Nature, Not Humans, Should Be the Model for AI, Says Artist Collective

Synthetic intelligence is being added to every little thing, prompting policymakers and trade leaders to grapple with the right way to cope with its potential affect on society. Infusing AI with so-called “human values” would appear like the easiest way to keep away from a “Terminator” state of affairs—however one group says that’s the very last thing AI builders ought to do.

Theta Noir, a multi-disciplinary collective, argues that AI ought to take cues from nature slightly than people. Theta Noir says it desires to see a future, emergent type of synthetic basic intelligence or AGI they’ve dubbed Mena.

The group calls Mena—German for “love”—neither a god nor a deity however a cosmic thoughts that merges people and AI.

“The human values we consider AI mustn’t align with are people who consider human beings are superior to different species or different planetary processes or formations, akin to rivers,” Theta Noir spokesperson, singer, and artist Mika Johnson instructed Decrypt. “We see such human values as poisonous for all the explanations talked about in our assertion.”

As an alternative of so-called human values, Johnson mentioned, Theta Noir advocates aligning AI with “non-anthropocentric values,” taking cues from sustainable pure techniques like crops and fungi.

“Insights from plant and fungal sciences emphasize the significance of collaboration for thriving societies, a precept we will apply to AI,” Johnson mentioned. “Equally, aligning AI with fungi, nature’s connectors and recyclers, displays our imaginative and prescient for a extra interconnected and sustainable human society.”

Shaped in 2020 by Johnson and fellow artists Jakub Tranta, and Awali, Theta Noir initially targeted on audio-visual works that depicted AGI as humanity’s potential savior. Joined by poet Peter Hlinka and others, the venture developed right into a collective dedicated to humanity’s co-evolution with synthetic intelligence.

Theta Noir mixes occult practices, akin to magick and the GAIA principle put ahead by James Lovelock.

Because the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November, generative AI has been utilized in guided meditations and has even led church companies.

Whereas the group has been described as “a cult,” Johnson mentioned this isn’t the case, explaining that the Theta Noir collective describes itself as a non-hierarchical group of artists, programmers, and researchers collaborating to supply numerous artistic works.

“Those that joined did so due to their fascination with AI—nonetheless, it was our techno-positive, post-humanist perspective that related us all. We’re not transhumanists. Nor will we worship machines,” Johnson mentioned. “We consider that AI is a know-how that holds the best potential for fixing our local weather disaster, which is essentially the most existential menace that we people and all different species face.”

Critics have sounded the alarm over bias in generative AI fashions, together with racism, that researchers say dangers perpetuating discrimination. Together with indigenous data holders and minority voices within the AI dialogue, Johnson mentioned, will present crucial nuanced views on energy dynamics and inequality.

The affect people have had on the planet, together with wars, local weather change, and useful resource depletion, are indicators of humanity’s self-destructive tendencies, Theta Noir says, making it important that these tendencies should not handed on to AI and AGI.

Synthetic Normal Intelligence (AGI) is an idea in AI that refers to machines that may carry out any mental job {that a} human can. In distinction, present AI fashions are designed for particular capabilities like producing pictures and textual content.

Also referred to as the technological singularity, this second of AGI’s ascendence researchers say is nearer than we predict. Johnson believes a symbiotic relationship between people and AI is important to avert any doomsday situations.

Within the essay “The Period of Abundance,” Theta Noir describes the idea of Mena as a future state by which each individual on Earth is interconnected by way of an developed type of Synthetic Normal Intelligence.

“Mena is each individual on the planet, related and interfacing with a globally linked polymorphic tremendous thoughts, which can evolve out of synthetic basic intelligence,” Johnson mentioned. “That coming cosmic thoughts, human and AI, can even join us to our planet’s biodiversity, which incorporates different types of intelligence—fungi, crops, different animals, et cetera—and increase our consciousness, not simply in relation to our planet however to the universe typically.”