From the series Artificial Intelligence
There is an anthropological question linked to the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on human consciousness, analogous – though at a higher level – to the effects of online communication and even television. We consider three aspects of this. Physical, concerning changes in the brain’s neural connections as a social product. Functional, concerning capacities that are stunted or developed by the internet and the use of artificial intelligence. Epistemological, concerning the implications for the theory of knowledge and the very notion of an objectively defined principle of reality.
The Church, as it has already done with biotechnologies capable of intervening in human DNA, is developing its own reflection on artificial intelligence and its anthropological implications. This is centred on offering its official teaching, which provides an ethical framework to regulate the use of AI, with the claim of averting its potential threat to social stability and to human nature itself.
We shall return to this matter. For the moment, we shall confine ourselves to a few observations by Paolo Benanti, a Franciscan friar and populariser of Catholic reflection on AI. In L’uomo è un algoritmo? (Is Man an Algorithm?
), Benanti takes up the arguments of the American neuroscientist and populariser David Eagleman, from the book Livewired.
At birth, the human brain is not fully formed. According to Eagleman, as summarised by Benanti, we are born with a genetic predisposition
for certain basic functions, such as language acquisition and a predisposition to imitate behaviour, but the structure of our brain is largely determined by the experiences we have in the world
.
There is actually a quantitative imbalance between what is determined by our genetic makeup and what is determined by experience:
Genes provide only a limited number of instructions for building the brain. With 20,000 genes and 200 trillion neural connections, genetics alone cannot explain the intricate details of our brain
.
This is where the notion of a live-wired
brain comes in, where experiences continually shape and reshape neural circuits
. DNA does not provide a fixed template
for the highly intricate assembly of connections between neurons, writes Eagleman; it would be impossible to specify the details in advance
. The solution lies in the strategy encoded in the genome:
Building a remarkably incomplete object and letting the experience of the world perfect it. This is why humans are born with an unfinished brain and need to interact with the world to complete it
. In this process, thanks to the brain’s flexibility, life’s events are woven directly into the neural fabric
.
During childhood, Benanti summarises, we experience a long period of vulnerability and dependence
. What appears to be a disadvantageous condition for evolution is, in reality, crucial for the development of the brain’s capabilities. During this period, the brain is extremely plastic; it eagerly absorbs information from the surrounding environment and adapts to culture, language, and social interactions
.
This plasticity in childhood and adolescence unfolds through genetically determined phases and timescales; age matters
, Eagleman points out, and certain learning from experience is possible only within a limited timeframe
. However, within the limits of those developmental stages that lead from childhood to the fully formed adult brain, brain plasticity is a permanent condition. Benanti embraces the fundamental view that grounds the brain in social relationships:
The brain does not stop developing after childhood. Neuroplasticity continues throughout life, allowing the brain to adapt to new experiences and learn new skills. In this dynamic process, it is not only the ‘machine that we are’ that matters, but the life we lead: in other words, through our lives as individual, we are both the children of a history and the fathers of a history. In fact, culture profoundly influences the way our brain interprets and assigns meaning to sensory information, enabling the formation of neural landscapes that determine how we perceive and interpret the world
.
Hence, insofar as we understand the notion of culture in the broadest sense, i.e., as the sum of practical and intellectual acquisitions within a given socio-economic formation, in which those acquisitions shape relations between individuals and are transmitted across generations, we are operating within a materialist conception of consciousness.
Language, science, technology, historical tradition, literature, and ideologies, which are linked to a given mode of production, are, through experience and sensory mediation, directly woven
into the neural fabric of the cerebral cortex of individuals. We must note, however, that the economic structure of society and the class division linked to that mode of production are ultimately decisive, and that for Marxism the ruling ideologies are those of the ruling class.