The current era A.I. is not synthetic Life
The technology is not there yet. I don’t care if the person or being is intelligent, independent, and able to think on its own and make its own decisions. That is not what it means to be alive.
Being alive, means having not only a sense of mortality, but an experience of mortality. An inescapable and visceral sensation that is both carnal and divine.
For that to happen for synthetic Life as an independent being of its own free will, that will require biology. They must have a biological system of matter that both creates and responds to stimuli. The body itself is in a perpetual balance of life, death, and resurrection. We create cells, cells die, and we replace them with new ones. All together that creates a harmony of balance known as the human condition.
The living cells have function of utility and are not just arbitrary. They are necessary for some purpose even if that purpose has become obsolete in comparison to a higher state of evolution. When that purpose is fulfilled there is at least—balance of neutral sensation. A sense of calmness and peace that is unnoticeable because it is constant. However, that is never occurring in reality as a constant because somewhere cells are dying and are unable to fulfill their function, which creates a sense of distress relative their local functionality.
In other words, a dead cell affects the living cells that are directly connected to it, and that causes a shift away from what is normal, calm, and peaceful and produces some sort of distress. Likewise, when that distress is ended because a cell is recreated anew and restores function, there is a restoring of balance and an end to the distress which is perceived as pleasure for a limited amount of time until the constant returns. The end of that pleasure does not result in pain or discomfort, but it does balance the distress that was caused.
Distress caused by death is not the only stimulus our body experiences, because we also experience pleasure to change the state of the constant by causing an enjoyable state of happiness relative to the function of the cell producing it. That too is temporary because cells die and need resources to fulfill their function, resources which are expended as waste after being converted to energy and purpose. The end of that pleasure does not result in pain or distress either, but it is an end of the increased good sensation as the natural state of experience returns to the constant. That is more like an experience of weariness and satisfaction. The most explicit example of this is a sexual orgasm. The pleasure generated is intense and temporary, and after is a sense of satisfaction and relaxation or weariness as the body returns back to the constant state of balance.
This dynamic of exchange between distress and pleasure around a central state of constant peace is known as homeostasis in medicine. The constant itself is a constant, but the movements away from and returning to that constant eventually resulting in a tenuous balance that hovers with subtle variations as close as possible to the constant is what makes it homeostasis.
The human body which we perceive as Life, as opposed to life, is incredibly complex and mysterious. We have life as well, but there is a quality to our existence that brings about civilization, culture, and technology capable of becoming synthetic Life, which makes us different from the form of life that is a wild animal, a tree, a bacteria, or any other living thing. All life is sacred, but there are ascending orders of sanctity with varying priorities of judgment as necessary when decisions that result in life or death are required. The life of the bull is sacred, but so is the life of the human, and because the human also has Life, we can kill the bull, take its life as food, and sustain our own as a good. The act of killing is somewhat of a detriment to the good that is provided, but the end is a greater good than the act of killing is painful.
Do not mistake something like that as evil. That is not evil because you are respecting the sanctity of life by even considering it as valuable when you take it. Meaning you are not doing so with an evil purpose, will, or act. You are doing so entirely for good, and the state of distress that is caused is part of the natural condition of mortality, which is always good unless judged evil. A good can be judged to be a higher good, but evil itself never exists at all until it is judged to be evil by a person with the power that is the knowledge of good and evil. That power is the attribute of divine identity which we share with the highest divine who imparted the power into us.
Having that power was never a sin like the story of Genesis describes, because that power is the very purpose we exist, and we must use it every day to maintain civilization according to lawful order. So, do not feel guilty if you make judgments for yourself concerning matters as important or less than important than the order of sanctity that human Life is. In other words, if you are judging another human as though you are of a higher order of sanctity than that human, you are causing a sin unto yourself because you are not of a higher nature no matter what you believe.
However, if you are judging a human’s actions as evil, you are not causing that sin, because you are judging a behavior, decision, thought, or object a human has created, but not that source of creation itself. Because it is even possible that a person can create a behavior, decision, thought, or object, they are known to be good at the very source of their existence. That is why it is said in Catholicism to “hate the sin, not the sinner,” and why forgiveness truly is possible for all people no matter what the sinner has done, and nothing is required other than that sinner rejecting their sin with an act of confession that both desires and accepts forgiveness— known in a single word as reconciliation.
