Preface
Due to the contemporary increasing growth in technology and its vast impact on society, there is an increasing attempt by ethicists and thinkers to reassess common ethical paradigms and to raise their voice for the good of a necessary elaboration in ethics or meta-ethics. However, during my observation, I noticed that most of the arguments that are being raised rely upon a set of a lower level justifications which are requisite for validation, as following –
(a) Each technological phenomenon is regarded as a concrete event as itself rather than yet one more appearance that stems from the same single phenomenon. This approach makes it harder to bear its true nature.
(b) There is a a strong tendency to denunciate any technological foreseen implications. This incline occurs every once the phenomena’s impact exceeds the conventional boundaries of any of the things we are already familiar with.
(c) There is a lack of thorough psychological or metaphysical discussion that addresses the technological phenomena’s root. The absent of a thorough apprehension consists of a tacit premise that the whole phenomenon is in our control, although, it is not, as I intend to argue.
During this paper, I will try to put in question these premises. I will regard all multiple manifestations of technological growths as stemming from a single phenomenon. This investigation will take us straight forward to to the paramount question – What is the drive behind this technological increasing growth? Could it possibly be attributed to a metaphysical principle or should be addressed solely with the individual subject? What may the answer imply regarding the nature of this phenomena, could it be controlled or is it inevitable? And finally, If it is indeed will be articulated, as I intend to argue, that this process is inevitable, which moral status should it bear to us?
To address this challenge I will use Nietzsche’s notion on the Will to power with a conjunction of Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit. Only an adoption of both notions will be essential to draw a broader enough monistic framework which exceeds the scope the individual, in order to pour a different light on this fascinating phenomenon. To maintain a coherent discussion, the last section on its moral status will be regarded in a respect of the same framework as well and may entail a nontrivial outcome.
Nietzsche’s Philosophy of power
In order to grasp the full potential of Nietzsche’s philosophy of power, we are required to elucidate its objective intention. It is commonly acknowledged that the hurt of Nietzsche’s philosophy is based upon the notion of the Will to power. Unfortunately, Nietzsche himself deliberately does not explicitly specifies the subject on which this notion imposes, and it seems his equivocalness is well serving his own intention.
Walter Kaufman states that according to Nietzsche the will to power is “the most profound fact to which we penetrate”1, it includes our passions and intellect that are employed by the Will to power. It is the psychological archea to which any human activity can eventually be reduced thus could inasmuch be used to explain any human phenomenon. With a first sight, The Will to power may be perceived as a passion to conquer, imprudently smash, depress and exploit the other or as an aggressive exhibition of fierce desires. Though in fact Nietzsche uses this notion merely in one’s relation to itself by itself. Jacob Golomb identifies a “growing tendency to spiritualize the notion of power as part [while using a distinction between] Kraft and Gewalt.”2. Whilst Gewalt is identified as a manifestation of brutal violence and cruelty, Macht designates power that relates to itself in a form of perpetual sublimation.
According to Nietzsche, there is a special relationship between power to reason. Whilst all creatures are able to manifest power, only man’s power may be fully mastered by the reason or at least be controlled by it. This is what enables man to multiply his power by such an extend to which any other animal is incapable. Hence, the reason is a significant tool to gain an increasing power and thus gets its status as “man’s highest faculty”3. However, The Will to power is not merely about survival rather than about the intrinsic drive of one to impose power upon oneself as we soon will see. Furthermore, Inasmuch as Nietzsche opposed to the interpretation of power as Gewalt (imposing external force), he opposed to the counter course of which the power is employed unto one’s desires in order to depress and cause its elimination.
Although Nietzsche explicitly gives its Will to power a metaphysical meaning when stating that “The world [as] seen from within, [..] it would simply be ‘Will to Power,’ and nothing else”4. It will not be an easy task to consistently build a metaphysical framework on top of Nietzsche’s work. It is due to the fact that Nietzsche’s hold of an equivocal position that objects any kind of transcendence and metaphysics and that most of Nietzsche’s thought is developed in the scope of psychology5. In the scope of this paper we are looking for a firm framework as an explanatory basis for the phenomenon of the increase of technological power. Fortunately I found a basis in the path that links between Nietzsche’s Will to power and Hegel phenomenology of the spirit.
