On the Disconnect – Intelligence and Consciousness in the Brave New World
Precisely because of the urgency of these ecological issues, we have a tendency to underestimate the threat posed to our present globalized society by the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Nevertheless, within the field of AI itself, many powerful, critical voices are alerting us to the possible dangers of AI.
One of the best known is Elon Musk, himself a leading exponent of AI, who has been warning us for some time that the domination of AI could lead to a catastrophic disruption of our civilisation1.
Similarly, the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom (Bostrom, 2017) has pointed out the risks involved in creating super-intelligent computers or robots, which can blindly carry out their set tasks without regard to the goals and ethics of mankind. The cosmologist Stephen Hawking has also issued strong words of warning.
Not all the players in AI share such a bleak outlook, but there is no doubt that we are relying more and more on artificial intelligence in all aspects of our private and social life.
In this essay, I would like to focus on one particular aspect of this problem. Namely, that while AI is enabling us to solve more and more of our technical problems, our awareness of the spiritual dimensions, and consciousness in particular, are shrinking—perhaps even withering away.
This is not a new idea: Yuval Harari devotes a whole chapter of his book (Homo Deus, 2015) to the problem of the growing disconnect between intelligence and consciousness. Here we will look at how this issue relates to some of the concepts discussed in earlier essays of this book.
