The Philosophical Challenges of AI: Initial Considerations

In this paper, we raise philosophical questions that artificial intelligence developers should ask about believing who we are and who we actually are (authentic identity). The very words “artificial” and “intelligence” implore an examination of the artificer and that which we are crafting, “intelligence,” begging the question, “What are they?” Answers cannot be perfunctory, as in traveling a semantic web, where one word is defined by others, thus returning us to the initial one. We need introspection, and such demands philosophy. This implies confronting our notions of consciousness, values, and our very identities. Here, mere belief does not necessarily translate into behavior. Authentic identity means belief validated by action. Any method to locate one’s true identity (such as Authentic Systems) is sustained by philosophy. Especially absent these considerations, there is the real possibility that artificial general intelligence “housed” by biocomputing quantum supercomputers could assume an inferior substitute for human identity and bring to bear Isaac Asimov’s nightmare of human extinction. Indeed, some founders of AI warn likewise. AI may be like a semantic web, biowarfare, or gas grenade, set forth, only to return and envelop us. Our technicians are all too clever in creating and uniting chatbots, quantum supercomputers, and biocomputers to try replicating us, but what “mission” does the proverbial machine carry out if the developers are oblivious to the fundamental question of who we are?