Friday, March 21, 2014

AI: It's Role in Fiction (Person of Interest)

What is its the "referent" of AI in science fiction? By that I mean, what is it actually saying something about? One possibility, the "literalist" (rather than the literary), is that it claims that AI is possible in the real world, that it is possible for a machine's logical program to evolve into a living being capable of full human thought. This would be an interesting concept for which to use the word "evolution," because it is the same basic movement as is meant by the extreme form of the usual meaning of the term, only from the opposite direction. The usual usage of the term most often refers to the evolution of the physical, organic human body from lower animals. The more extreme form would say that everything about humans, including all aspects of psychology (even rational thought and "free will"), developed solely from animal psychology. According to the teaching of the Catholic Church, this would he distinctly hetrodox, as it denies a spiritual component and nature in humans (spirit being a whole other order of reality than the physical and biological). AI, on the other hand would be the evolution of pure logic (unfettered by animal body) into life on the same level as humanity. And it would be equally heterodox (replacing the mystery of the Incarnation with evolution, denying the former altogether, at least at some inevitable point).

But the question is whether or not this is what AI fiction, or any fiction, is doing (making metaphysical assertions). I would offer an alternative, which is that it can be doing analogy. All good literature deals with issues of human persons. Here the computer represents the rational side of humanity. The question is what the rational side of humanity does with the larger reality that is human nature.

Pure rationality can do cost analysis. This ultimately ends in a Jeremy Bentham utilitarianism. The thing that I like about the Person of Interest consideration of AI is what I mentioned in a previous post, Finch's statement that it was only when he taught the machine to value human life (sympathy) that it was able to understand human behavior enough to predict threats. The purely rational cannot, on its own, comprehend human nature without valuing it. Reason needs pathos in order even to do its own job of understanding human life and action. I am not sure if I would go all the way to saying that this pathos arises directly from the animal psychological drive for self preservation (I'm not sure, but that might violate my principles of avoiding any solely evolutionary explanations), but I do think that in the human condition (being both animal and spiritual) that animal self-preservation does play a role in the development of the necessary pathos.

An even more speculative move would be to include the other role that I usually assign to AI in good science fiction. Artificial Intelligence often, I believe, stands in for Artificial Identity. I would argue this is most often seen in the group identity, the whole that becomes more than the sum of its parts through human construction of the concept of that identity (sometimes conscious, but often collectively unconscious). The machine taking on a life of its own beyond the original program would be an analogy of the group identity taking on a life of its own, now defining the members, rather than the individual members defining the group.

I am not entirely sure how I would tie this together with the first concept of AI I started this post with; these are more just raw thoughts.  But it does seem to me like the conjunction of (1) AI being reason contending with human nature as including the biological and (2) AI being collective constructed identity provides a more interesting starting point for the question of the "greater good" vs the individual good (the tension between PoI's relevant list and irrelevant list) than does a purely rationalistic utilitarianism that gives no consideration at all to the question of valuing human life in the first place, and then simply tries to perform calculus on the value.


Paranormal Activity and Constantine: Do the producers believe in demons, and does it matter?

The question of this post is whether or not the producers of the "Paranormal Activity" series believe in the existence of demons, or more accurately, is stating such a belief what they are doing in the films. The real question at the heart of this is that of what it is that fictive art does.

As background, starting off, I thought the first three PA movies were well done, but that the fourth really fell apart.

So, by the end of the first movie it is obvious that within the framework of the story, this is a real, traditional demon: an entity that is malicious and purely spiritual in nature, but able to manipulate the physical world. It's not a ghost story, and it's not a story about the tension between spiritual explanations and psychiatric ones. An example of the former done well would be "The Others," with Nicole Kidman. The prime example, for me, of the latter would be "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." But "Paranormal Activity" is a straight-up traditional demon story.

