Day 343: AI and the Human Mind

Photo by Samuel Austin on Unsplash

One of the best things about summer break is the opportunity to have long talks with colleagues about important ideas. This type of exchange is the best reason to be in a university setting, but too often it gets shoved aside by the exigencies of teaching, committee meetings, and the usual hurly-burly of the day.

Today I had the luxury of a long coffee chat with a colleague who is also exploring the impact of evolving understandings of consciousness on his field. He shared several important writings and how they have affected his thinking, writings I’ve now begun to explore myself.

What I Am Not

M: A part of the whole seen in relation to the whole is also complete. Only when seen in isolation it becomes deficient and thus a seat of pain. What makes for isolation?

Q: Limitations of the mind, of course. The mind cannot see the whole for the part.

M: Good enough. The mind, by its very nature, divides and opposes. Can there be some other mind, which unites and harmonises, which sees the whole in the part and the part as totally related to the whole?

Q: The other mind — where to look for it?

M: In going beyond the limiting, dividing and opposing mind. In ending the mental process as we know it. When this comes to an end, that mind is born.

- from I Am That: Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Majaraj

In property law, I often remind students that an owner cannot transfer a larger estate than they own.

What lies beyond the thinking mind? Even if humankind succeeds in giving AI access to all of its knowledge, can it give away more than it owns? Won’t the essential work of humanity remain to be done by humans?

If so, can we regulate AI to ensure that we retain space to do that essential work?