THE HEART OF BEING HUMAN

October 9, 2009

Computer scientists have given considerable thought to the question of whether or not computers will ever be able to achieve what we call human consciousness.

The debate on this question has led to general agreement that advances in artificial intelligence may be solving certain small issues on how human thought processes occur, but it has also rendered more acute a much larger issue: what, exactly, is human consciousness? Many computer scientists seem befuddled by this question. Computers can play great chess, they note, but there are a number of human experiences they can never share in. For example, even if they get a joke, they can't laugh at it (even if they can electronically emit a cackle). Nor can they ever appreciate good music.

If computers seem to do more and more of whatever the human mind can do, though, what is it that makes us human beings, and not just living matter neurologically "wired" to super‑computer brains?

Some of the pioneers in computer technology set out to develop super computers that could so mimic human intelligence as to render all distinctions between computers and human beings meaningless. One famous experiment intended to demonstrate this would run as follows: develop a highly sophisticated computer and put it in one room, and then connect it to another computer in an adjoining room. Let a person sit at that adjoining computer and communicate with the super computer, say, for a few hours a day over a period of several weeks. The human being would carry on a conversation with the computer just the way people do today on the Internet. Now, if after a few weeks the human being does not know whether he has been talking to a computer in the next room, or to another human being sitting at that computer, what's the difference between talking to a computer and a human being?

Here's the irony, though. In trying to prove that man is nothing special, the champions of artificial intelligence seem to be doing just the opposite. Their research has thrown into relief how different humans are from computers.

To make the point directly, if you stare into the computer monitor, or in the case of the very sophisticated computers, into the lenses it has for eyes, you realize there's nobody home there.

The only way you can confuse a computer with a human being is if you think the essence of being human is intelligence. It is not. To illustrate my point with a single example, no one who has ever had anything to say about Mother Teresa of Calcutta has ever mentioned her intelligence. She apparently never struck anyone as having superior intelligence, and her speech is the speech of a very simple mind. But what everyone notices and writes about is her humanity.

What is it about her that makes her so human, and such an attractive and admirable human being? Her great heart!

That is what computers lack. They have no heart. They can't feel your pain or your joy. They don't care if you are alive or dead.
If we are to say that a computer can think (by some definitions of the word), it "knows" in order to manipulate, organize and arrange, store and retrieve information, but not to love.

When it comes to the question, then, of what makes us human, we should fix our attention above all on the mystery of love, not on that of intelligence (although that, too, is a mystery and a wonder).

The fact that we have intelligence, and can perceive order in the universe suggests that everything is the result of an intelligent designer. But we should also and primarily be struck by our power and capacity love, and see that this means we were created by a loving designer.

There is enough design in nature to lead even some evolutionists to acknowledge that more had to be involved in bringing about the order and harmony of the universe than blind chance. But there is also enough beauty to bring us all to see that more had to be involved in bringing that beauty about than mere intelligence. Love brought it about.

Our hearts announce to us that it is love that makes us most human, and that it was out of love and for love that we were created. We could live without computers or much knowledge about anything if we had to. The ancient cave dwellers proved that. But we cannot live without love ‑ at least we cannot live human lives without it.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 09-Jun-2010 10:44 sitemap