What would Artificial Wisdom look like?
We have myriad technologies which are grouped under the umbrella term Artificial Intelligence. Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Generative Computing, etc. — these are systems which both quantitatively and qualitatively differ from the computation-focused and command-driven processing of earlier computing systems. And they are considered A.I. because they delve into kinds of information processing traditionally recognized in human intelligence, such as natural language exchange, associative memory from vast experience, learning, and creating.
Along with the acceleration of A.I. we hear alarms about its mis-use and even about a possible A.I. apocalypse, where the automatons and networked systems with intelligence exceeding human intelligence become tools of our destruction. And we may already see symptoms of its misuse in the accelerated spread of misinformation, in continued replacement of human workers, and in commercial optimization which somehow never results in lower prices or more sharing of generated wealth, only in more degradation of democracy and expansion of extreme wealth inequality.
What’s the difference between intelligence and wisdom? Interestingly, mystic and mythic traditions tend to center wisdom much more than intelligence. Wisdom and intelligence have both always been contrasted to crude mental activity and base drives, but wisdom has something extra, and that involves not merely the clever manipulation of information but also the soul, ethics and morality, reverence, silence, the life lived in accordance with higher principles and natural balance.
Separated from wisdom, intelligence is a kind of mental commodity or capacity that is indifferent to concerns of ethics and balance. Profit, exploitation, coercion, deception, even atomic-era destruction and genocide can all be amplified by intelligence put in service of their ends. But none of these can be amplified by more wisdom. Unlike intelligence, wisdom does not posit some sleight-of-hand that suggests an end justifies dubious means. Wisdom knows that ends and means are inseparable; moral short-cuts, brutality, dishonesty — if these are part of the means, they will be qualities built into the outcome, materials embedded in its foundation.
This brief essay is meant as a prompt, not a conclusion. I do not believe it is too early to begin building systems of Artificial Wisdom to manage and ensure the benevolence of Artificial Intelligence. But just as building A.I. had to start with activities of human intelligence, so A.W. will have to begin with hours of applied human wisdom, something we apparently don’t have a surplus of these days. Exploiting, polarizing, cancelling, abusing, cynically dismissing or destroying one another — these seem to be our collective obsessions. Until there’s more natural wisdom in circulation I’m not sure that an Artificial Wisdom will be much help.