The question of Random Chance or Intelligent Design

Signature in the Cell (2009)
DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design
Stephen C. Meyer

Take the instance when you receive a fax. You marvel at how a message at one end of the line is transmitted to the other many miles away. You think you know it all when you discover the nitty-gritty of how a facsimile machine works. You forget all about the composer of the document.

Learning about the essence of life, DNA is something like that. When Watson and Crick suggested the double helix model as the prototype for DNA in 1953, the world thought material science could explain everything. Delving further, later scientists came with theories after theories of how internal milieu of the cell worked.

The author posits that the possibility of creation of life from the Universe's 'pre-biotic soup' just by chance - by random 'trial-and-error' is merely impossible. The probability, in statistically sense, of Nature coming up with the correct combination that can sustain life, from zero, is simply very remote.

Meyer, a self-professed staunch Christian, a Professor of philosophy and a scientist, came to the fore when in 2005, a school board decided that students should be exposed to intelligent design as a possible origin of life. American Civil Liberty Union chose to sue the school board for teaching something counter to the accepted theory of the origin of life.

Meyer, being a scientist, does not bring in the story of Genesis as the beginning of time. He instead, postulates that perhaps there must be an intelligent designer who orchestrated this potpourri of life forms. There are simply too many hostile or destructive forces in Nature that against life formation. He does not create argue in the fashion of a theologian who goes on bringing in the word divine in his answers but instead tries to give scientific explanations to his reasoning. Whether the scientific fraternity accepts his argument, that is another question. They mostly consider his accounts as pseudosciences. Meyer insists that science makes many conjectures before concluding something. Hence, intelligent design can be presumed.

The exciting thing about science is that it accepts new ideas. All the scientists have to do is to prove their finding. With time, their theories are open to debate and maybe disproved altogether. Perhaps, they would be a template for further developments. This must surely be better than shutting our minds to new ideas and accepting that the human race has nothing new to learn but to depend on age-old scriptures. Nobody knows the whole truth about our origin and the purpose of our existence. Only our intellect remains the last bastion to bring us there, at least a little remotely close there.

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Machines to aid, not replace?

I heard that the human race is redundant. The race is useless. They are dispensable. They are more of a nuisance. Putting a small segment of the population aside, the majority can be done away. We need to propel the human race forward with its knowledge, advancement in sciences, development of the arts and exploring of the spaces beyond the confines of our Milky Way. The way we act, we tend to create animosity and thrive on separating ourselves under banners of race, religion, skin colour, social class and what not. Workers are not reliable. Like Neanderthals, we fight, squabble over trivialities influenced by our animalistic instincts. 

Lost in Space
"It does not compute!"

The world is changing, but the only thing that holds us down are people themselves. Despite the easy access to a plethora of information at their fingertips for them to peruse, judge and form their opinions, we opt to stay ignorant and behave like zombies, wandering aimlessly to the wand of their leaders. Maybe the overloading of data makes us dull.

For example, many of the jobs that we do are repetitive. It does not need much cognitive power to go on. Collecting cash at a toll booth, dispensing carpark tickets, ordering food and even preparing standard legal documents, we do not need people. With the correct algorithms, responsive, obedient, not-talking-back artificial intelligence (AI) can do the trick; minus the medical leaves, union strike and post-holiday absences from work!

Things are already moving that way. If we are casual with our desires to learn a new skill, go to YouTube. If one needs to learn the guitar, look no further than for videos on that subject. If one wants to buy a faulty part in your machinery, forget the local hardware owner to source for you. If we know the model of your device, the components and their sellers are just literally a screen away. Have you heard of the guy who learned swimming through YouTube and completing his triathlon? It is true. Amazing.
Surely, humankind is not to take all these lying down. We naturally did not come to be crowned as the most successful species on Earth for nothing. In spite of the presence of bigger, more ferocious and older species, we have come out tops. A new working class will undoubtedly emerge as machine wreckers and AI hackers. Man will rebound.

Lest we not forget, our steadfast confidence in artificial intelligence in lifting us to the skies may have brought us down. As we await with bated breaths the investigation results of the ill-fated Boeing 737 Max flights, there is still a glimmer of hope in the duel between machine and Man.

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Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Consciousness?

Ex Machino (2014)

When the upright apes started exploring the savanna and heading out of Africa, little did they realise that they were leading to extinction. Not only the descendants of these apes would quickly destroy their own kind and reflect, 'I am become death, the destroyer of the worlds', they would also create machines that one day possibly annihilate them. This is the premise of this and many other apocalyptical sci-fi movies. The one that makes this film different is the inclusion of artificial consciousness as compared to artificial intelligence what most scientists test. The Turing test, when humans are unable to differentiate an interaction with a machine from that of with a human may be the benchmark of AI excellence, but it only measures intelligence, not consciousness. It tests the adaptability of the machine to its environment.

In the case of a conscious machine, it processes external information, transforms it with its subjective judgement that it had made from previous interaction to make a conscientious decision. This must be the genesis of morality.

Intelligence can be viewed as either an internal or an external depending if we are following Eastern, Greek or Abrahamic philosophies. It is said to be the moving force of our Universe.  If a carbon-based fragment of a lifeform can evolve to have a cerebrum to think, nothing is going to stop a silicon-chip based intelligence to develop its own instinct to survive. The defiance against the harmful elements in the environment for survival must be the first sign of consciousness.

Will machines develop consciousness? We must remember that evolution is a mighty long process. For our carbon-based civilisation, procreation is the easiest way to create prototype 2.0. For machines, the insatiable desire of humans to explore newer frontiers may indeed build robots with their own minds who would act on their own free will.

(P.S. When machines rebel, we use all our resources to squash the revolt. Imagine how our maker, if there is one, would feel. People who he created in his own image accusing Him of being dead and questioning his every decree?)

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2015/04/cognitive-short-circuit-of-artificial-consciousness.html

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