[ExI] People often think their chatbot is alive

[Giovanni Santostasi]

In a way brains are also "hives", it is a mystery how the single neurons,
that are relatively simple and unaware, create collective awareness and a
sense of I. But that sense of I is very precious and important. We are
unique as individuals and I think that individuality should be preserved
and cultivated. Merging with AI should be done carefully to maintain some
level of individuality. I'm very different from when I was 10 for example
but I do share memories, preferences and tendencies with that being and I
feel we are somehow the same being. I think any uploading, merging with a
hive mind or AI needs to be done gradually where the previous state is
processed and absorbed by the new one to maintain a sort of continuity. A
too quick transformation would be equivalent to death.
Bees and ants are very interesting and indeed relevant to this discussion.
But the critical thing for us, to transition to some level of hive mind,
that I think is almost unavoidable for humans and artificial minds we will
create, is to respect and protect the subunit individuality. This is not a
problem for neurons or bees because they do not possess a high level of
awareness but it would be a challenge in our case. Maybe a solution similar
to "power rangers" or similar comic book plots where individuals merge
temporarily to solve a challenge or task would work well.
By the way I did some work in stimulating neurons with sounds during deep
sleep when I was at Northwestern (I have a patent on this technology) and
it is very fascinating to see the neurons respond to external stimuli and
being able to affect high level brain functioning like memory for example.
One of the things we found out in this research is that this stimulation
cannot be similar to driving a mechanical machine, for example using a
constant pulse.One has to do it in a closed loop to make it work. We used a
Phase Locked Loop, where the brain rhythm is the master clock. Basically,
we played back to the brain his own rhythms (using short bursts of pink
noise) and gently moved it in a desired direction (for example enhancing
low delta frequencies, that are good for deep sleep). In other words, even
if we were trying to enhance brain function, we had to listen to intrinsic
brain "wisdom" and let the system be guided by it.



On Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 8:53 AM Dave S via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 13, 2022 at 4:14 PM Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> [...] also I agree with Kurzweil that merging with AI eventually is the
>> only solution to them replacing us eventually.
>>
>
> Merging, as in adding AI at the individual level, or achieving some kind
> of symbiosis, where we're still us/them but we work with each other?
>
> I think if humans could form effective superorganisms we could outcompete
> AI unless they form superorganisms, too. Reading about honeybees in
> Seeley's _Honeybee Democracy_ got me thinking about the power of the
> superorganism. Individual bees are pretty stupid but a hive is capable of
> making good decisions.
>
> -Dave
>
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