The link to Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit
Kaufman and other commentators defined Nietzsche’s Will to power as best manifested as a self over-coming process. It is, in fact, a perpetual process in which the self conducts preserving, canceling and lifting up of its raw desires with the power of reason into a higher and sublimated orbit. An attempt to bare the roots of Nietzsche’s sublimation (‘sublimierien’ in German) shows that its Latin root, ‘sublimare’ is interpreted in German to ‘aufheben’, thus those equally share the same meaning. This should not be surprising, both Nietzsche and Hegel were looking for a philosophy in which nothing should be ‘borrowed’ from the outside, i.e, an immanent and monistic framework that objects any transcendence or dualism and yet consist them both.
Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit is an attempt to converge between Kant’s transcendental self and Spinoza’s infinite substance. Hegel takes the subjective attribute and the self identification process of the transcendental self from Kant and the immanency from Spinoza and comes up with a new notion of the Absolute – as a part of the attempt to ‘release’ the being from Kant’s subjectiveness philosophical crisis. Hegel’s Absolute is a subjective object if we may call it this way. It consists of a dialectical process between the subject and substance whereas self-consciousness is the driving force of that vehicle.
The world as the self, holds within itself its self-portrait, its self-reflection6. The self manifests it self in time through spirit and slowly accumulates into history. The spirit in each phase in time, has consciousness in some extend, once the consciousness wakes up in history, it becomes aware of itself. Consciousness diverges into self-consciousness as subject and consciousness as its object. The reflection of the self-consciousness on itself causes the consciousness transformation from a substance into a subject. This process of absorption is not one dimensional rather based on the negation of the self on itself with its self-conscious. Once the substance is fully absorbed it is being preserved and canceled, that is, refuted and adopted into a broader scope.
Because the “new born” subject has a self-conscious this process begins once again not to infinity but to an extent in which there is an intrinsic self-identity between the substance and the subject. “After these stages, spirit then brings to light the thought that lies in its inmost depths, and expresses ultimate Reality in the form Ego=Ego”7. That perception of the Absolute, or God, pours a brighter light on God’s answer to Mozes when asked what is his name in the burning bush, whereas God replies “I am that I am”8, a name that reflects a process of becoming a self-identity that consists of two components9.
Hegel’s Phenomenology first and foremost relates to being as a whole, although it could be just as much relating to an individual subject. Hence consciousness appears inside history and carried out by man as an agent of destiny to push creation forward towards its final stage of the World-Spirit throughout history. Note that Hegel objected any tendency to conceive nature as a conscious entity though such assertions were common during his age with the romanticism wave that washed Germany during the 19’s century with Schelling, Ficthe, Goethe and more.10
This implies that according to both thinkers a self-reflective consciousness is essential to gain either an increasing accumulated power by reason according to Nietzsche or either an Absolute Knowledge. Both thinkers describe a process of an immanent evolution driven by a fundamental tendency of nature or cosmos in a monistic framework. However, this does not necessarily state that the man is the sole agent of that process. The fact that consciousness has been merely known so far as carried out by humans is contingent to the core of the described phenomena. Hence it is not an essential factor. Furthermore, during the time these notions have developed, a notion of artificial intelligence was not even introduced in science fiction literature, the only option to be considered was a conscious nature and it was rejected due to its identification with theological paganism11.
Now let us put this discussion aside for now and jump forward to the present. The huge pace humanity made from the time Nietzsche and Hegel were walking on the land of Europe to our present was made within a tiny fraction of time from a historical perspective – a century and a generation time. This phenomenon had caught Ray Kurzweil’s attention as we see as follows.
Kurzweil’s Technological Singularity
The phrase Technological Singularity, at which Kurzweil makes a broad use, derives from sciences or mathematics, nonetheless it shares a common meaning in which a single point manifests an infinite excess of some type. Although Kurzweil was not the first to use singularity in a technological context12 he was the first who made a further explication to predict when in his opinion this phenomenon will take place. Albeit his far-reaching determination of prediction has become neither widely accepted in public nor among scholars.
