Kurginyan: Artificial intelligence is about idolizing rationality, and it’s nothing new

12.12.2020, Moscow.

Philosopher and leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan outlined three possible directions for the development of artificial intelligence on December 6 on the air of the Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov program on the Russia One TV channel.

Sergey Kurginyan commented on President Vladimir Putin’s recent speech, in which he reacted very reservedly to the proposal of implementing artificial intelligence nationwide, which lack such concepts as conscience and compassion. Kurginyan noted that he agrees with Putin in many respects. At the same time, the political scientist stressed that there is one “point” to be considered.

He explained that with respect to the development of artificial intelligence he sees three scenarios:

“unrestrained technocentric development, when the technosphere absorbs Man, dictates everything, and we obey.”

“morally restrained technocentric development,” a scenario mentioned by President Vladimir Putin and also by Mikhail Kovalchuk at the Federation Council meeting regarding the human genome;

“anthropocentric development.”

Moreover, Sergey Kurginyan stressed that it is impossible to stop development.

“Can we morally restrain technocentric development? No. It can be done at one price: we will slow it down – this is where we will end up with the ultimate disaster,” he explained. He also added that full reliance on artificial intelligence, let alone subordination to it, is tantamount to the death of humanity.

Discussing the role that the artificial intelligence should play in the destiny of humanity Sergey Kurginyan suggested to look back on history in general and to discuss how the human understanding of oneself and the surrounding world has been changing over the centuries.

As the philosopher noted, for a very long time the humanity was moving in a God-centric world where religion played a fundamental role. Then, with the beginning of the Enlightenment, Reason took the place of God. But for a number of reasons, Reason failed to take the leading role in human society.

“Who destroyed it? Immanuel Kantdestroyed it, who showed that there are antinomies, and reason is not infinite. Then mathematicians who said that any system of axioms contains a huge number of statements, which cannot be proven true or false destroyed it,” the political scientist explained.

According to Sergey Kurginyan, Hegel attempted to save the “leading role of Reason” by opposing the formal reason with dialectics. And after him, Karl Marx proposed History as a new fundamental category of development, the political scientist explained.

“He [Marx] said: God is History. In its different variants,” Kurginyan stressed.

Thus, according to the philosopher, the artificial intelligence, the machine – “is a belated idolization of formal reasoning.”

“And this formal reasoning does not contain strategic novelty. It cannot contain it,” said Kurginyan. He stressed that artificial intelligence lacks such categories as metaphorical and creative thinking, which are fundamental of human consciousness.

Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency

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