A REFLECTION ON DEEP BLUE (FYI - That's The Computer That Beat Kasparov At Chess) Today’s post is a bit late but, nevertheless, is in honor of the 10th anniversary of the defeat of Kasparov by IBM’s supercomputer – Deep Blue.
For the longest time I've been thinking about something a good friend told me. He said (actually it was at his first child's baby shower if you can imagine that) that one of the main reasons he couldn't believe in God was because there simply wasn't a need for God anymore. God, in his mind, was now irrelevant, and if I needed any proof I had to look no further than his field of artificial intelligence (actually computer programming, but it’s close enough).
Apparently AI is now getting so good that it is generally accepted to be only a matter of time before robots are smarter, stronger, quicker, and, in short, superior to humans in every capacity that matters. "Just think!", he gushed, "once artificial intelligence achieves better than human intelligence no one will assume that we need 'outside intervention' to explain anything!" I think I said “whoah” or something equally brilliant.
But before all the theist's in the house collectively throw up their hands at the stupidity of such an argument, let me at least spell out the salient points of his underlying argument. It goes something like this:
1. Since we know that human flesh was created by chance (See Darwin).
2. And, since superior intelligence is the main thing that separates humans from the rest of the things created by chance.
3. And, in light of the fact that humanity has demonstrated (with machines like Deep Blue) that intelligence qua intelligence, can be simply and scientifically created using just the tools available within the observable, testable world.
4. Then God cannot be a necessary component in the process of the creation of humanity.
5. It, therefore, follows by Occam’s Razor that it is more logical to assume that humanity came about (body and mind both) purely by natural causes and not by supernatural intervention.
That’s about the best I can do with the time I’ve got so don’t throw things at me, I’m just not cut out to be an atheist you see. On the surface, it looks fairly solid. However, underneath this argument are a raft of indefensible a priori suppositions (and a healthy dose of faith but I don’t have time to go into that just now). To sum up my critique (perhaps I would do better to steal Dennis Prager’s line “Who Cares about Deep Blue’s Victory) I will simply ask, Who decided morality was non-essential to humanity?
Because, to my secular-humanist friends, discussing the concept of morality into the context of a discussion about mankind’s origin probably seems crazy, so I like the way it makes them go nuts when I bring it up. But, seriously though, most of these folks will not say that morality is insignificant – they just conclude that it’s already accounted for under the heading of “intelligence”. But, don’t we all know people who have advanced intelligence but subpar morality? Going further, doesn’t Deep Blue present just such a case? I mean look, it is either intelligent, but not moral - thereby distinguishing the two faculties (leaving morality unaccounted for in the string of causation listed above). Or, if you conflate the two (as my friend does) it is simply not as intelligent as any grown-up person… which, again, seems to work against the argument that the existence of Deep Blue somehow explains away mankind’s uniqueness.
Finally, if Deep Blue’s raw computing power somehow de-thrones man from our special place in the universe, then so do calculators (to riff off Dennis Prager’s again). No human can calculate the square root of 1,235 as fast as a calculator. And, since I’m on a roll, if men consistently beat woman at chess shouldn’t this prove that men are more advanced than women? However, the reason most of us believe this not to be the case is because we believe that brute logic, “processing power”, is only a function of our souls living in a body - like height or weight, somehow related to brain size and what our mother’s ate while we were in the womb, but in any case not at the core of what makes us human.
Humans are not just complicated calculators – because we are obsessed with doing the “right” things, and are astonishingly interested in whether or not they will have eternal implications. Even though my friend may have concluded that his actions do not have implications on the hereafter, he is still faced with the question - something Deep Blue will only ask if he is programmed to.
Posted June 08, 2007 Dennis Prager is the man Posted by: Christof Meyer I guess that's pretty much all that needs to be said about that... I've just been reading more from this guy and he's so easy-going and mellow that I think most people in the world of public affairs should take their cues from him! Posted 2007-08-16 11:59:01 COMMENT ON THIS POST