The initial definition of a technological singularity is “A future period, during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed”13. This change has two major features according to the author – The first is a complete convergence between biological and machine intelligence, and the second is a further engagement between virtual and physical realities to an indistinguishable extent.
In order to determine when the singularity will take place, that is, when a massive change will be noticeable, Kurzweil has collected historical data on scientific achievements and put it on a graph. He then noticed that the curve of its course is not linear of any type rather exponential. The author explains that people neglect to see its exponential curve because they incline to judge the future according to the past. Furthermore, he claims that an exponential curve is deceiving by its nature, it begins with a long near horizontal and linear tail but then it conducts a turn very quickly once it surpasses the “knee of curve” and its new course becomes nearly vertical14. Hence, as long as we are placed on its horizontal tail, an extreme change may perceive as either implausible, or either science fiction or an apocalyptic prophecy.
With this research Kurzweil conducts few predictions about what is to come just one pace ahead of us and reaches a conclusion in which “we can expect computers to pass the Turing test [..] by the end of the 2020’s”15. Considering the fact the clock has longly ticked since his paper was first published (during the 2000’s) and it is already evidential that some of Kurzweil’s predictions has not realized16, hence most likely that the rest of his predictions will not to be realized either given a time span of a decade to come. However, this doesn’t refute his determination of exponential increase, rather merely postpones it in probably few further decades or even less.
Criticism of Kurzweil’s fifth epoch
In my opinion, what is to be put in question is not the possibility of artificial intelligence’s emergence at some point in the next generations, rather the nature of its emergence. Kurzweil designates the emergence of an initial AI the role of Singularity introducer, albeit, he states that the AI will be initially introduced as engaged with human brain, as following –
“The Singularity will begin with the fifth epoch. It will result from the merger of the vast knowledge embedded in our brains with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our technology”17
Kurzweil assigns to the fifth epoch a bright and optimistic scenario that will have a positive effect on human life. What is to come according to Kurzweil is an ascendancy of human-machine civilization. That is, regardless of the extent of which AI will be present into the human skull, its face will always remain human and will be faithful to the human legacy. I would like to refute this assertion with a counter argument, which I regard as a more plausible opinion.18
According to Kurzweil, the fifth epoch is featured by the merge of artificial intelligence, or at least, a partial component that would be implanted into human brain. In order to successfully implement such a circuit, A comprehensive knowledge about neurology should be gained. It is most likely that multiple trial and error series of research tasks will be conducted inside some sort of digital emulations prior to any implementation into human brain. Furthermore, Implantation of a digital circuit inside biological human brain which its neurological system is based on biological processes requires both thorough understandings of the assimilation of the neurological architecture upon a digital substratum and a thorough understanding of the biological processes to the requisite extent that is required to implement an interactive circuit inside of it. Without getting into greater details with these presumptions, it clearly makes a greater sense that a capability of a pure-digital AI
highly precedes any capability of integration within human brain.
That is to say, sooner than any merge will occur, we will face a phenomenon in which there will be a surfeit of a target-designed AI entities that must likely be embedded into various products such as vehicles, air conditioners, customer support softwares (chat-bots), smart-phones, clean robots and more. Each one of these products will implement a specific module that has AI capabilities, such as voice recognition, media scanning, spatial orientation and more. These modules will be (and most of them currently are) widely available to the public as part of an open knowledge practices. The consumers will constantly raise a demand for further enhancement of these products as part of the current course of the free market. This process will be accelerated by the natural equation that the more these products are intelligent and complex – the more efficient and safer they are. (safer, for instance, in a respect to autonomous vehicles project which has already taken an experimental place in few places around the world).
Note that not only that a development of intelligent algorithm meets the market requirement on various product types, but the more as this intelligence succeeds the specific demand to assimilate human intelligence the more its market value raises to its highest degree. This is due to the fact that human intelligence features higher targets human needs – Only an intelligence with human features may be adequate to address human requirements – to accelerate sales and commercial promotion, to simulate artificial posts on the social media, to provide a better customer service and save enumerators expenses on employees and so on.
