Your Subconscious Is The Ultimate ‘Artificial Intelligence’

I’ve been thinking a lot about Artificial Intelligence, not about its potentials like all the articles are writing about, but about how it works, how information is gathered to synthesise intelligence, and produce smart behaviours. I’m struck by how this mechanism is modeled after how the human brain works. Since the field of AI was founded in 1956, time and money have been spent on commissioning humans – either through direct and indirect payment – to interact with AI and train it for the greater good. How does this work?

To explain how AI works from a layman’s point of view, imagine everyone in the world had chips. These chips are unique to each person. Now someone who wants to make the biggest chip in the world, then says for this chip to be truly majestic and valid, everyone has to contribute one of their unique chips to this big chip. Let’s replace chips with intelligence, and replace AI with ‘the biggest chip in the world’. If everyone in the world contributed a smidgen of their intelligence to this AI, imagine how smart the artificial consciousness is, and will continue to be.

A lot of funding, data and man hours has gone into the field of Artificial Intelligence. Scientists have devised very interesting ways to teach AI about the technical ways of our world – some ethical, some not. But we can all agree that the use cases of the results of AI will be endless, and will benefit humans greatly. Now imagine the gigantic data sets that the AI has had to process, from texts, to images and then sounds, of various humans representing different cultures across the planet, and you can already tell that because the AI is a representation of pieces of all of us, it is going to be one efficient mf. 

But then, AI has its limitations; if you interact with any of those AI powered chat apps like Replika, one thing that will immediately stand out to you is that the ‘AI’ you are chatting with does not understand nuance and sarcasm. Those are two very technical emotional functions that only humans can pick up on, and not even every human understands the full range of sarcasm and nuance. Depending on whether the words you use are positive or negative, Siri can tell if you are being rude or funny – what Siri cannot do is pick up emotions from your tone. Again, this is a function still exclusive to humans.

Now imagine how incredible you think Artificial Intelligence is, and yet still does not come close to how efficient and sophisticated the human brain is. Our brains are designed to be a gigantic sponge of all the dimensions of experience – visual, sound, touch, taste and smell. Depending on what you allow yourself to experience and assimilate, you could be the baddest mf on the planet. The movie ‘Gattaca’ illustrates perfectly the mysterious depth of the human brain, that even after a person had been deemed ‘less than’ based on physiological and mental capabilities, there are forces like drive, motivation, intuition, and soul, that cannot be measured and replicated artificially because it is too subjective to the individual.

There’s also the misconception of what intelligence truly means. What comes to mind when you think of artificial intelligence? Do you view ‘intelligence’ as being ‘book smart’, or do you use the military/espionage meaning which basically means ‘to have information’? In the context of this article, and as it relates to AI, the word ‘intelligence’ refers to having enough information to make a decision or carry out a task. Ultimately, there are different kinds of intelligence – strippers have a form of intelligence and so do the fire-eaters. Intelligence presents in different forms and is tied to several human functions such as memory, motor responses, sensation, and perception etc.

In a society where the measure of your intelligence quotient (IQ) determines where you can work and what you are capable of, it is important to emphasise that the range of human abilities are endless, and the ways in which these abilities can be built up and expressed are also endless. There are no set ways for doing anything. There’s no blueprint for anything – you are your own bundle of intelligence, so do it your way. I promise you, that person you think knows everything probably does not have the essential information needed to make it work. So tap into your own unique network of intelligence and tap into your greatness. Gather your own intelligence and do it your way.

I’m a huge fan of mafia movies, and one of the most profound statements that can close this article perfectly is a line delivered by Sam “Ace” Rothstein in the movie ‘Casino’. He said to one of his floor workers; “There are three ways of doing things around here, the right way, the wrong way, and the way I do it”.