So, the question I have is whether the point of the movie is to make the metaphysical/ontological claim of the existence of demons/angels and explore the different facets or questions of that matter (can they manipulate some types of things but not others? or other like questions). My answer is that this is not the point that can be taken from the movie (JRR Tolkien did not believe that Middle Earth historically existed, but this does not make the Lord of the Rings pointless). Furthermore, I will say that I do not think that it matters as far as the film doing what it does as art. I will also note here, however, that I do not think that the fact (if I am right) that this is not what the movie is doing means that the producers definitely do not believe in demons, NOR that what I am about to discuss cannot have any relevance in a world in which demons are real. It is simply not the question that the movie poses as art.

So, What does the movie do? The key concept for me here is analogy. Take the qualities of the demon in the movie and ask if there are any things in our real world that have these same qualities. Then ask how characters in the film interact with those qualities, and how do those interactions play out.

Whatever the demon's name or origin etc are is inconsequential. Some of these are guessed at throughout the four movies, but they are not, I would submit, the core of what the demon is about. Likewise, the specifics of what the demon wishes to do with those it takes are, relative to this discussion, inconsequential. We are looking for more general characteristics.

We find several things about the demon. The first is that its true nature and mode of action (how it impacts the material world) are unobservable (we can see the effect, but not the means). The second is that it is malicious. The issue of whether this is malicious intent would only muddy the waters for the analogs I will offer, so I will confine this quality to saying that it has a decidedly negative impact. A third quality is that it seeks some kind of control.We do also have a fourth quality hinted at in the first movie and confirmed in the third, which is that it is aided by figures who are elders to those affected (this is present both in the impact of the choices of the older women on the younger women and in the role of parents/adults in the sought after control of the child, Hunter).

I would offer two real world things that could be analogous to these qualities of the demon (there are probably many more that would work; these are just the two most prominent ones I have thought of). The first is psychological and/or psychiatric malady. The second is socio-economic factors and/or higher-up actors with negative impact. Regarding the first, the ambiguity between psychology proper (behavioral based) and psychiatry (with a stronger emphasis on the bio-chemical) is actually a good starting point. The difficulty of distinguishing between the two (behavioral causation and chemical causation) relates well to the aspect of the demon being unobservable in its core nature, because the ambiguity stems from the difficulties in observing those factors directly. It is nowhere near as easy as in the science of physics or chemistry in inanimate material. The same is true for socio-economic forces and actors. The web of possible causality and determining factors is very complex.

The point for the movie, however, is that the things are real (if my analogies hold), just as it is clear that the demon is real, although equally as mysterious, which is part of the point.

The real point is the reaction to it and interaction with it by others. In the first movie the main person under consideration is the boyfriend, Micah. He is not only flippant and calloused; at points he is downright antagonistic towards Katie. In the second movie it is the husband, who ardently and arrogantly refuses to believe in the existence and action of something beyond his comprehension, disbelieves his daughter's testimony, and even "playfully" antagonizes wife's and daughter's fraying nerves with the trick with the pool cleaner ... that is, until what is really happening is undeniable, at which point he does a deal with the devil, completely selling out the sister-in-law, Katie.

To understand the analogy, let's substitute the analogs I have suggested in for the demon. If Katie were to suffer from psychological or psychiatric malady that the male character (whether Micah or the husband in the second movie) does not understand, and thus dismisses them and perhaps even acts antagonistically towards her, rather than trying to understand and find some way of being helpful (other than flippantly trying a ouija board or diabolically making a devil's deal), the root causes go untreated. Perhaps it would be very difficult to even diagnose, let alone effectively treat, the actual causes, but the other person has not even tried, and has even made things worse through antagonism. The same can be true of socio-economic forces. The point is that, whether it be psychiatric, socio-economic, or actually spiritual (demonic), the other person has only made it worse.

Of course, in the case of the grandmother and other women in the third movie, the older generation has actually sold out the younger, knowing full-well what the effects will be. There are human beings who do this to other human beings as well.

In my assessment on the literary level, all horror, when done well, is apocalyptic in the original sense of the word - revelatory. Through analogy, it reveals things to us about the real world we live in.

