Meditation takes you beyond artificial intelligence (AI)
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| Ramalingeshwara temple courtyard Avni |
I'm a software engineer by profession and I love technology. In the recent years tremendous investment has been made in the research, development and application of artificial intelligence and machine learning. I'm absolutely excited by the possibilities this has created for machines. I'm also dejected and disappointed by the lack of investment in human potential (HP) and possibilities. Why is meditation not a mainstream activity yet? Why is the world not pursuing meditation with the same rigor?
A walk down the memory lane
It was the final semester of engineering and one of the courses was AI. Our professor Dr. K.K. Shukla introduced the Turing Test the crux of which is that, a machine is considered to have passed the test if a human evaluator cannot distinguish the responses of the machine from that of a human (for the same set of questions posed). Despite all the respect I had and still have for Turing, the test seemed to be loosely defined from a human point of view.
Compare the response of the machine to a human. Which human? Did Turing consider all humans alike in competency? Will not the results of the tests change if different humans took the test along with the same machine?
This was the beginning of my disillusionment. I certainly didn't believe that all humans are alike in all respects. Even if we take one human, the competency/skills/knowledge of that human is not a static thing. It changes over time.
Was I not supposed to come out of college a different person than what I went in as? If all humans are not alike and the same human is not alike over a period of time and training, then what does the human in Turing test refer to?
I didn't bring up these questions with the professor, because he had lot of course material to cover which didn't seem to depend on I getting my questions addressed. But the questions didn't leave me. They lingered, intensified and multiplied.
What is more important?
Make an insentient machine match a human or take an average human and make him/her match an Einstein/Gandhi/Michael Jordan/Donald Knuth/... ? What if human potential can be multiplied and this can be done and done at scale?
The questions faded to the background till one day accidentally I heard about the life and death of Turing. Prof. Menon, HOD Applied Mathematics Dept. was giving a lecture on I don't remember what and in the passing mentioned that Turing had a tragic end. This made me curious enough to go back and research more on Turing. I learned that a man who was super intelligent and a genius took his life.
All the algorithms and theories he worked on couldn't save/prolong such a precious life (his own).
Making the case for meditation
In the last decade or so we have come a long way. Cars can drive themselves, technology can diagnose cancer better than oncologists, technology can defeat human champions of a certain game. Technology is fascinating but the areas of focus is narrow.
Why only technology to improve machines? What if we had technology to convert a violent person to a peace loving one? Can we convert a person with suicidal tendencies to one full of zest for life? Is there a technology to transform terrorists to peace loving and productive people who work day and night to make this earth a better place?
Huge corporations, institutions and governments have committed a lot of money and time (for AI) to research and advance the 'human' like abilities of machines. But what is equally important if not more is taking a 'machine' like view of humans and researching and advancing it. Doing this allows defining lot of present day 'human' issues with technical precision and working scientifically on them. Lest all this sound too abstruse, let us take a simple and concrete example.
An example from past
When I was a small kid, I wanted my mom to buy me a shirt I liked in a store. I was miserable thinking of the shirt all the time. Then one day she bought me the shirt and I was happy. Here is a simple state machine representation.
1. Is there a way to sustain the happiness state without coming out of it ?
2. What is the least expensive external trigger to get back into happiness state should one slip out of it ?
3. Does there have to be an external trigger at all ? Is it possible to activate the happiness state just like that without the need for any external trigger (shirt, house, car, hike, vacation, awards, appreciation, sex, position,...) ?
4. Are there other deeper and more fulfilling states which can be experienced ?
In a world where everyone is trying to maximize their ownership of the finite resources of the planet in the vain hope that doing this will secure their happiness, the mindset which can actually make a difference is how to achieve maximum happiness (inner experience) by consuming least or no external resources. This is an optimization problem worth solving as much as the AI problems of the day.
Whether I travel in self-driven car or a chauffeur driven one doesn't matter as much as whether I have meditated and performed the spiritual practices which lets me go deep inside and directly access inner states without the need for external triggers.
Meditation leads to samadhi
In the Indian thought tradition and spiritual literature, a fourth state of consciousness is described called samadhi, the other three being wakefulness, deep sleep and dream states. The joy of this state is described in the following way: What the light of sun is in comparison to an oil lamp, is the joy of samadhi to the material joys of the world. And the only access to this state is meditation. There have been spiritual stalwarts who could get into this fourth state almost at will. The picture below is of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (guru of Swami Vivekananda) in the state of samadhi.
In conclusion
As I near the end of the post, here is something to mull over. It is wonderful to invest in machines and experience what they have to offer. As humans it is also our responsibility to understand, actualize and leverage the potential of the (human) machine that each one of us is endowed with. And the access to that is meditation. It's great if you own a Tesla. But are you investing time in meditation?
I couldn't find a better way of ending the post than these marvelous and thought-provoking quotes by none other than Alan Turing.
Computers should be thought of as an important laboratory tool for the study of life.
A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.
Alan Turing
PS. Originally published on June 26, 2016 on LinkedIn.
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