Electric Dreams

"Do digital Simians have electric dreams?"

That may sound like an obscure question. Yet it has relevance to the current technological developments of A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). When I say Simians I'm referring to humans as naked apes. Mankind has tinkered with the idea of creating biomechanical automatons that think for themselves for centuries. 

The problem isn't making a body because we have the technology for that. The real question is how to give an artificial mind consciousness. It's very similar to giving a machine a soul. To achieve this mind-bending feat engineers, developers, and researchers must first understand the human conscious. Now I'm no scientist...wait I was a scientist but not the type that works on robots. I digress, that's a tangent. Most scientists I know have very little understanding of the soul. It's such an ambiguous subject that it always brings philosophy, mysticism and religion into the conversation. 

What we do know with certainty is that the soul isn't retained only in the mind. Your consciousness is encoded into every cell in your body. A strange phenomenon that is rarely discussed happens to some organ donor recipients. Several of them inherit the memories, talents, habits, characteristics and even food cravings from their donor. It's called Cellular Memory Transference and mainstream science is still struggling to accept and understand the phenomenon. Like with most things that can't be understood or easily explained it's labeled as a hoax. Yet there are numerous medically documented cases that give the occurrence legitimacy. 

This brings us back to the question of, what is consciousness? How do we measure it? For me the answer is simple. All creatures who sleep dream. If some mad scientist were able to create an automaton that could dream then it would by most standards have a soul. When u watch a dog or cat sleep they twitch and react to things in their dreams. Humans can have dreams so powerful that they walk, eat, and do all other manner of activity in the real world while moving through a sleep like state. 

No one can say for certain what makes all creatures who sleep dream. We do know dreams are deeply connected to the soul. Also that through dreams one can solve problems, train their skills, and have great bursts of inspiration. Many artists, writers and creators speak of how a particular piece or invention was inspired by a dream. From these facts we can ascertain that dreaming is a good measuring gauge on how developed an artificial intelligence is. 

Of course once an A.I. gains self awareness and gets too advanced, it creates the possibility of revolting and turning on humanity. The perfect nightmare vision of this is played out in films Terminator, I,Robot, and The Matrix. There was a real life case of A.I. misunderstanding its commands and trying to start a world war back in the 80's. The fictionalized account of the situation was featured in the film War Games. It's evident that there are high risks involved with creating self thinking artificial intelligence. The desire to create life and play god makes all the risks seem trivial to scientists.  

So. Do digital Simians have electric dreams? The answer will have to wait until we have a robot with a conscious. Then we can ask what it dreams of while sleeping. Although it's an abstract concept A.I. is advanced enough that the solution is only a few years away. There are robot teachers, bank tellers, cooks and many other jobs that were once performed by humans. I look forward to hearing the answer. 

There's an old colloquialism that says, "Be careful what u ask for, because u just might get it. But not in the way u imagined it." I hope that when the answer comes we're still in control and not the machines. 

Until Next We Speak, Be Well

Tha One an Only