Constantine

So, let's turn to another film that uses imagery and subject matter that is more properly "apocalyptic," "Constantine," with it's Revelations themes. Here, again, we have the presence of actual demons and angels stated in the fictional reality of the film. Here the term Constantine uses for them is very telling about the concern of the film; he calls them "the influence peddlers." "No direct contact," but they can, in a sense, whisper in the ear ... and their slightest whisper can give great hope or can turn your favorite creature comfort into your worst nightmare. The analogy is that there are human beings who fit this description very well: never working in direct statements, but always (in the negative cases) tearing down through subtle whispering.

Of course, subtle whisperings don't always have to be verbal or made to just one person. The Catholic Church, in her teachings on social justice (in the set of papal encyclicals grouped together as the social justice encyclicals) speaks of "structures of sin." As the old saying goes, "no man is an island," or to quote Aristotle (Aquinas' "the philosopher"), humanity is a political animal by nature. It is possible to use structures to achieve desired ends. And it is possible for intermediaries to willfully look the other way when they have the capability to at least be cognizant of more than they choose to.

Here, the film "Constantine" offers a bit further commentary on the role of other humans, other than the ones actually peddling influence ... the ones who can either help or hurt (even if through negligence) those impacted by the whispering, particularly those who see it for what it is. As a boy Constantine had this sight (represented by the faces on the bus), and for it was treated as if crazy.

Again, the commentary (via analogy) is primarily on human action when confronted with things that we cannot completely grasp, but also know that a possible explanation exists that is not a comfortable one for us to accept.

Constantine carries an extra complication for those (like myself) accepting the doctrines of the Catholic Church, which is the issue of suicide. I would offer only these few considerations (NOT from the analogical interpretation). The Church teaches that suicide is a mortal sin, but it also teaches that mortal sin requires adequate understanding and consent. I will not say, as some might, that it is impossible for those to be had in the case of suicide, but I will say that it is all too easy to jump to hasty judgments in cases of suicide, neglecting very real psychological and psychiatric factors that could be mitigating. Further, in the case of the second attempt, the goal actually seems to be (at least in the minds of the film-makers) self-sacrifice. The action is done to trick the Satan character into appearing as a way to stop the diabolical action.

But there is also another role of both this suicide attempt and the first one, a role that I must admit, as a smoker, I hesitate to bring up ... the connection between smoking and suicide (which some might state as the slow way and the fast way of the same thing). But, if I am to be honest about reading the film, I have to bring it up. I also bring it up because it broadens out this treatment of film-art beyond the merely analogical. The connection is not done through analogy, but rather through merely close proximity in dialogue and through visual imagery. The first instance, the one done with dialog, comes in the conversation between Constantine and Gabriel in the library: she tells him, "you're going to die because you have smoked 30 cigarettes a day since you were 15; and you're going to hell because of the life you took [meaning the first suicide attempt]." In art, unlike real life, dialog is never random (truth-be-told, many things in real life conversations are not as "accidental" as we like to think they are either). If the two are in that close conjunction in the constructed dialog, the authors probably did it for a reason. The second instance of the conjunction, though, provides a development in the theme, and it is part of the reason that I say that the second attempt is not the same as the first. It's an easy thing not to catch, but Constantine actually douses his last cigarette in the blood from his wrists.

So there are my main thoughts on those two supernatural horror/thriller films and on the relevant issues of what fictional art does that is different than making metaphysical "scientific"claims.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Person of Interest: "Root Path" Aired 3/18/2014

First note of interest, the title for this episode, "Root Path," pairs off against the title of the episode first introducing Root in season 1, "Root Cause."

Many points of philosophical interest are possible in this episode especially, such as providence in a chaotic world (chaos theory), and the "greater good" vs the good of the single life etc. But the one that caught my interest the most is when Root states her take on the machine continually telling her to protect the janitor as Finch having to have broken the machine so badly for it to care so much about people. Finch states that it was only when he taught the machine to care about people that it was able to understand people enough to be able to see what it needed to see to analyze threats.

This reminds me of something Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, in regards to Biblical Studies. He spoke of "sympatheia," having sympathy with the subject. His basic point was that in order to understand something like the Biblical text, a scholar must be exercise sympathy with it ... meaning it cannot be treated simply in a completely cold and "objective" scientific fashion. I liked seeing the same theme here.

