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Why Did We Create Artificial Intelligence?
A common idea tossed around by many a pundit on why humans invented Artificial Intelligence is that we want to play God and create another intelligent species. This, despite the fact we still don’t really know what intelligence is. Or consciousness. We have theories. But what if there is another reason or two that we really created A.I.? Something inherently deeper?
Perhaps there are two reasons. Our own existential fear of death as a species and that as a species, we feel terribly alone. Let’s amble down the garden path of us animals and explore this.
On Being Alone As A Species
The root of the word exception means, in Latin, excipere, which means “to take out.” And we humans see ourselves as an exception, separate from other animals. We expend a lot of effort doing things that help us to deny that we are, in fact, animals.
Our fear of being alone as a species may also be why we create all kinds of stories around aliens. In most of science fiction, aliens appear and do rather nasty things to us. But somehow, we always win. We feel again, exceptional. In some of these stories, aliens are nice and we have lots of fun parties with one another and go off exploring the galaxies.
