A little bit of context for this week's article: last year I had the opportunity to write a research paper on any topic for my humanities class, and what you'll see below is the result of several months of research and comparison between Mary Shelley's 19th century novel Frankenstein and today's advancements in artificial intelligence, something I am unbelievably passionate about. However, I've actually condensed my paper quite heavily for a more general audience; my actual paper is about twice as long as what I have here right now, but I promise that the main focus of my research is still there. And for those of you that haven't read Frankenstein, all you need to know is that a guy named Dr. Victor Frankenstein creates life in the form of a monster that ends up murdering his friends and family. So please enjoy:

Frankenstein is a horror story focusing on the conflict between a scientist named Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he creates in his lab. The story begins when an old Frankenstein comes across an aspiring adventurer on a journey to the North Pole. Frankenstein warns the man saying, “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.” The warning Dr. Frankenstein gives the adventurer serves also as a warning from Shelley to the reader, indicating that the pursuit for knowledge is a double edged sword; while the results from the progression of science usually benefit society as a whole, some discoveries impose a Pandora’s box situation that can end up just creating more problems. One of the most well-known examples of knowledge harming society comes from a time after Frankenstein was written. The advancements of nuclear power in the 20^th century gave scientists the ability to generate an enormous amount of relatively clean energy. This was an amazing advancement for an energy hungry society, but the creation of the atomic bomb arose from the exact same technology, directly leading to the destruction of two entire cities. Shelley writes Frankenstein as her own example of a situation like this in order to demonstrate the necessity of thoughtful regulation alongside the progression of knowledge. For Dr. Frankenstein, his discovery of the creation of life was impressive, but ultimately it was that same discovery that led to his downfall.

One of the main aspects of Frankenstein’s creation that sets it apart from other organisms is its consciousness. At a cellular level, life is almost indistinguishable between organisms. But animal life is incredibly complex; most animals have a brain, and that alone distinguishes them from other simpler organisms such as bacteria or small plants. And with the brain comes the idea of consciousness. Philosophically, consciousness has many different theories that each have their own conclusion as to what it actually is, but a simple definition from the Oxford English Dictionary is that it is “internal knowledge or conviction; the state or fact of being mentally conscious or aware of something”. This means that if consciousness is required for Frankenstein’s creation to be considered alive, then the monster must be self-aware and aware of the world around it.

However, it is sometimes impossible to determine if some organisms other than ourselves demonstrate self-awareness. Despite this, in July of 2012, a research team presented a declaration on consciousness to a group of prominent scientists and philosophers in Cambridge, UK wherein they declared that “non-human animals have the… capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors,” and that “humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.” The main point from this is the idea of non-human animals exhibiting intentional behaviors, which distinguishes them from simple mechanical organisms that operate purely on reflexes. For example, sunflowers always turn to face the sun in order to maximize the surface area that they can use to absorb sunlight. This is a reflexive process within the plant that can be easily explained, making that process within the organism seem more mechanical than intentional.

Even so, Schrödinger notes in his book Mind and Matter that even with the existence of a brain and a nervous system, humans and most other animals still function physiologically on an unconsciousness level. For example, the digestive and cardiac systems operate automatically, and while the breathing process can be purposefully controlled, it will also operate without manual intervention. He also argues that we accomplish everyday actions unconsciously, such as walking, because we no longer have to put in the effort to think about that specific process. The important thing he notes, however, is that processes such as walking had to have been learned at one point, indicating that a conscious effort was initially necessary in order to learn something. He then concludes with his hypothesis that “consciousness is associated with the learning of the living substance; its knowing how is unconscious.” Therefore, the learning process is integral in the idea of consciousness, so if an individual organism can learn, it can then be considered to be conscious.

At the time the book was written, Dr. Frankenstein’s creation of life was meant to be controversial for the readers because this scientist was able to synthesize a brand new consciousness. As previously mentioned, there exists many different theories that attempt to explain what consciousness actually is, indicating that it is not completely understood now and it definitely was not understood in the 19^th century. And as with most unexplainable concepts, humanity has usually attributed consciousness to mythical or religious reasoning, such as pairing consciousness with the soul. This lack of understanding is what allows Shelley to grant a fictional scientist a power potentially equivalent to that of an almighty creator. And a scientist utilizing this god-like power is what creates serious controversy within society.

Frankenstein is the story of a man entirely enthralled by the pursuit of knowledge, and results in the creation of a conscious and highly intelligent monster that is capable of demonstrating human behavior in an appropriate manner. Shelley uses this idea of an ambitious experiment gone wrong to demonstrate the destructive nature that follows the blind progression of science. And while this warning was meant for the people of the 19^th century, that same warning still pertains heavily to the 21^st century with the emergence of technologies such as artificial intelligence.

In Daniel Crevier‘s book AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence, a common definition for artificial intelligence is that it “is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men.” This is a broad requirement for AI that has easily been achieved with computers being programmed to do a specific task. Yet there exist this desire within the science community to one day create a program that rivals the innate intelligence of the human brain. But just like many research fields, the search for AI is driven by the procurement of funds, and the only way to obtain these funds is the production of results. Because of research in all areas being driven by money, technology and its products are progressing at a rate much faster than the regulation of these products, resulting in a lack of preparedness for any major or groundbreaking discoveries.

Imagine if one day, scientist finally create a computer program that demonstrates true artificial intelligence comparable to the innate intelligence of humanity. Would that program be able to think independently? And if it could, would it then be considered conscious? If so, these scientists will have duplicated the results of Dr. Frankenstein’s fictional experiments, just in a different medium. A program that could potentially learn and think independently would theoretically have no limit as to what it could accomplish, and just like Frankenstein’s monster, it may become unpredictable. Dr. Frankenstein would have never been able to predict all the atrocities that the monster commits, and the creation of synthetic life has the chance of ending in much the same way. The issue is, however, that science is not slowing down, and the discovery of AI may happen unexpectedly. And just how Shelley demonstrates how Dr. Frankenstein was unprepared for the repercussions of his ambitions, it should be recognized by society that we are not prepared for a sudden and major discovery equivalent to the generation of life.