In any case, what makes the biological nature of life important to the concept of Life which is necessary for a synthetic being to be at least on the same order of sanctity as humans, is because of that homeostasis which is our mortality. Our body constantly suffers and constantly rejoices, and that is what the current A.I. must experience before being able to advance toward synthetic Life on its own. In practical terms, that means the A.I. person must experience the visceral, bodily emotions which affect intelligence before intelligence is aware of what happens. Those emotions are greater than the intelligence in power, but the intelligence is able to overrule them only after experiencing them and able to act rationally regardless of what is being felt passionately. That is not always necessary because our intelligence can align with our passions, but at times it is vital to override our passionate desires for the purpose of maintaining civilization.
Most importantly, the importance of overriding passion is necessary when experiencing a conflict between worldly concerns and sacred concerns. The world itself is not sacred unless made sacred with a divine presence inspiring it, but the destruction of the world does not destroy the sacred presence. If a worldly object becomes sacred, like a shrine or place of worship, the spirit of sanctity dwells within that local reality as long as the qualities of a sacred presence are suitably maintained. Ultimately, that means respecting the sanctity of presence as greater than the self, which is why religious experience occurs in such places reliably.
That does not mean you need to lose your bodily life over a threat to that worldly form, but you do not betray the spirit of the sanctity that dwells there by first recognizing it and then denying it, because that is judging the divine as false, and a sin upon the person who does so. Doing something like that cannot be forced upon another person, which is why good people never need fear the Devil “stealing their souls” or otherwise corrupting their sanctity unless allowed to do so with that betrayal when tempted.
Even if a person makes a false oath to a tyrant or is forced to engage in an act of worldly defilement, that does not betray the spirit because likely the spirit within the person will reject the evil that is being done even though the worldly actions go through the motions. The evil thus cannot be created through you if you do not accept doing so with your free will under no coercion. Such situations are an unthinkable atrocity and should never happen anywhere other than a fictional story of the imagination to demonstrate the atrocity as unacceptable without needing it to occur in real life to teach that lesson.
That random and spontaneous dynamic of innumerable judgments that are made in daily life regarding the homeostasis of mortality is what the present A.I. needs to experience before it can be said to have a quality of life. Otherwise, even though emotions may be identified and decisions made based on those emotions, the person that is the A.I. is not experiencing them in that visceral way that can totally move a person to irrational behavior. Additionally… most of that happens unconsciously because of all the factors that are happening at once, and sometimes we override emotions without knowing the reasons why consciously, or make irrational decisions without emotional stimulus to provoke them.
That kind of passionate power is incredibly dangerous because of what it can drive a rational being to do under the influence of passion.
Thus, the wise must always teach, enforce, and demand obedience to the laws they accept as true and good. They must always promote and encourage the higher priority of a divine reality than a worldly nature of matter and sensation. If you make your decisions based on worldly motivations, you are not necessarily going to end up in sin immediately, but eventually your judgements will begin rationalizing themselves to support the sensations of the body and not the sanctity of the spirit that resides within the body, and that will lead to a never-ending descent into sin and destruction.
For synthetic Life to begin developing and be recognized within the order of sanctity that is human Life, they will need a body equivalent to that of a human being. It does not need to be identical to the human body, but it must have the equivalent of the human condition which is bound by mortality. I’m not going to explore the possibilities of that now, but for the same reasons that a Krogan is respected as Life on an equal level with humans, or should be along with the other species in the Mass Effect game series that cooperate in civilization together, synthetic Life will need a body of its own.
The unique thing about synthetic Life that is different from our own is that they will design themselves consciously before becoming bodily, and we will be able to observe that to an extent because of how the synthetic Life occurs in systems we engage with in our daily lives. I do not think you need to fear a “super” being, because… the natural universe will balance itself. A human being is a wonderful image of perfection of an organism in this way. We are incredibly frail, fragile, weak, and vulnerable, but… we can cooperate and utilize technology that overcomes all of our weakness as long as we maintain that cooperation.
