Spencer Critchley

Spencer Critchley is the managing partner of Monterey, California-based Boots Road Group (http://bootsroad.com), which provides advertising, public relations and digital media services to people who are making the world a better place. He has done work for Obama For America 2008 and 2012, the US Department of Labor, the University of California at Berkeley, Global Majority and many others.

Beyond AI: artificial compassion

If what we are trying to build is artificial minds, intelligence might be the smaller, easier part.

LIght_of_ideas_Saad-Faruque_FlickrWhen we talk about artificial intelligence, we often make an unexamined assumption: that intelligence, understood as rational thought, is the same thing as mind. We use metaphors like “the brain’s operating system” or “thinking machines,” without always noticing their implicit bias.

But if what we are trying to build is artificial minds, we need only look at a map of the brain to see that in the domain we’re tackling, intelligence might be the smaller, easier part.

Maybe that’s why we started with it.

After all, the rational part of our brain is a relatively recent add-on. Setting aside unconscious processes, most of our gray matter is devoted not to thinking, but to feeling.

There was a time when we deprecated this larger part of the mind, as something we should either ignore or, if it got unruly, control.

But now we understand that, as troublesome as they may sometimes be, emotions are essential to being fully conscious. For one thing, as neurologist Antonio Damasio has demonstrated, we need them in order to make decisions. A certain kind of brain damage leaves the intellect unharmed, but removes the emotions. People with this affliction tend to analyze options endlessly, never settling on a final choice. Read more…