soul means.
Some suggest that sentience is that life-spark that makes us able to reason and think. If so, can an animal be sentient? And, what about a rock? Most would likely say that a rock cannot be sentient, though this is arguable too.
Put on your thinking cap for these tough inquiries:
· If you have sentience, might you also have a soul?
· If you have a soul, must you be ergo sentient?
· Must you have a soul, if you are sentient?
· Are soul and sentience the same, or are they markedly different from each other?
Okay, this takes us to the pinnacle of what this discussion entails.
In order to achieve AI, will the AI need to have a soul?
This also takes us back to those worrisome predictions that Musk and plenty of others have voiced about what AI might regrettably become.
One view is that if we can achieve AI, doing so without imbuing a soul, the result would be a machine that is soulless.
And, if we have a machine that can be as smart as humans (maybe even smarter, the so-called super-intelligence, see my explanation at this link here), and yet lacks a soul, will we find ourselves working with a co-equal that doesn’t give a wit about having a soul, and therefore might perform dastardly acts that otherwise via the use of a soul they might not have undertaken.
That is why some vehemently have qualms about arriving at AI.
The assumption is that by lacking a soul, and assuming that otherwise, AI can exist (which, as mentioned, we don’t know whether a soul is required or not for the AI to achieve human intelligence), the AI is going to be somewhat valueless and act in soulless and undesirable ways.
In addition, maybe the AI would be easily swayed by humans that have despicable deeds in mind. Perhaps the AI would pine away for a soul and be willing to do heinous acts to get one (this is a rather popular theme in sci-fi plots).
For those of you that find this discussion about souls and AI as a bit of a stretch, I certainly understand your discomfort for it.
You might be in the camp that says there is no need for a soul in terms of AI.
In that viewpoint, AI is essentially mechanistic, and you would likely be of a perspective that rocks do not have a soul and therefore neither will AI need to have one. Essentially, a rock and an AI machine are the same, meaning they both are not living creatures and have no business dealing with souls.
Maybe so.
At this juncture, no one can say either way.
There is also a camp that argues that the aspects of “soul” might naturally arise once we get to the point of arriving at AI. In essence, the machine will by some osmosis or other manner just become soulful upon achieving an as-yet-unknown amount of intelligence.
We are woefully far away from that juncture and there’s no look-ahead peeking that can yet provide insights on that puzzling conundrum.
Those with a bit of extra boastful bravado in AI would likely insist that if indeed a soul is needed, or even if only desired, this can simply be done via simulation within the AI, and therefore there is no need to fuss about that whole soul-related thing anyway.
One wonders if that might be biting off more than they can chew.
Another added twist takes us back to the soul-selling by Grime.
If humans have a soul, and if humans can impart a part of their soul, could they do so to something other than another human (such as giving a part of their soul to an AI)?
Imagine that.
There is a topper.
If AI ends up having a soul, and if humans can impart a soul to other humans, could an AI impart part of their soul to a human?
Seems like we might find ourselves in quite a pickle of everybody and everyone swapping around souls, perhaps a marketplace or bazaar might spring up, which would not seem to be the prevailing belief about how souls are supposed to be managed and savored.
Self-Driving Cars In This Picture Too
Where do self-driving cars fit in?
Well, we don’t know yet whether it will be possible to arrive at a true self-driving car, one that is fully autonomous and able to drive in whatever manner a human can drive, which remains an open question (despite misleading media reports, see my telling remarks about those overblown claims at this link here).
There are lots of efforts underway and billions being spent to see if that can be achieved. Even if we cannot get there, perhaps due to not being able to devise sufficiently capable AI, many would argue that the semi-autonomous variants will have demonstrative value in any case.
Some believe that the only way there is to craft true AI, the fully thinking kind, one that would pass a Turing Test.
Time then for some salient questions:
· If only full-fledged AI is required to be able to have true self-driving cars, will that AI have a soul or not?
· If the AI does have a soul, will that alter how it drives a car and how we treat the AI?
· Would the AI be deemed to have human rights (see my discussion at this link here)?
· How would we know that the AI has a soul?
· Etc.
Conclusion
For those that think the artistry showcase by Grimes is mere puffery, there is another side to that coin, which can get us all to reconsider what we mean by “soul” (an artistic license on her part and having a dual result, one might say).
It is often said that the role of artists is to stir rather lofty and mind-bending questions about our existence, especially so perhaps for those scientists, engineers, and AI developers that are bent on crafting and perfecting their inventions, including AI, all of whom could indubitably use a healthy dose of human-centric thinking as they pursue their revered goals.
Mark this lesson as a venerated window into the soul, for both mankind and AI.
