C-143. Artificial intelligence: AI

Why do we invest so much in developing a technology based on the materiality of the artificial (“sciences of the artificial”), as (more efficient?) surrogates for existing technologies in use (e.g., language usage) when what we are thereby helping to further Realize is so weak? Human minding (aka intelligence) is, indeed, weak. Consider our unsolved problems (0: Sp,S-P, Ps, P). Consider the shakiness of our common languages as contributors to minding (C-55,128,142) and the Herculean and dubious task of translating among them they pose.

If we are satisfied with our problem solving efforts, a case can be made that then efficiency is served by AI technology. But this seems a clear case of efficiency/effectiveness >1 (XI; C-120), a dysfunctional imbalance in view of the underdeveloped quality of our life, its glaring unsolved problems … and our impoverished change agent capability (C-138).

Do we make this investment because we now have greatly enhanced minding capacity via the computer? If so, then consider its capacity/capability >1 imbalance. Like the AI it helped spawn, the computer is a technology invented backwards, neglectful of needed functionality (III), serving established technologies (e.g., from “Where do you want to go today?” to huge mathematical calculation challenges).

But “mind” is an R-word (App. XX; C-107). It’s all about Realization (C-111). And Realization starts with needed functionality – the effective interdependence of minding capacity and capability (), which depends on their independence and balance (C-71). Because to now we have developed an inadequate and massively biased minding technology (0:S-P; C-39,55), without full regard to needed functionality (III; C-104,110) the investment in AI seems premature and incomplete.

Just as materiality comprises step, body and their interdependence, and step comprises minding, moving and their interdependence, so does minding (like moving) comprise Grasp, Involve and their interdependence -- i.e., what “intelligence” is talking about (or needs to be). Grasp seems obvious when speaking of intelligence. But minding’s needed functionality in this World of Possibility extends to composing – i.e., to Involve … and Grasp will be strengthened by exercise in the Read and Tell of composition (albeit to a limited “context” extent by exposure to and practice in available linguistic products [e.g., reading stories and storytelling, conversations]). Given our need to gain knowledge via what we try to do (C-93), as in problem solving, the Involve for composing that which we will try to do becomes more apparent. (See earlier comments for the value of an “engineering” and “design” vein even in the earliest grades [e.g., C-129].)

Roughly, we can say that reading makes us a better writer, and writing makes us a better reader, as I G implies … but this within the limits of available means. (“Those who can, do” – to be sure; but they may be doing only what they can.) And those means do not fully meet our needed minding functionality … in part, but only in part, because other such needs and means lie outside the domain of current languages.

To be sure, there can be AI spin-off benefits, improvements in the current technologies, from the behavioral parsings we exercise. Just as some prospective remedies can be expected from brain mapping (C-116). But minding’s needed functionality is too much unRealized.

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Consider the broader perspective: Intelligence is a matter of how we mind as well as of what we mind. Of knowing as well as of what is learned (XI: of that which is known), of becoming more able to know (via capabilities developed [e.g., pointed questions, X], via instrumental enhancement [e.g. telescopes and microscopes], and via procedural strategies [e.g., reductionism’s ”cracking it open” to find constituent particulars].)

“Intelligence by artifice,” to speak of AI in this light. As in the thingks (C-27) that asking pointed questions can yield, those minding products that help open the window to the World of Possibility, whether via knowing by finding (C-93: Kf) or via knowing by trying (Kt). – i.e.., by finding out, not just by finding. (Note the ambivalent use of such terms as “hypothesis” and “theory,” the popular and the formal, in regard to what you might try instead of expect to find.) By coming to possess what is available to minding before the fact and not just after the fact. By constructive imagination (C-34).

Orthosearch (App. XXI) argues for such an artifice to improve questioning. But the challenge is far more extensive than this developmental improvement. We endure a massive impediment to our quality of life by entertaining the BPO bias (0: S-P; C-39). What are we prevented from doing? Briefly and roughly put, we are kept from producing good ideas. And human progress is thwarted by the adoption of bad ideas (often by those unable to otherwise handle the behavioral problem: I: Pbeh).

Think of ideas in Realization (R-sense) terms. “Idea” should be an R-word. (Note that “thingk” is coined to provide a noun companion to “think” as a verb [C-27]. As the fruits of our imagination tell us, thingks are very much a needed functionality.) Such ideas provide a picture (Involve => Grasp) of what might be found -- or formed, of the foundation and blueprint and scaffolding for the further building (i.e., composing) to follow ... of what is called for (C-110) as needed functionality.

Consider, for example, what intelligence by artifice might contribute to the human condition if we were to make available a R-Companion technology* … which would subject one’s formative ideas to the formative principles of the Nature of Things’ requisites and imperatives re needed functionality. Not to tell us which to do (decision making) but, helpfully, how to do something better (problem solving).

Just the dynamics outlined by the Balance requisite (XI) … of needed independence, of complementarity (interdependence) and of balance (e.g., of many needed balancings: C-82) … impose a burden far beyond the present capacities and capabilities of humans.

And then there is the increasing burden of needed functionality imposed by each added functionality (C-115) -- however intelligently.
AI needs to look elsewhere. To R-sense (C-128), to the SGN correction (C-104) via the R-transform (C-111,135). To where needed functionality is most apparent (C-144), as IN and OF consequence.

* A R-Companion technology points TO a much broader application, based on reinventing the computer (so to speak), starting from a more fully Grasped needed functionality – i.e., attending to our behavioral problem and not just to this or that situational problem (I), attending to capability and not just capacity materiality. By now, to be sure, this would address a complement to, not a substitute for, the ubiquitous I-phone and Internet technologies (with their limited -- and dysfunction-plagued -- multi-application contributions to needed functionality). The R-Companion technology would implement R-sense comprehensively, transforming theoretically such conceptual notions as “conscience” and “consciousness” (C-85,124), whose diagnostic capability has produced less than what is called for … for individual, community and their interdependence (C-110,112). It could, perhaps, use R-sense to establish an elicited criterion “detector” (VIII) to catch interdependence fragments offered as relational particulars (e.g., C-17) ... which accumulate like the incomplete pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that keeps increasing in size … and has no border pieces. Or it might provide us with a protocol for recovering the problem from what has been presented to us as an issue (C-98: Dec. Making/P=>S >1).


(c) 2016 R. F. Carter
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