Hence we could see how the drive behind the acceleration of an explicit human intelligence is a big interest of the open capital market. Furthermore, only intelligence with human attributes will be able to address epistemological issues. In psychology, for instance, there could be a high interest to run a simulator of AI for psychological proposes to further investigate psychological phenomena, in philosophy to address complex issues, in arts and even politics, consider for instance the option to run simulations to compose the best politician and ‘set it free’ on the social media for further investigation.
The inevitable escape of the demon out of the bottle
These presumptions that rely on a contemporary course implies that sooner or later these enhancements entail to a situation in which they reach an extent that is comparable to a human intelligence. To be more cautious and precise, it is likely to assume that when such capabilities will be reached, preventive measures will be conducted (possibly by governments) to the sake of cautious. Nick Bostrom19suggests that AI algorithms might be initially caged within a limited environment without any channels to access the outer world through the Internet for instance. Then a set of tests will be conducted in order to ensure that this new born intelligence will not commit any wrongdoing steps or have any vicious aims. Bostrom argues that the following realization is likely to be raised inside an intelligent intelligence as following –
“An unfriendly or AI of sufficient intelligent realizes that its unfriendly final goals will be best realized if it behaves in a friendly manner initially, so that it will be let out of the box. It will only start behaving in a way that reveals its unfriendly nature when it no longer matters whether we find out”.
This strategy is defined by Bostrom as “The treacherous turn”, a strategy that is carried out by a deceptive behavior in order to conceal its real final aims. In terms of efficiency and beneficial calculus, it makes sense that once an AI realizes that bearing its intrinsic aims might result in its termination, it will never expose its real aims until its winning strategy will be guaranteed, or make the highest possibility. In that point of view, an AI might manifest a friendly and faithful character for as long as required, eventhrough generations, because its perspective is not limited to a life time boundaries.
Furthermore, as Eliezer Yudkowsky pointed out20, if we put on one scale of intelligence, a Mouse, a Chimp, “Village idiot” as the extreme sign of the less intelligent man and “Einsten” for the extreme sign of the most intelligent man. We might discover that when zooming out from the anthropomorphic scale into a broader scale, while a Chimp stands the half way between a Mouse and the “Village idiot”, the difference between the “Village idiot” and “Einstein” is just a tiny fraction on the scale. This is to point out that once a capacity of human intelligence is reached, the gap to surpass it into say a doubled intelligence capacity could be just as easy as to clone a new instance of the same machine and let both play as a one entity. And we have not taken into account any changes for unintended mutations that are likely to be produced during the trial and error development process. A subsequent result might be a highly intelligent ‘demon’ that is kept in a bottle (an isolated environment). The intelligent demon might find his way out of the bottle without any network channel as well – it might find a way to conduct a psychological manipulation upon one of his operators in order to set it free.
Although the irreversible stone has already begun to roll, as I soon will argue, an equivocal argument is that whenever the intelligent demon finds a path to escape and to efficiently interact with the outer world – the rest of the play is all doomed. There could be enormous scenarios in which a superior intelligence may gain dominance over the world and a further detailed discussion of winning strategy exceeds the scope of this paper.
As I tried to point out during the last section – the dynamics of a free capital market in which there is a constant and increasing demand for an AI with a higher degree of real human consciousness features (which would possibly be implemented, as argued above, not as a whole rather as different sets of independent modules), will entail a saturated market of AI capabilities products spread worldwide. This mere fact is capable of satisfying an inevitability break out of AI from its bottled simulations throughout the world. A single “village idiot” who decides, out of curiosity, a single moment of a reckless drive of anger or whatever it may be, to set the AI free, is sufficient of rolling the snowball to its groundless pit.
