Gödel Escher Technē
This is a revised version of an essay about artificial intelligence that I wrote in 2023. It’s about some things that had been on the mind for a while, and that, in particular, I was thinking about while grocery shopping one day in Gilford, New Hampshire
The essay is titled “Gödel Escher Technē”, a reference to the book “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas Hofstadter
I think the continued development of artificial intelligence will lead to an epistemic unraveling of teleological claims. There’s been some of that already.
A while ago, I read a news article along these lines:
“Every year, a team wins the Super Bowl. That then leaves the deeper question: what’s the point of winning the Super Bowl?”
If a machine can do everything a human can do, what’s the purpose of a human doing anything? This is particularly important for domains previously considered the sole purview of humans. Work and relationships are under siege.
If not technē, is hedonia teleologically significant? What about eudaimonia?
What about qualia in general? Specific quale, such as raising children?
What if an AI can raise children - expertly - according to a specification?
Are human endeavors teleologically significant when a machine can replicate them, down through neuromorphic signal transduction?
It would be interesting if AI drove a renaissance in epistemology, teleology, and logos.
I think solutions will, as with the Super Bowl, be deontological. Consequentialism will be as good as gone.
More to the point, I think philosophy — and in particular, epistemic sense-making — will be the final and most important area of human endeavor, whether or not we directly call it philosophy.