Towards A Furious Philosophy Of The Discrete

Information Fascism

The view of human consciousness as mysterious and ineffable will soon be 
displaced by the view that this consciousness is an emergent property of the 
information-processing system of the human brain.  

"It is important to note here that the view of the universe as an information-processing 
system is not an ad hoc assumption on the part of the advocates of the AI 
evolution-of-consciousness hypothesis - it is widely endorsed throughout the
entire scientific community.   The notion that all complex life forms are 
information-processing systems was first advanced by Norbert Wiener in the early 
1940's in an attempt to explain biological behavior using concepts like feedback 
and equilibrium.  This view was greatly extended and reinforced about a decade later 
when James D. Watson and Francis Crick suggested in their model of DNA that the program 
for generating life was stored in a pattern of nucleic acids.  More important, this view 
has been recently expanded by experts in systems theory, information theory, cybernetics, 
and modern theoretical physics to apply to all activities in the universe.  

The area of scientific study that has most substantively validated the claim that 
the human brain is an information processing system is neuroscience.  

The following comments by advocates of the hypothesis illustrate the extent to 
which their understanding of the character of evolution legislates over their 
view of AI technologies inexorable progress into existence as conscious beings.  
According to John Kemeny, inventor of the programming language BASIC, what we will 
witness in the initial stages of the AI Revolution is a "symbiotic union of two 
living species," ourselves and AI computer systems, and "each will be dependent on the 
other for survival."  When a machine with the average intelligence of a human being 
comes into existence, says Marvin Minsky, a pioneer and leading exponent of research 
in artificial intelligence at MIT, it  "will begin to educate itself... in a few months 
it will be at the genius level... a few months after that its power will be incalculable." 

When we look into the more distant future, according to physicist Robert Jastrow, 
we are obliged to come to an even more dramatic conclusion; "The era of carbon-chemistry 
life is drawing to a close on earth and a new era of silicon-based life - indestructible, 
immortal, infinitely expendable - is beginning." ...

There are, of course, many reputable AI experts who do not endorse the AI 
evolution-of-consciousness hypothesis, and who regard those who do as extremists.  
Although it might be tempting to dismiss the hypothesis by appealing to the 
authority of the experts, those who are concerned about the potential negative 
impacts of future AI systems on human life and consciousness should, in my view, 
resist this impulse.  The first reason for doing so is that these alleged extremists 
have enormous reputations in AI research, and their advocacy of the hypothesis is 
anything but casual.  ... If they succeed in their efforts to make the hypothesis 
an orthodox view in the AI community, which is clearly their intent, then the 
consequences could be graver that most of us could begin to imagine.  
If the planners and developers of AI systems come to view these systems as 
stages in an evolutionary process that is inexorably leading to the creation of 
conscious beings that will be superior to ourselves, it is reasonable to assume 
that they will not be terribly preoccupied with the potential negative impacts 
on ourselves." - Nadeau
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