Are machines going to control us? (Consilience) – Dialogue with Chris Lingle – D47

For our third dialogue of Consilience, Christopher Lingle visited us. There were many neuroscientific topics, and one of the most important was the materialistic implications and possibilities of eventually creating artificial intelligence (AI) and emotions (AE). I mean, if emotions are just chemical reactions in our brain, can’t we create an artificial organ that simulates this? You may say that emotions are connected with memories, so how about creating a machine with enough capacity to gather databases and based on these knowledge, form opinions, criteria, and emotions. By doing this, you would be able to talk with a computer and not find a difference with a human interaction, making an exception to the Turing test. So, can we achieve a state in which we can control our minds? Read thoughts? Control them? Change our perspective of time and space, being able to control it? Are these AI and AE machines have the instinct of survival and therefore capable of rebelling themselves against humans? Is this process of controlling us, humans, inevitable and only a matter of time? Maybe, I don’t know yet…

Some neuroscience and psychology – Dialogue with Arne Dietrich – D45

Today, at 11:15 a.m., Arne Dietrich visited us. He is a neuroscientist specialized in creativity, and found out about the MPC because he is a friend of Dylan Evans. The dialogue went pretty well. First, we made an introduction about what the MPC is, and read our dialogue rubric, which he suggested some changes and questioned it a little. Then, he talked about who he was and what was his specialization. After that, the dialogue was about many psychology things, but especially about the future of genetic engineering and the emotions. One of the many remarks he made was that the control for knowledge and modifying human brains is evolving very fast and we can reach a point were a society may have the resources to become more intelligent and developed than another, and (as I understood him) be able to gain control over other society. Some utopia/dystopia, kind-of a Brave New World/1984 world. Another important remark was regarding a question I asked him about whether psychological diseases activate chemicals in our brains or if first there is a chemical reaction in our brains that triggers a psychological disease. His answer was that what I said was a dualism, but we have a third option that is that they are the same. In other words, there is no psychological state, no mind, psyche, or any metaphysical thing you want to call it. The psychological state and the chemicals released by our brains is the same. It was a very interesting dialogue that I think everyone enjoyed a lot.