Jottings on a Tuesday evening.. - The triumph of AlphaGo

Jottings on a Tuesday evening..

While we celebrate the victory of artificial intelligence over Man in a game of chess or Go, I would like pause and think on what do we mean by this word intelligence. Chess or Go, if you come think of it, is in essence only a series of computed moves based on logical rules accumulated through experience, culminating in a decision triggered by a previous frame of reference. Which means, if a piece of software can be programmed recursively for all possible combinations of moves based on a variable or a set of variables, then it is not at all surprising that we would eventually end up building a machine capable of holding billions of instructions to be served at moments notice. Given the state of computing today, this is child's play. Machines are unemotional, psychologically irrelevant, relentless, methodical, error-free and they don’t suffer from the vacillations to which Human beings are naturally prone. Hence anything that requires tireless persistence and rigor are fit candidates for automation. Therefore, Board Games, card games , physically and mentally repetitive tasks find greater success in our endeavor to automate Them. Nothing more. When Gary Kasparov lost to deep Blue in 1997, or when the young Korean master Lee-se dol was comprehensively beaten by AlphaGo in last few weeks, are we seriously speculating or expostulating that Machines are becoming more and more intelligent, or is a threat or substitute to Human Intelligence? Nothing can be more ridiculous!! Intelligence, for God sake, is more holistic a phenomenon than merely calculating moves on a chess or a Go board. Let us not forget it has taken years of extreme computing to outmaneuver Lee on the Go board. After feeding millions of games into it, AlphaGo was able to produce a statistically viable move capable of outwitting the champion. It is more long term rote, than intelligent decision making. But would you consider that to be threat to Human intelligence? I am not for a moment demeaning this achievement in creating such a software. It has its place in human progress, but let's try and place this event in perspective. Since the time the phrase "Artificial intelligence" was coined in late 1950's, there has been this persistent worry ( or expectation, some would say) that Machines would slowly outdo human beings. Nothing wrong with that. We have always made machines and appliances only to make our lives easier. But that does not mean they are intelligent. In fact, the problem is calling it "intelligent” because the word means something entirely different. All that software has done or can do is compute and measure, based on past data.. Intelligence is something beyond that. It is that irresistible sense of "knowing" and "feeling" in the presence of numerous alternatives without any foreknowledge of it. And no software can ever get there, at least not in the near future, unless we suddenly decode the mystery of Human consciousness.

Lets get one thing straight. I am willing to accede that machines may eventually be programmed to do everything a logical, reasonable human would do, but what it can never replace or substitute is the "experiencing self" of Man- which is the cusp of intelligence . A machine may beat me in a game, work for me, play for me, think for me - but never once will it ever feel the living pulse of “I” ness, which I, as a Human being experience to be constant thread of my existence, against which the drama of life is played out in its wonderful variety, with so many conscious and unconscious intelligent decisions made every moment. We may be fallible, but in that very fallibility lies tremendous joy and existential knowing. Lee made a significant remark after his defeat. He said " It is odd playing against a machine. A game is played in response to Human reaction, body language and emotions. But with a machine, it is just precision..." And there lies the foolishness. Why would I want to play against something that essentially does not know what playing means, or fun means, or tension means. If all that is taken away, then what is the purpose of the game at all. What are we trying to prove.

Intellect and intelligence are two different dimensions. What machines can do successfully is ape Human intellect because it is built from Logical rules, but intelligence is that intangible presence within us that makes intellect worth possessing in the first place. J Krishnamurti brings out the difference beautifully when he says

"..Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Rather, intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally. There is a vast distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is merely thought functioning independently of emotion. When intellect, irrespective of emotion, is trained in any particular direction, one may have great intellect, but one does not have intelligence, because in intelligence there is the inherent capacity to feel as well as to reason; in intelligence both capacities are equally present, intensely and harmoniously.."

It is not my intention to go into current researches in neuroscience and what its proponents feel about the quality of Human Intelligence. But , it seems clear to me, it's leading advocates are strongly convinced that mimicking processes of thought is not intelligence. It seems something larger, more encompassing than that. That's good news for all of us..

God bless…

Yours in Mortality,

Bala