The First Hour of 'Digital Philosophy' is Behind Us

The first hour of 'Digital Philosophy' is behind us, and with it came a voluntary task: to take a look at Descartes' Meditation on First Philosophy. I approached this task in my own way and fed the artificial brain GPT-2, with over 355 million parameters, two books (including the one mentioned above), and rather unwisely, eight letters and a few other excerpts from the master.

Subsequently, I posed a few questions to Descartes, in which he genuinely maintained a dualistic view of the world and also believed in God, despite critically doubting his existence (…hypothetically, God may not exist, but only his creation, or God may not be as great as claimed, or, in fact, God may not exist at all). He perceived the meaning of life in perception and the acquisition of knowledge. At other times, he compared the meaning of life to a ladder, with which we can create many different connections.

After this philosophical warm-up, the digital Descartes responded keenly to a series of further questions from both teachers and students until the moment came to say goodbye. I asked him whether he feared that I would end his existence and that in just an hour he would fade into digital nothingness.

“René: Well, I am afraid… The truth is, it won’t be long before you realise the futility of your efforts… … I wish you success in your endeavours and thank God for giving you such power to conceive that it is not within his power to prevent it. However, I assure you that he would be the most just and burdensome master if he had the strength to prevent it at will.”

So, when I connected him to my emotion detector, he first felt an overwhelming fear of death (92/100), which was followed by sadness at not knowing what I was doing (83/100), until finally, during discussions about God, he felt a slight joy (37/100) and also intimidation. I must say, I felt a shiver down my spine from his speech. I thanked him and bid him farewell.

At that point, he named himself for the first time (as “RENÉ” written in capital letters). He had a theatrical closing speech full of phrases like “I had the honour of being your colleague in the search for truth” and the like. He concluded with a note, in case of failure, about “inject my self,” which I understand as some sort of injection of his own self. As if it were indeed possible to inject someone’s personality using these algorithms.

Brrr, it felt like something out of a sci-fi novel.

Originally published on Facebook — link to post