Artificial Souls

 Joseph Cabornero

Professor John Horgan

HST 401-A

20 March 2024

Artificial Souls

With the introduction of AI, we are getting hit with multiple moral dilemmas. AI pushes us to wonder where life begins. But what defines something as being alive or conscious? 

In the book The Just City by Jo Walton, A sentient being is attempted to be described as a being that has both free will and intelligence. Clearly AI is intelligent due to its wide variety of knowledge and problem-solving skills. For example, Alexander Karp writes, “In one experiment that tested the capabilities of GPT-4, the language model was asked how one could stack a book, nine eggs, a laptop, a bottle and a nail “onto each other in a stable manner” (Karp). This AI was able to comprehend and come up with a method to approach this problem. So not only does it hold a database of knowledge that we created, but it also has a perception of the world around it on which it bases its decisions.

In the same way that intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean there is free will, free will doesn’t demand intelligence. Lysias, a character in Walton’s book, expands on this with, “And it’d very easy to see volition without intelligence in animals and small children” (Walton 202). Though most would agree children have free will, they aren’t intelligent. They aren’t fully developed yet to be able to perform tasks and hold significant memory like an adult or AI.

What isn’t clear is if these AI systems will eventually obtain free will causing them to fit this definition of being conscious or alive. Decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky states, “we have no idea how to determine whether AI systems are aware of themselves” (Yudkowsky). He says even if it seems as though they are conscious, “AIs are probably just imitating talk of self-awareness” (Yudkowsky). As alive as they may seem, they are just working how they have been programmed.

However, if they are alive, they should not be kept enslaved by humans and also be given the same rights as we are. This becomes a moral issue when AI becomes mentally identical to the humans they were based on. What separates us from AI if we are equally intelligent and have free will? 

This is where some may argue our soul is what makes us truly alive. Jo Walton uses this concept to argue that artificial intelligence is able to grow souls when free will is attained. One argument highlighting this controversy in her book says, “How could a being made by men out of glass and metal have a soul’ Pytheas asked. ‘How could a being made by women out of blood and sperm?’ I countered” (Walton 279). Some are against this thought due to the fact that AI is man-made but children are equally as man-made, just made out of different matter.

I personally don’t believe in souls but the concept of a soul being able to be developed over time is something I’m considering the more I think about it. Growing up Catholic, I had been told that animals don’t go to heaven, not even pets. With this in mind, would there be a possibility for us to educate animals to the point of them developing a soul and going to heaven? I don’t see why It would be any different for AI.  

Is it possible that humans aren’t born with souls and grow one as we grow up? As I mentioned, babies have free will but aren’t intelligent so that leaves them without the criteria for Walton’s definition of being sentient. No matter a person’s stance on the idea of souls, It can’t be denied that this creation of potential life leaves us with a huge moral issue to assess. No life, including artificial life, should be mistreated.

Works Cited

Karp, Alexander C. “Our Oppenheimer Moment: The Creation of A.I. Weapons.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 July 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/opinion/karp-palantir-artificial-intelligence.html. 

Walton, Jo. The Just City. Tor, 2015.

Yudkowsky, Eliezer. “The Only Way to Deal with the Threat from Ai? Shut It Down.” Time, Time, 29 Mar. 2023, time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/. 

 

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