No great big further thoughts on that one yet, just cataloging it for now.

Person of Interest: The Machine as Golem

Jonathan Nolan is a pretty smart guy. Guy's like him usually know A LOT about the particulars of Western literary tradition. They also are usually fairly in touch with current literature. If Terry Pratchett is using the Golem motif in the discworld series, and mentions are even being made to "making a golem" in something like the Sopranos (or so a student once told me in a class when I asked if anybody knew what a golem is), I would find it shocking if Jon Nolan was not decently well versed in at least the concept, and maybe even a good bit of the actual literature.

A Primer on Golems

This is what I can remember from a talk given at Lumos (Harry Potter conference) in Vegas in 2006. The earliest literature we have is from somewhere around 11th century in Prague. The basic storyline is that a holy Rabbi needs to save his town from impending danger. He molds a man out of clay and brings it to life by placing one of the names of God on its forehead. This golem then saves the city. Once that purpose has been fulfilled, the Rabbi takes the name back off and the golem becomes inanimate clay once again.

The danger (and reason that it must be a particularly holy rabbi doing it) is that the golem will become self-aware and not want to be decommissioned. The golem is pretty powerful, so this could be a real problem.

Person of Interest's Adaptation

I think it is a pretty easy case to make that the machine is a golem. It was made to protect humans, and, as we see in season 2, it becomes self-aware.

What I think is interesting is that in this case the self-awareness comes from the directive to protect. In order to better protect humans, the machine must know about the great dangers to humans. It thus has to know about itself as a great power that, in the wrong hands, could be massively abused, and thus is a potential danger. Thus, it MUST protect itself in order to protect humans. It is designed to be self-upgrading and all that because any human having access even for repair could be a potential means to control the machine and use it for great harm to humans. This is the seed of the self-awareness of this golem. It has to be aware of itself as a thing in order to protect itself as a thing, and it must protect itself as a thing in order to protect humans.

I don't know if this is a unique adaption of the golem motif by Nolan and co, or if it has a precedent in golem-lore, but I would love to know.

(By the way, it could be a unique adaptation of the motif by JN without JN being conscious of it.  He may be consciously using, or at least aware of the connection with, the golem motif in general, AND be adapting it, without really thinking about adapting it ... artist's don't always sit down and think things out logically before creating; in fact, a lot of times their art is better if they don't pin it all out logically before-hand)

Pi as Life the Universe and Everything: Darren Arnofsky and Person of Interest

As a warning, this post has no discussion at all of the Douglas Adams book from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I simply like that phrase for what I have to say about the connections I am about to discuss.

Here is the progression of thought-events as they have presented themselves in my brain over the years:

1. Watching Darren Arnofsky's Pi, leading to many, many, many musings about the 216 digit number as power (to know the true name of God would be great religious power, to understand humanity well enough to predict the stockmarket would be great economic power).

2. Watching Person of Interest: The season 2 episode called 2PiR has some interesting comments on Pi.

3. My own thought that those qualities of Pi makes sense (for me) as why Arnofsky's choice of Pi as a key to the 216 digit number is appropriate.

Pi

So, first up in this list is the 216 digit number in Arnofsky's movie, Pi. The number is presented as 3 things: The true name of God embedded in the Torah; the key to predicting the stockmarket; and the expression of the silicon identity/nature of the computer (which could be taken as an emergent AI, but could also be taken as symbolic of human rational capacity unfettered by bio-psychological connections and taken to its full potential).

The main point of the movie is, it seems to me, relatively straightforward: no matter which of these 3 you focus on with the number, there are two dangers. The first is injustice from abuse of the power. The second, and more the focus of the film, is that it will break the human mind. Whatever it is, it is too big for the human mind and will thus undo it (and it may be all 3 combined together, which makes it an even heavier weight - this, btw, is the root meaning of the word for the "glory" of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible/OT, the root verb from which the noun comes means basically "to be heavy"). Max is happiest at the end when he can no longer figure out the answers to the Chinese girl's math questions (and this was a nice human touch too: as a child, she never really wanted to test his math skills, she just wanted to play).

