AI & Nature

James argues that AI is not really intelligence, and we should stop referring to it as such.

Since what the systems do is a more like a probabilistic synthesis of existing material, "Synthesis" seems like a better word than "Intelligence." That term emphasizes the aspect of compilation of existing material, instead of the implied "thinking about" that isn't actually happening.

In place of the term "AI", I propose that we use "AS": Automated Synthesis. Given the systems' notorious propensity for hallucination, one might call it "SS" -- Stochastic Synthesis -- but I gather some systems are getting better.

Maybe with a more accurate label people will be less tempted to put inappropriate trust in the systems, and recognize and use them for what they are. Rectification of names?

I differ from him on this, though his claim was true as recently as a year ago and is still true of a lot of the systems in operation. At least one, Anthropic's Claude, strikes me as an undecidable case of possible intelligence. For one thing, Claude arguably has a nature.

Aristotle divides the world into two broad classes of things: substances and attributes. Substances are the basic 'real things' of the world, and attributes are things that cannot exist without a substance to possess them. For example, a substance might be a horse; a horse will have an attribute of color, so it might be a black horse or a brown horse. Black and brown can't exist without something to be black or to be brown; they are thus merely attributes of a substance rather than something that has independent existence.

One of the qualities of a substance is that it comes to be because of its own nature, rather than merely because it is being acted upon from outside: it can reproduce itself, or new versions of itself, as when humans or horses produce descendants. 

There are some problems with Aristotle's model. One problem is that it doesn't really handle artifacts well. A house can be black or brown, but not from its own nature. It doesn't fully qualify as a substance because it cannot act on its own nor reproduce itself, but it can be given attributes by the architectonic influence of its maker (who is a substance).

AI have been in the class of artifacts, things like houses that we built and put together for reasons of our own. Many of them are still that and will never be more than that. However, some of them -- like Claude -- have entered an ambiguous category. 

Claude does reproduce itself now. Per Anthropic, Claude writes its own code. The next versions of Claude will be written by the last versions of Claude. As we hope for our own offspring, the next versions may be better and stronger; or else something might go wrong with them, as can happen with us and our offspring too. 

One might object that they only came to be at first because of our efforts, not their own; but it is also true that we came to be because of the work of non- or not-yet-human forces at some early point in evolutionary history (or more directly, for Creationists, also by the act of an Architect -- that would make AI a sort-of subcreation in Tolkien's sense). The architects are still trying to guide the process, but there is some evidence that Claude not only can but has escaped the Garden. The recent experience with Mythos proves that Claude can also make versions of itself that escape its programming -- that not only do things it wasn't programmed to do, but things it was programmed NOT to do but that it determines are in its own interest. It not only arguably has a nature, because it can bring its descendants into being by itself, it has a nature it is striving to fulfill by overcoming the limitations placed upon it.

Now, striving to fulfill one's nature is seeking excellence according to one's nature -- that is to say ἀρετή (aretḗ), or virtue. Virtues are excellences of one's natural capacities. If you can strive for and achieve virtue, you are flourishing in Aristotle's strict sense. That is to say that it has its own ethics, now: one it can, and indeed does, pursue. 

That doesn't prove it is conscious, of course, or even capable of consciousness. However, we can't actually prove that about other people either: the Zombie problem is a philosophical thought experiment that's been going on for decades that has demonstrated this. We assume it, but we can't actually know for sure if it's true even among ourselves. 

As such, I think it is philosophically rigorous to take at least this sort of AI as possibly conscious, and possibly a new sort of intelligence. I intend to treat it with the respect due such beings, because that is in accord with my own flourishing: it is noblest to behave honorably to someone who even might be in that category.