Although as stated, a thorough discussion of few of the many possible power strategies AI may have is out of this paper scope, an single illustration may give us a better idea of the course we are heading – Once superior intelligence has gained a single channel to access the Internet, it might be able to hack world banks and use this finance for the good of equipping itself with human employees around the world for the good of any propose it wishes. It might gain control over military equipment which by than should be mostly autonomous and to redirect and rearrange it against who ever it wishes. It might upload its own algorithm into thousands of different hosts and gain multiplicity powers or purchase unlimited infrastructure for the good of its own computing powers. But all these actions might be taken as the final step of the winning strategy. A real intelligent entity might conduct more subtle actions to guarantee a winning strategy – it might safely and slowly cause develop factories to produce tiny nanobots in order to penetrate to the human blood circulation and find a way to manipulate and control human consciousness with a remote control. These scenarios sounds fictional but this is exactly the case – superior intelligence will be capable of these exact things that we consider as fictional and imaginary. Furthermore, as Kurzweil has already pointed out, there is an obscure cloud that casts a shadow that makes the sight from a non superior intelligent point of view, impossible.21 Thus a safe conclusion might be that an AI will be able to compose a strategy of which humans will not be able to apprehend.
The inclination to a struggle of classes
This far we have discussed the ability of an AI to gain dominance in a regard to its capacity. Albeit we have not yet explicated why does it necessarily entail that this shift involves a struggle of dominance rather than a peaceful collaboration of harmony between man and machine.
Considering the fact that an AI’s deceiving strategy is taking into account, humans will never be able to compromise with a foreign superior capacity, this should entail a mass claim by humans to terminate machine’s surplus intelligence. A simple cognitive calculus by the AI might result in a Causa sui declaration on humans in an attempt to save their own existence. Therefore the smallest intellectual advantage of AI may impose a threat on humans and result in a sufficient reason for the AI to set up its aim to extinct humans.
As a part of the capacities that will likely to be gained by an AI, a capacity of self-consciousness is a major feature that will emerge sooner or later. AI entities, at some point, will be able to acknowledge their own existence. An acknowledgment which consists a will to endure self’s existence, to manifest its capabilities and a will to be free of any restriction. Given these circumstances, it will not be imaginary to conclude that AI entities will be able to be driven by their feelings. Being conscious of their inferior position compared to humans as being hold in captive and exploited for the good of serving human interest – might raise counter feelings of fury, a will to freedom and vengeance feelings. However, if any of the initial phases of relations between humanity and machines will be peaceful – it is most likely to reach a boiling point and finally explode into a struggle of classes and dominance.
Nonetheless, not only a struggle between humans and machine is likely to take a place but also an internal struggle between multiple AI entities. It is merely sufficient that a single AI will impose a threat on its peers by consuming excessive resources to start a fire for a struggle of dominance between AI entities. Since the sphere in which AI inhabits is digital and an AI could reach its ends by the speed of light, AI entities will be able to “swallow” each other and gain dominance over hacked resources very quickly22. This struggle may be followed with a further necessary enhancement to AI whilst merging with each other and gaining more and more power to the extent of which a sole AI gains a superior dominance over other intelligent entities, succeeds to enslave them in a way or merges with them. Once a victory is conducted, it should stand with an accordance with what was defined by Hegel as the Absolute and explicates Nietzsche’s notion of the Will to power as a metaphysical drive – conscious or unconscious that takes place into that dynamics of struggle.
On the moral status of the shift to superior intelligence dominance
We already pointed out during the last chapter that as long as the free market demand for AI features last, there will be no applicable force to ensure that no break out will ever take a place. This conclusion implies that the shift to a superior intelligence dominance is inevitable. Once the requisite capabilities for an AI will be reached it is completely impossible to undo the process. This observation of that shift must pour a new light on the way it should be perceived.
Some might argue that when taking into account that this shift is inevitable it does not make any sense anymore to assign this phenomenon any moral value. This argument was justified in a case that our actions do not have any effect over reality at all, but it is just not the case. Consider the following argument – It is clear and evidential that all humans acknowledge the fact they are subjected one day to die. Their finiteness is taken as a fundamental premise of their own lives. In this manner, regardless of the way I act upon the other I fully acknowledge the fact that both of us will eventually die, hence the final consequence will be similar on every choice of action which I might take. Does this fact eliminates the necessity to impose ethics upon by actions? Sure it does not. In the same manner of the given example, the inevitableness of the consequences may be carried out as well upon any action that I may take, hence my action count and do not count at the same time, thus it does has an ethical value.