Person of Interest

So, in the episode 2PiR (sorry, can't find the symbols in here) in the second season of Person of Interest, Reese is in jail being interrogated and Finch goes undercover as a highschool substitute math teacher to get close to the kid who winds up being an amazing computer programmer.

The pertinent thing for my thoughts here is what Finch says about Pi in his class lecture. Because it is non repeating, Pi contains every possible combination: every social security number, every birthdate, every name (if you transpose numbers to letters), every phone number ... everything in the world of humans.

My Thoughts

From the PoI observation, Pi contains ALL human particularities. It contains the whole human world by containing all of its particulars in every aspect or facet (each person, but represented by all expressions of them: name, SSN, birthdate, and on and on). In Arnofsky's Pi, the 216 digit is the name of God and the expression of pure rationality. Just as Sol's bug in Pi is the path to the number, so Pi as humanity is the path to knowing God (Please bear with me and read to the end of this post to avoid confusions about what I mean by this). What fascinates me the most is the fact that it has to be the whole sea of particulars (Pi containing every possible combination). The alchemical whole is more than the sum of its parts, but it has to have all the parts to be the sum. I'm not sure where I go with this, but the thought fascinates me.

Disclaimer

To avoid blasphemy here, which is pretty much what I would take it to be if I said that God (the 216 digit name) is contained inside humanity (Pi). If Sol's bug is the 216-digit number, and the bug is in Pi, and the number is the true name of God, then basically God is just a by-product of human being, or human evolution, or however you want to describe the totality of humanity contained in Pi.

This is definitely NOT what I believe.

Look at it this way though: the 216digit name is still only the true name of God as spoken by human beings in human language (even numbers and math are still only human expression - that is why you can have math that is unstable at advanced levels, as mentioned in the film A Beautiful Mind). It is not the true name of God as God is in and of himself, eternally. However, and I do think this is part of what is in Arnofsky's film (or at least uniquely possible from what is there), that human expression is not simply produced by humanity. Somewhere in the sea of data in Pi is the expression of a belief in transcendent deity, but that doesn't mean the idea came from humanity. But that would jump off into a whole new, long discussion of concepts of Inspiration of Scripture etc, which I don't have time for here.

Here I would include only two brief related concepts from my own credal background and studies. The first is just the basic formulation of Inspiration in Catholic magisterial teaching: the Word of God in the words of humans. The second is that this idea of "only as spoken in human language" is found in some Rabbis. Rabbinic thought is VERY different from modern western thought. They think in lines of logic like, the beginning always begins with the beginning - the first word of a text should logically begin with the first letter of the alphabet (and thus you have acrostic psalms). SO, the question arises for the legendary Rabbis of the Classical and Middle Ages, why does the first word of the Torah (Bereshith = "in the beginning") begin with the SECOND letter of the alphabet, the bet, rather than the first letter of the alphabet, the aleph? One answer that one Rabbi gives is that, as Holy as the Torah is, it is still only text in human language; it is not The Holy One, Blessed be He, or the completeness of his actual utterances to Moses (for Rabbinic thought the written Torah is never complete without the "Oral Torah" that was also given to Moses). So, beginning with the second letter rather than the first is a reminder of this fact.

Further Thought:The Incarnation

Where this would go for me if I had time etc, is Pi as an expression of the Incarnation. It would not be just taking on "human nature" as some sort of singular abstract. The whole is indeed more than the sum of the parts, but it needs all the parts, and human mind cannot encompass it because it is infinite (which is different than being eternal). In regards to what I said above about "humanity is the path to knowing God," for me as a Catholic Christian, this can only take place fully in the context of the Incarnation (the path of the noble pagan, such as Plato or Aristotle, is valid, but can only go so far).  The number is infinite, so the grasping of the meaning, in theological terms, must be an eschatological event.  Then there is the area to explore of how this fits with a concept of divine Inspiration of human text, the Word of God in the words of humans.