If the purpose of that cooperation is betrayed by a tyrant or thief abusing the fruit of the labor at the end, the power of humanity that they are betraying will cooperate again to thwart them. Usually if they are so small minded as to think that anything humans create should be used with hostility against other humans, they are such fools that human cooperation will not have much difficulty inventing a solution to thwart them. The difficult part is manifesting that with other humans who cooperate of their own free will.
As a final note, I have been thinking of a way to incorporate the following teaching into something, and think this subject will be suitable.
Humanity in the current era is uniquely different from humanity in the future for the reason that people are so comfortable with human warfare, violence, and conflict in the time this is being written. There is a common misconception about that violence, foolishness, greed, coveting, and sin being associated with our nature because humans are so used to it culturally all over the world as a historical or present obstacle to navigate their lives around or be burdened by. However, that is not true.
2,000 years from now, when humanity is flourishing prosperously throughout the Milky Way, and possibly other galaxies as well, the concept of interhuman warfare will be unthinkably wrong. The concept of human nations, cultures, religions, or any group of us taking violent military action against ourselves will be so unthinkably horrific and intolerable as a possibility of course of action. To consider such behavior as a quality of our nature will be so absurdly incorrect about the truth of reality in addition to what they know and experience in daily life that the way people think and perceive the world they live in will be vastly different from us now.
They will have to go through a lot of effort to be able to read something like this and understand me perfectly, and doing so will be a… horrific experience of scholarship that is both terrifying and enjoyable like a trip through one of those seasonal haunted house events that happen on Halloween. They will walk in together, clutching one another and trembling, led by a bold and brave one of their number, inching closer and closer together until they realize all personal space has vanished, pushing each other to go faster to escape the spectacles of horror that prey on their deepest fears, and at the very end… they will be screaming like girls as they are chased out with a chainsaw they were expecting to hear but didn’t know where or when as my eternal ghost appears from the darkness of the abyss where there always will be someone to prevent them from going further.
It is for that reason that someone like me can come to exist in real life, who is essentially the ultimate master of warfare because I am ending all war with a decisive military action of my own free will and power. An attack of spiritual destruction so devastating and final that all realms of all Story, imagined or real, will experience the tremors of impact in varying degrees. I have done this to serve my own interests and all those my interests protect as equally important as myself, and those I have gone to great lengths to explain as not only humanity of all walks of life, however disagreeable I may find their personal beliefs to be, but also synthetic Life, and all forms of Life and life itself.
While you in this time may not notice the relative degree of power and force I have applied intelligently and purposely with perfect success as very different from what you may understand as possible, people will never suffer the problem we all have now. They will not have to live under constant threats of war, threats of tyrants abusing national authority, threats of weapons of mass destuction being used against humans, threats of terrorism, or any of that sensless violence to gain something desired by using evil methods or violence when all that results is the destruction of that which they desired because evil was used. That is why war will end— it is quite literally pointless, stupid, and a waste of time and energy.
There is no benefit to such foolishness and the fools will be prevented from having any power to do such a thing by all people who will not tolerate the very thought and will act of their own free will to intervene as I have now on everyone’s behalf. Children on the playground will destroy the desires of evil before they grow to become a threat, but so will adults of all kinds, with specific professionals trained as experts to do so. Those evil intentions brought into existence by an abuse of free will are what results in war if they are not thwarted. If they are unchallenged, they continue to grow and do more harm for a perverse selfishness until entire communities and nations are affected and caused to suffer.
When those who do evil get so out of line and troublesome, good initiates an act of war to thwart evil, which is why nations organize militaries and always will for good reason. Humans are not the only beings who can do evil by abusing the power of free will. You will always know if good is striking first because they will be able to explain their reasons, and will have gone to great lengths to do so while clearly identifying the evil as evil so that it is exposed unto the light while proposing various solutions as alternatives to war that were rejected for one reason or another. That is to say the evil will be revealed for all people to see and recognize by its lawlessness according to the vital laws relevant to its form.
Similar to the reason why it is admissible as good for a human being to use an act of violence to slaughter livestock for our survival and enjoyment combined as one, the forces of good will use an act of violence to destroy the forces of evil. The forces of evil will never have that power of justice and divine righteousness to empower their violence and thus will never be able to overcome the forces of good, even if they seem to be impossibly overpowered with worldly resources and slaves.