AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Q: What is Digital Soul about?

A: Digital Soul calls attention to important social, moral, ethical, and religious questions that will arise in the near future, as we begin to share the world with super-intelligent machines.

Q: What sort of questions?

A: The most profound questions challenge the primacy of human beings as the dominant life form on Earth: What rights and responsibilities would intelligent machines have? Will we eventually be forced to treat them as persons? What would become of human dignity? Will intelligent machines upset our social, legal, moral, and religious institutions? Should we worry that super-intelligent machines will eventually take over the world?

Q: What inspired you to write Digital Soul?

A: This book probably began almost forty years ago, when I picked up a copy of Dean Wooldridge's The Machinery of the Brain. It set forth an idea that, to me, was astounding: that human beings function entirely according to the laws of physics. This idea upset a lifetime of Catholic doctrine about an immortal soul and the spiritual nature of the human mind. If true, I thought, then there is no essential difference between human thought and the workings of some possible future computing machine. And if that is true, then it is only a matter of time before there are machines that will outperform us in every important way, have emotions, and be conscious. The consequences of the coming advances in artificial intelligence reach into every nook and cranny of our social fabric. The excitement of exploring those nooks and crannies has been the inspiration for writing Digital Soul.

Q: What is it about you that allows you to write with some authority about intelligent machines and their social (legal, moral) implications?

A: I don't claim to be an "authority" on any of these matters. If that's what you want, there are plenty of "big names" to choose from. What I offer is the insights that come from merging many of my lifelong interests: science, engineering, computers, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, ethics, science policy, and religion. I have found the view of artificial intelligence from each of these perspectives exciting and enlightening.

Q: By "intelligent machines" do you mean "robots" and "androids," or something else?

A: Some of the "intelligent machines" in our future may well take the humanoid form of robots and androids. Others, like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, will work in the background and subtly take charge of critical aspects of our lives. Still others may link together to form a Global Brain. But the containers that machine intelligence comes in are not important. What is important is that their cognitive abilities will eventually far exceed our own. By that time, we will no longer be in charge.

Q: Given the book's title (Digital Soul), are you seriously suggesting that machines might have souls, or might in other ways be or become the equals or equivalents of human beings?

A: I chose the title Digital Soul to make you wonder how these two words that would not normally be coupled could possibly make sense when used together. "Digital" normally refers to computers, while "soul" normally refers to the spiritual essence of our humanity. Many believe that, no matter how "smart" machines get, they will never truly think, have a soul, or be self-aware in the same sense we are. But suppose that the essence of our humanity lies not in some non-physical "spirit," but in a wonderful organization of matter and energy that functions entirely according to the laws of physics. Then "soul" could be just a name that we give to this intricate machinery - and indeed to any machinery that performs comparable functions. So whether you say a machine has a soul or not may be just a matter of personal taste. What really matters is not whether it has a soul, but what it can do. One can certainly imagine machines with "personality," "values," and other traits that we have so far thought to be uniquely human. So why not "soul"?

Q: Many of the matters you discuss have been explored provocatively in works of science fiction. What distinguishes Digital Soul from science fiction?

A: Digital Soul is not science fiction. The main difference is the likelihood that certain predicted future events will actually happen. Given the present rate of growth of computing power, many scientists seriously predict that super-intelligent machines will be here in twenty to thirty years. Because the vision of science-fiction writers dramatizes the shape of things to come, Digital Soul does draw heavily upon works of science fiction to illustrate moral and ethical issues raised by intelligent machines. The big problem, pointed out nearly two centuries ago in Frankenstein, is losing control of our creations. Also, science fiction has a way of becoming science fact. The vision expressed in Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon was realized in 1969. Flash Gordon's ray guns have become today's laser weapons. The communicators used in Star Trek have turned into today's cell phones. The intelligent machines of the future may be more or less like those portrayed in science fiction, or something totally unexpected, but what is not in question is that we have already set out down that road, and there seem to be no exits.

Q: Are intelligent machines a concern that awaits us in the future, or is the future in a real sense now? That is, to what extent have the issues you address in Digital Soul already started to impinge on us?

A: It is not obvious to the person-on-the-street that intelligent machines yet pose any problem that has to be dealt with now. Yet there are many complex systems that operate behind the scenes, providing services that we take for granted, whose failure would have a great impact on our lives. A power surge in an electric transmission line can cause a power failure that cascades over many states. An error in a single line of software code could cause an airliner to crash. A false alarm in a NORAD computer could start World War III. Engineering catastrophes are not new, but they will become more common and more disastrous as we give up more control to very complex machines. The less people understand about these machines, the more likely they are to fail.

Q: What can we do about it?

A: We can insist that our technologies have more built-in safeguards against failure and abuse, in the form of more sophisticated self-monitoring and self-repair capabilities. These qualities can be thought of as rudimentary forms of consciousness.

Q: Most of us live our daily lives without thinking much about thinking machines - why should that change? (What are the dangers of NOT thinking about intelligent machines?)

A: We do not think much about thinking machines because they have been subtly woven into the fabric of our daily lives, which are cluttered with more immediate "crises." When you get money from a cash machine or make an airplane reservation, you are interacting with a complex reasoning machine. We notice only when they stop working! No one thought much about the Great Depression or the terrorist attacks upon the United States until they occurred - even though the warning signs were there for all to see. There are always steps we can take to avert disasters, if we pay attention to those signs, but it seems to be human nature to ignore problems until they become crises. You can see crisis management at work on the evening news. I am not optimistic that this will change, but the future of mankind may depend on it changing.

Q: If it is not already too late to plan our response to the expansion of the control of intelligent machines over critical aspects of our lives, when would it be too late? What would be the criterion (or point of no return) for defining "too late"?

A: It is said that you can put a frog on a hot plate and it will immediately jump off, but if you put it into a pan of cold water and gradually heat the water up, the frog will stay there until it cooks. Some catastrophes occur suddenly, while others sneak up on us. Like our response to global warming, it's never too late to address the problem. There's probably no clear "point of no return," but the longer we wait, the more irreversible the effects will become. Only in the last century have we developed technologies that could destroy civilization, so we have not had much practice dealing with global-scale crises. But carefully thinking things through in advance, so we can adjust our policies and attitudes toward any technology, is always better than "playing it by ear" and waiting until its abuse results in catastrophes.

Q: Does Digital Soul focus entirely on the dire consequences of machine intelligence, or is there anything hopeful for us, as human beings, to look forward to?

A: Intelligent machines could represent the next step in human evolution and development. Whether you see this evolution as extinction or immortality depends on your personal point of view. People have always tried to improve themselves, and now we are on the threshold of a major renovation. For the first time, we will be able to consciously control the evolution of our own bodies and minds. We could intelligently modify our own moral programming, thereby eliminating the quarrelsome evolutionary baggage that causes us so much trouble. We could arrange to transfer everything we learn to future generations, including our personality and values. There is certainly no shortage of desirable human attributes and powers that we could nurture and amplify, just as there are many that we could better do without. I see these exciting opportunities as rays of hope for mankind.