AI from our mid-brain point of view
We use our brain on many decision making situations and don’t always choose what is best for us. Let’s take the example of smoking or drinking alcohol. People are rationally poisoning themselves. Let’s have a look at our brain where all this happens.
The mid-brain is commonly known as the one which deals with our emotions. The old brain deals with primal urges and the new brain deals conscious decisions. But the mid-brain does not handle only the emotions, it deals with judgment too. We often base our decision making on the judgment. Let’s say we meet a person for the first time. Even if we don’t know the person well, within few minutes we can decide if we like this person or not, if we trust him/her or not. Our mid-brain has processed the person and handed the decision on the rational mind. The rest of the mid-brain deals with the reward. It releases dopamine, the substance which makes us feel good when we eat chocolate or cheese. Basically is the body telling giving you compliments.
The reason we do things that are bad for us is because the midbrain is taking charge of the situation. Our emotional responses in the midbrain also influence the choices made in the primal brain and the rational brain. So we can make decisions which are bad decisions because they feel good at the time, such as smoking or eating too many cheeseburgers. This is because it makes a certain judgmental “meaning” which isn’t directly linked to the real meaning but to the emotional one. All this may sound very manipulative but we all do it to ourselves.
We should guide our mid-brain towards making choices that help us not harm us.
How is the future of AI going to deal with helping us on decision making?
We are constantly in touch with devices which are making our live easier, saving us a lot of time. The technology is building complicated systems which are able to make well-thought, data-driven and analytical decisions. This means we don’t have to use our brain that much on simple tasks (now even on complicated ones since there are build many emphatic prototypes which deal with emotions and can intuitively control them)
Stage we’re able to compare it with the human thinking and how we (our brain) approach it. In theoretical computer science an Artificial Intelligence is nothing but a mathematical model of the human intellect. As previously stated human intellect is capable of decision making. But it also does many other functions such as pattern recognition, learning, connecting the dots or finding a connection between two apparently independent events. We are including all of this and making it part of an AI model. By doing so, for a given problem it is possible to develop an AI that is capable of working out the best possible solution without any intermediate human intervention. Depending on the function this is a whole complicated process which involves complex research algorithms and obviously cannot be discussed here at this post.
So I usually smile when people say that computers would take over when AI will help them become sentient. Artificial Intelligence is insentient; it has only the purpose that we give it. I wouldn’t go that far on discussing whether it is going to be harmful for humanity. It might, if only we don’t use it properly. Just as we don’t care about the garbage or pollution, we are facing the risk of getting killed by it.
