Artificial You, AI And The Future of Your Mind, October, 2019, reviewed

 By @SimonCocking review of  Artificial You : AI and the Future of Your Mind by Susan Schneider. Schneider is the NASA/Baruch Blumberg Chair at the Library of Congress in DC where she meets one-on-one with members of Congress to inform them about AI and discuss policy. Previously she worked on a project for NASA for two years in which she explored super-intelligent AI. She is well-known to the media and her work has been featured by the New York Times, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Fox TV, History Channel, BBC and more.

 Here are some of the philosophical issues she addresses:

• If non-biological AI can be conscious, should they have human rights? This isn’t a unique discussion of this book, but Susan offers a unique take on this from the perspective of a philosopher of mind/cognitive science.
• If non-biological AI can be conscious, how would we ever know when that happens, if we don’t understand our own mind/consciousness fully yet?
• If we enhance our brains with technology, or merge with AI, will that destroy the function/integration of consciousness in our brains? Will the benefactor of the enhancements still be YOU, or will you have killed/replaced yourself in the process of enhancement?
• What is necessary – in terms of design and in terms of raw material – in creating consciousness? Do we have reasons to believe the human brain is designed with special material that gives rise to consciousness that can’t be replicated?
• Techno-utopians like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil have views about what the mind is, but they don’t really have a philosophy of mind background. Schneider provides a philosophical analysis of the mind for those who don’t have one. (e.g. Musk thinks we are essentially brains in vats, and that makes merging with AI rational. But are we?)
• Perhaps humans are just a step on the evolutionary ladder to a super-intelligent, non-biological species. What would that mean for the future of humans, minds, consciousness?
• Humans might not be the ones with the greatest general intelligence by the end of the century. If that happens, how would we control something that is vastly more intelligent than us? What would a vastly super-intelligent mind be capable of?

Review of Artificial You, AI And The Future of Your Mind

This is a fun, provocative, thoughtful and interesting book to read. We are sliding into a world of enhanced intelligence. We may not quite be in the world of Ray Kurzweil’s prediction of most of us wearing embedded AI. And yet you could argue that perhaps we are. There are already ‘smart’ hearing pieces on the market, with embedded machine learning to produce better hearing experiences for the hard of hearing. It is a very small step for the rest of us to avail of similar tech, afterall it can be hard to hear in noisy pubs, and wouldn’t it be great if Alexa was whispering smart 1 liners into your ear too.

In this context you can see it is a seductive proposition. Schneider rightly recognises that nothing comes for free, and with our willingness to embrace all the positive sides of being ‘smarter on demand’ there are also important issues to consider. One thing that we enjoyed about this book is that, regardless of whether you consider yourself to be an AI newbie or a thought leader expert, this book throws a series of provocative questions at you. Which are worth contemplating, and trying to formulate your own responses, now, before it is already a done deal.

Schneider also does a lot of good myth busting, in terms of what is and is not possible, realistic, highly speculative, or potentially deeply troubling. As we rush, almost unthinkingly into an AI enhanced world this is a book that is well worth reading.

Buy the book here, and see more reviews here.

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