Neeti, Prakrti Darsana & Artificial Intelligence

The United Nations India and O.P. Jindal University had invited me to speak on ethics of artificial intelligence, as these two institutions were exploring pluri-perspectives on it during the summer of 2021. I did what was told, offered them a perspective of an Indian natural scientist. Sharing my excerpts and the video, where I roughly begin my intervention at 2:56 hrs. But I will encourage you to listen to my fellow speakers too!

"Thank you, Prof. Singh, for introducing me so charitably. I also thank UN India and OP Jindal Global University for inviting me to this august gathering.

The synopsis of this session is leading into deep terms like Dharma and Nyaya. However, at a time when human understanding of these two lexicons have been limited, I don’t expect AI to be profuse with it any time soon. Having said that, I am quite interested in delving into the phrase ‘long history of humanity’ also mentioned in the synopsis.

India’s antiquity is intimately linked with the antiquity of Sanskrit. Over the year India has been home to opulent language dictionaries catalogued as Shabdkosh, Shabdbandh, the Amarkosh, the Dhatukosh, and many that grew of Sanskrit’s daughter languages. Languages grow prosperous over time. The prosperity comes via literature. For India, Sanskrit's antiquity and its motherly attribute as the progenitor of all Indo-European languages make it the most abundant of all languages. And there is an immense treasure-trove of Sanskrit that can of great utility as we comprehend AI and ethics.

I am not a linguist, neither into epistemology, nor have businesses in Artificial Intelligence. I am an astrochemist, studying the chemistry happening in the universe, including the formation of life on planets that occur over billions of years. My study offers an atypical perspective on the evolution of life from inanimate prebiotic chemistry to sentient beings the way we are.

If we humans think in Modern English, today's Lingua Franca, all the decent citizenry truly wants ethics to prevail. In common parlance, ethics evokes the correct-incorrect, right-wrong, moral-immoral binary.

But suppose we humans begin to use the massive lexicological expanse of Sanskrit. In that case, ethics become highly dependent on the settings it is used in. Let us choose a Sanskrit synonym for ethics - neeti - and do a metasearch of all words that uses it as a suffix – we come across so many of them.

Rajneeti, Ranneeti, Arthneeti, Dandneeti, Kootneeti, Suneeti, Kuneeti and many more.

Ethics along the Sanskritized reasoning can have various dimensions and depend on the matrix in which it is viewed. The neeti of a carnivore, an herbivore, or an omnivore in an ecosystem is bound to be different. The difference is what maintains the order. Spoken language, therefore, becomes key for the advancement of ethical AI regardless of its applications.

The Sanskrit literature is a treasure-trove of Prakriti Darshana (the study of nature), evident from various treatises. The treasure-trove will be important as human studies ethics in the context of AI. This Prakriti Darshana is necessary because there is a lot to learn from nature and the various natural intelligence that has evolved before humans.

In today's context, the term intelligence is used quite profusely. We tend to call engineered systems operating on cause-and-feedback loop smartened by complex sets of instructions that go by the name of algorithms as intelligent. Now that is a bit of a stretch. In reality, it is us humans that have learned to develop better-engineered systems.

Humans have spent thousands of human hours on such engineering and offered it billions of gigabytes of data. As a result, the systems now can compute a colossal number of tasks of varying complexity.

Significant technological progress in the algorithm-robotics-sensors trinity makes machines highly dexterous. They can now do unimaginable tasks earlier. However, it has not reached a stage where AI has become emergent or acquired the capability to self-reproduce. The Self-Reproducing Automata, as imagined by the famous systems theorist Jon Von Neumann is still far away. But that doesn’t mean a philosophical inquiry into understanding intelligence should not be delved into.

The distinction between the inanimate, animate, intelligent, sapient, and sentient is made in Bhagavad Gita when Shri Krishna says, "the working senses are superior to inanimate matter; the mind is higher than such senses; intelligence is still higher than the mind, and the soul is higher than intelligence."

Before going any further with AI and ethics, I ponder, have we aptly termed AI?

We humans may be the most intelligent species on this planet. Still, we need not be under the misconception of being the only intelligent life-form on this planet. Intelligence on this planet rose at a time when 3.8 billion years ago, complex organic chemistry decided to undergo 'emergence' and become 'self-reproducing into unicellular and later into multicellular life-forms.

The overarching intelligence-led biological life on Earth to pervade the planet, only to adapt and evolve to changing climes and environs. Human intelligence is a product of this overarching intelligence of all life on Earth.

And today, when we discuss AI and ethics, we are repeating the same mistake of anthropocentrism. Humans are not the centre of the universe, and indeed, AI, being an anthropogenic product, should not become one. At least from a human perspective.

As a natural scientist, one often wonders, do 'cancer cells' have intelligence? Can swarming bees and birds be called intelligent? Can the billions of bacterial colonies present on different zones of a slimy microbial film that grow on waterbodies cooperate for nutrition? I don't need to talk about the well-known cognitive abilities of octopuses, apes, dolphins, and whales.

As we study AI, we must also look at scientific communities that are part of endeavours known as 'Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.' That domain is as great a blackhole as AI is. We do not worry so much about SETI because there is uneducated certainty humanity will encounter AI emergence well before ET Intelligence. But, what if we are wrong to presume that way?

There is so much intelligence out there. Are we humans doing anything to comprehend, interact, cooperate, and transact with these kinds of intelligence?

Nature has been kind that we do not have an apex predator above humans anymore. Now that we enjoy that apex position, we must still remember that no species has remained apex for too long. Hence, it will be wise to study the science of various kinds of natural intelligence before we mock ourselves with cockeyed technology advancement in AI.

The deliberation on natural intelligence is not vague. The Convention of Migratory Species, a respected body within the United Nations Environment Programme architecture, views dolphin intelligence seriously. Likewise, the Great Apes Survival Project, another UNEP project, takes the intelligence of gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and orang utans with great diligence. Anti-whaling programs of the UN also give due significance to the brilliance of whales. The points made in this intervention therefore are parallel with the Goal Number 13, 14 and 15 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Prakriti Darshana in Indian philosophy has always emphasised natural intelligence. When multiple species help Lord Ram build the bridge to Lanka, it is evident. Even in modern literature, the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, inspired by the Panchatantra and Jataka Mala, is full of Prakriti Darshana. India has a multi-millennia treasury of knowledge when it comes to the study of intelligence. It is time to take it out from the vault, dust it, and open it.

Thank you all for your patient listening."

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