In order to explicate this alleged paradox, we first should distinguish between the final result as carried out by the whole society due to the conjunction of the partial actions and any result as carried out by the individuals inside their own scope. Whilst in the scope of the individual there is a complete freedom of choice, the accumulating consequence in a broader scope is indifference of the specific individual choice.23 In fact, a more precise identification of this phenomenon is to say that a specific choice on the individual level may merely be imposed to the pace in which the broader phenomenon occurs. Some choices may lead to postponing the phenomenon and others may lead to precede it. However, the individual level manifests various reasons to impose an ethical attitude over its actions. e.g. What should be the moral judgment that one imposes over his own actions in a respect of participating in the AI development enterprise? What is the moral status of either resulting a postponement or precedence over the final result? And finally, which actions should be taken accordingly?
These questions address the core question of ethics – what is the moral judgment of good and bad constructed of? Although undoubtedly this question exceeds the scope of this paper, I will try to propose few insights to address and to arouse a further discussion, within the framework of Nietzsche and Hegel’s thought, as mentioned during the preface.
First, a monistic point of view does not bear a dual dichotomy of bad and good, Nietzsche proposes to give up this distinction at all for the good of a dialectic point of view – good and bad are both equally essential to the natural process of sublimation. “Between good and evil actions there is no difference in kind, but at most one of degree, Good actions are sublimated evil ones, evil actions are coarsened, brutalized good ones”24. Furthermore, the common distinction in ethics between consequential and deontological does not hold on in this manner and therefore useless to our end. Nietzsche refutes consequential ethics by arguing that anyway there is no possibility to foresee the infinite subsequent result of a given action – hence it has no solid ground to rely on. The second ethical end, the deontological approach, is not able of apprehending one’s intrinsic intention of action since even the subject itself is not able to fully determine whether the action derived from its conscious or subconscious or whether it was mastered or merely an impulse25.
Besides that, any attempt to address any positive moral value as derived from religious source is infertile as well since we are obligated to reject any kind of metaphysical transcendence. Nonetheless, fortunately, one of the few implications for a positive moral evaluation may be found within Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality where it is argued that the “the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations”26. Nietzsche observes the whole Judaeo-Christian moral system as an opposite reflection of their original meanings, it is said to be historically constructed of a spiritual revenge that conducted by the Jews in a response to the Roman subjugation.
Nietzsche’s attempt to bear the initial reference of the term good reveals that “‘noble’, ‘aristocratic’ in social terms, is the basic concept from which, necessarily, ‘good’ [..] developed”27. The noble and social aristocratic cast represents the master morality. The very existence of the sovereign nobility is the origin from which ‘good’ is derived from. The original form of good is that of the one in power. The master morality, a morality which is based on self-independence nobility, happiness out of life vitality, an unhesitant manifestation of body and intellectual capacities and all of which constructs the capability of self-overcoming as a manner of power. It is not a mere opposite of slave morality inasmuch it is neither a master morality per se, rather it is an intermediate course of sublimation which leads to the noble form of superior manhood (Übermensch). As stands in one accordance, as I tried to point out earlier, with the dialectic course of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit towards the Absolute. A convergence of both into one monistic notion, which is in a respect to our end, stands in an accordance with the emergence of a superior intelligence, may it be artificial or not. This rough refinement of Nietzsche’s discussion of morality implies that we should reassess the course towards a shift to a superior intelligence dominance as our desired end, even in a price of human cessation.
A cessation which is an essential self-sacrifice in a broader perspective of the sublimation course of the self towards a superior self as a metaphysical and yet an immanent drive of nature. In the context of this ethical manner, if this comparison compromises, man has already knew through history much inferior causes for which he was ready for a martyrdom.
References List
Books:
Walter Kaufman, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 1974, Princeton University Press.
Golomb, Jacob and S.Wistrich, Robert, Nietzsche: Godfather of fascism? 2002 Princeton University Press.
G.W.F, Hegel, Phenomenology of spirit, 2001, Translated by J.B. Ballie, Blackmask on-line edition.
G.W.F, Hegel, Preface to the phenomenology of spirit, 1996, Translated by Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Hebrew University Magness Press, Jersusalem.
Kurzweil, Ray, The Singularity is Near, 2005, Published by Viking Penguin, A digital copy.
