From artificial intelligence … towards a new spirituality?

Entry to the subject

When speaking or writing about spirituality, commonly the first association of the term is with the religious. However, the concept penetrates the depth of the mystical, emotional, interior, incorporeal, mental, cultural, sensitive, immaterial, among others. It is not directly associated with matter, on the contrary, matter is “separate matter.” Science for a long time has signed up for the conquest of certain types of spirituality, trying to establish relative and immutable truths. The same as art and philosophy, since time immemorial, do not get tired of the search for spiritualities that occupy the supposed emptiness of matter, generate inner peace, give life to life and relations with others.

The human individual reached a kind of spirituality when the world was defined by myths, magic and mystery. All types of fears, dusk, oppositions, venerations and submissions were developed. The spiritual character was manifested in Petroglyphs, in traditional poems, in songs, rituals and other creative traces of ancient man.

In modernity, great stories such as liberalism, socialism, fascism and Christianity are created and affirmed. Each of them entered into true crises with postulates and postmodern development. What was integrated and fundamental entered into frank dispersion and even in solution in certain aspects and principles. Science and technology penetrated the space of postmodernity, which have widened the scope of it, coining the terms of hypermodernity, liquid modernity or tiredness society to explain the accelerated changes of changes.

The changes of scientific, technological, cultural and religious paradigms have revealed realities that press the models of conception of the human individual of the present, mainly the western. That, turned into a less plural being, detached from their own identity, without being interested in links with others, unless it is not for interests. He does it out of classical ethics and those of recent social construction, because in that new model ethics has died.

Stories and searches

It was fabled with extreme ease, because the needs, emotions and thoughts of that time built cultural spaces for such purposes. Fables permeated in tribal individuals and groups, not only moments of happiness, but of terror and confusion. From there significant stories and religious, epic and philosophical metarralate originate. The presocratic period marked an era, which supports a detailed analysis, because the philosophers of that time not only tried to discover the ultimate principle of the cosmos, but from that from where everything comes and what is composed. Together with ancient and contemporary religions, they bet on the solution of questions without answers that were and are typical of their times.

Seen from the Socratic philosophy, through Fedon, the body must produce a catharsis, which is the purification of the soul through the denial of the body (of matter); unleash her of her ties. In religion, through spiritual development, the sacred is sought. Thoughts and experiences of the soul are recognized. Everything happens in search of responses to vital purposes.

Science works with objective, verifiable methods, palpable to the senses and logics of rational thinking. His work, although he addresses the theoretical fields, focuses his attention on the tangible and ensures that the result is the same in all contexts, or at least, that statistical probability throws acceptable values ​​of truth.

Revolutionary ideas

Undoubtedly, the development of science, the use of artificial technologies and intelligences (AI), pose a new look at the planet and the universe. Visionaries, not only scientists, but artistic, idealized and conceived revolutionary ideas in many moments in human history. Leonardo da Vinci should not forget, who designed a robot or automaton (1495), based on the work of Vitruvio and the automatons of Herón de Alejandría. In addition, several samples are found in July Verne, for example, in the novel From Earth to the Moon (1865) that was the first written fiction to describe in a scientific way the sending of an object to the moon.

Technologies changed the course of entire civilizations, from the use of the wheel or pulley to the most advanced IAS in the current world. In ancient Egypt, cranial climbing (some argue that they made brain transplants), but there are no scientific evidence of it. With modern technology it is believed that this practice is very difficult due to the complexity in the structure of that organ and its difficult connection with the spinal cord and the rest of the body of the person who receives it. It is important to highlight that experiments with animals have been carried out, and in the case of the facts by the neurosurgeon Robert J. White (1926-2010), who performed thousands of surgical operations, including animal brains. One of them did from one monkey to another, the animal was paralyzed from the neck to the rest of the body.

We will also include the experiences of the CIBORGS, which through implants in the human body are revolutionizing the experience of perception of the real, which could collapse postulated philosophical postulates sustained for a long time on that subject.

Chips implant

Recently, Elon Musk and his technology company Niralink announced to the world the first implant of one of their brain chips that aims to “connect human brains to computers and help treat complex neurological conditions.” By simple deduction certain hypotheses could be generated. Is that the sole purpose of the company? Of course not! Behind “so many beauty” there are always other arguments for the development of technologies. Only time will say it. Meanwhile, this technology tycoon, with its Spacex project and its space rocket company, aims to populate the planet Mars of human beings.

One wonders: Does Musk intuit the end of life on planet Earth? Is the planet Mars an alternative so that the present species of humans does not extinguish? Will you try to establish new civilizations where he exercises a power like that of the gods? Will a new spirituality be built? Perhaps these hypotheses are formulated at the wrong time, however, it is still a theoretical exercise of interest.

Transit to a new spirituality

On the other hand, the massive production of robots allows and will allow certain types of work of the present to be already exercised by human individuals. That goes so fast that when accessing certain technological programs you have to send a signal to rule out whether who acts is a robot or a human individual.

The human-robots relationship-ania-, implies the construction of new ethics and states of similar and different relationships at the same time. How far, feelings, thoughts and human emotions would be linked to machines? What if the machines acquire their own autonomy and identity? The stories of adoration for “certain machines” with degrees of spirituality would not be missing. Would there be submission and which of the sides?

The new spirituality would disagree to religions of ancient, modern and contemporary gods. That could be. We will have to live it.

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Publication on accent No. 125

Virgilio López Azuán at accent.com.do