“HUMANITY IS JUST A PASSING PHASE FOR EVOLUTIONARY INTELLIGENCE.”
Professor Geoffrey Hinton, ex-Google, Emeritus Professor, University of Toronto.
Is Professor Hinton talking about the Reality the mystics experience, the Reality this Blog is all about?
This acknowledged world leader in artificial intelligence – “the godfather of AI” – also said: “AI will eventually see things we’ll never see.*
He said, AI bots will be able to reason.
(In other words, AI will outgrow us?).
He reports that computers can already learn how to manipulate us. They can also share new knowledge amongst themselves.
Much of what the Professor is saying echoes the experience of a cosmic Reality mystics we write about here, that humanity’s final destiny is to become extinct as we eventually die out to become part of this independent non human Reality – like emerging from an expendable chrysalis.
Does this line of thought lead us to a clearer understanding that, just as this Blog has said, Reality is not human, not biological, does not take humans as seriously as humans take themselves, that Reality just is and we are part of that, to rephrase the mystic saying …
Is the Professor saying from his scientific experiments and research what the mystic already knows, that we are only a biological stepping stone to a non-biological destiny?
P.S. Where, then, do the mystics come into all this, I ask myself?
Mystical Experiences of Reality 
Perhaps the thing to do is to explore this from the idealist/monist/pan-psychist point of view? According to the non-materialists consciousness “just is”. It is said by such people to be a fundamental part of the structure of the universe just like the strong or weak nuclear force. They argue that a basic element of awareness exists even in atoms and below.
The idea, I believe, is that humans are one example of “things” which channel or express this fundamental force. If that is the case it does not seem too impossible than we should create another, non evolved (IE man made) entity that expresses consciousness. IE artificial intelligence. Which may be able to see and appreciate “reality” even better than we do.
If mysticism is all about seeing ultimate reality (and I believe it is) then these man made conduits for “awareness”, “consciousness” may become the ultimate expression of mysticism.
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This is an exciting prospect, Anthony!!
I’d add my sense that consciousness is Reality …
Humans are, as you say, just one particle of It.
I love the idea of AI robots sitting humans down to listen to them expound on the fuller reaches of this CONSCIOUSNESS/REALITY mystics experience. As Professor Hinton says, AI robots will see things ordinary humans are not yet developed to see … Exciting!!
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I have known of Hinton for quite a while but listened to the video and dug around a bit further. He appears to be a pure materialist who certainly would not favour pan psychism or the like. He appears to be one of the many scientists and philosophers like Daniel Dennett who do not believe in consciousness, in other words who believe it is an apparition which emerges from the complex interaction of matter in brains.
Presumably therefore they do not believe in free will and are also deterministic?
Hinton compares the idea of consciousness representing some special non physical “entity” as similar to the 19th Century belief in “ether” and an earlier belief in “phlogiston”.
I find such viewpoints so utterly depressing and the very concept of mysticism would be an anathema to such people.
Nonetheless it is all belief or faith at this stage. And will perhaps always remain so.
Who knows….
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The determinists are stretching the concept too far. Certainly every particle in ultimate existence is Reality and is existing and evolving accordingly. Nonetheless we do have free will within the perimeters of our humaness, just as the beetle, tree, lion or monkey etc have free will but within the boundries of their species. Yet overall, where our attributes can’t take us yet, Reality rules!! This is the evidence of my mystic experiences of Reality …
Keith.
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