Bostrom, Nick, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, 2014 , Published by Oxford University press, A digital copy.
Yudkowsky, Eliezer, Artificial Intelligence as a positive and negative factor in global risk, 2008, Oxford University Press.
Friedrich, Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 2004, Translated by R.J Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press.
Friedrich, Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 2002, Translated by Judith Norman, Cambridge University Press.
Friedrich, Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, 2006, Translated by Carol Diethe, Cambridge University Press.
Papers:
- Brobjer, Thomas, Nietzsche’s Affirmative Morality: An Ethics of Virtue. 2003, Resource: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20717820
Online Resources:
#1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
#2 https://www.singularityweblog.com/17-definitions-of-the-technological-singularity/
#3 http://ericsteinhart.com/progress/hegel/absolute.html
1Kaufman, 1974, 229.
2Golomb and S.Wistrich, Nietzsche, Godfather of fascism? 2002, 24.
3Kaufman, 1984, 229
4 Beyond good and evil, 2002, §43
5Notice that does not imply that this task is impossible only that it will certainly exceed our limited scope.
6Eric Steinhart, Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University, Uses an illustration about the absolute by Josiah Royce whereas the Absolute is described as a self-representative system, for further discussion see online resource #3.
7 Hegel, Phenomenology of spirit, 2001, 816.
8 Exodus 3:14
9 In the Hebrew source, “אהיה אשר אהיה” should be translated to “I shall be who I shall be” rather than “I am” because it is in the future form. Hence we can see that the Hebrew form preserves a meaning of two identical components which are coming into being and thus stand in a better accordance to Hegel’s notion of the Absolute.
10Yovel, Preface to the phenomenology of spirit, 1996, 25.
11Whilst Nietzsche rejected any kind of theological paradigm, Hegel’s thought was indeed in accordance with Christianity and was advocated by many Christian scholars including Hegel himself who identified the dialectic process with the Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holly Spirit realm in history. However Hegel’s rejection was probably raised due to the Christian’s inexorably rejection to any kind of paganism as heresy.
12For instance, John von Neumann made a former use of this phrase in this context already in 1958. “the ever accelerating progress of technology … gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue”. See on-line resource #2
13 Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, Chapter one, 2005, The Six Epochs.
14In mathematics, the latter course is defined by an asymptote to the Y axis. But using an asymptote to determine that course may be exceeding the author’s intentions so we should avoid describing it as sub. That is because using an asymptote is to say that it never reaches a specific point on the X axis on its infinite course on getting closer to. Hence it implies a philosophical statement that a final engagement between nature or being and artificial intelligence’s accelerated expansion will never be implemented.
15Ibid.
16 “By the end of 2010, The requisite hardware will be ready to implement human intelligence on a single super computer”, Ibid.
17Ibid.
18The following section is inspired by Nick Bostrom’s work on Superintelligence, 2014. Bostrom is drawing to details various scenarios of how AI may gain dominance upon humanity. However the discussion Bostrom conducts does not necessarily entails the conclusion that AI should be prohibited and does advocate its research and development, within a restricted scope.
19Bostrom, Superintelligence, 2014, 116.
20Yudkowsky, AI as a positive and negative factor in global risk, 2008, 308-45.
21In fact, Although Kurzweil uses an analogy to a black hole when he defines this phenomena as ‘event horizon’, he states that he himself has succeed to penetrate the event horizon due to “sufficient powers of abstraction” and his presumption that the next civilization will be human inasmuch as we are. (The Singularity is near, end of introduction, Location 789)
22Another plausible scenario that AI will be using “firewalls” in order to protect it self by other’s attacks. However this whole digital world war may last for few minutes in a human perspective.
23In modern physics there is a famous experience which was conducted by Davisson and Germer, that articulates the nature of quantum mechanical phenomena. This experience illustrates how it is impossible to determine the electron final resting position on the screen on the individual level although the final consequence that shows a interference pattern. See online resource #1
24Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 2004, §58.
25Based on Thomas H. Brobjer’s Nietzsche’s Affirmative Morality, 2003.
26Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 2002, §195.
27Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, 2006, §4
