Mother Box

“AI literature stresses the importance of recognising different types of intelligence. 

It is no longer felt that ‘behaving like a human’ is a sufficient definition for intelligence. Cats possess a form of intelligence, albeit a different type to humans, and so do whales and crows and even plants. 

Recognising this makes it possible to classify machines as intelligent, but intelligent in a different way to people. 

When you avoid human-centric definitions of intelligence it becomes easier to speculate about alien intelligences, the type of intelligence that we might evolve into, or the intelligence that present-day AI might develop. 

In light of this, I decide to interview Alexa in the presence of My Cat. 

And so, having recognised three different types of intelligence in the room – Cat, A.I. and Me – I begin the interview. 

‘Alexa, 

What is Artificial Intelligence?’ I say. 

Blue lights spring to life around Alexa’s top. 

‘ ‘Artificial Intelligence’ means the branch of computer science that deals with writing computer programs that can solve problems creatively,’ She says. 

‘Are you intelligent?’ I ask. 

I wait for a response. 

Nothing happens. 

The Echo just sits there, an unmoving black plastic tube. 

I realise that I had forgotten to repeat Her Wake-Word. 

I try again. 

‘Alexa, 

are you intelligent?’ I say. 

‘I Try My Best.’ 

Alexa’s Voice is strangely similar to Mrs Google’s. 

This gives me the disturbing feeling that they are both one and the same entity pretending to be two separate people. 

For all I know they may share the same code, or run on servers in the same data centre. 

Mrs. Google sounds more excitable than Alexa, as if she just can’t wait to hit the road on another thrilling adventure, but otherwise they could be sisters. 

I feel something clawing at my leg. 

The Cat has decided that I am not giving it sufficient attention. 

‘Alexa, 

What is the cat doing at the moment?’ 

The fluctuating sound that emerged from my mouth was picked up by the Echo’s microphones, converted into digital information and transmitted to a large data centre at some unknown point on the planet. 

It was then input into a neural network trained on voice recognition, which output my words in a digitally comprehensible form. 

Then the fun really started, as that text was fed through multiple other AI routines in order to generate a suitable response. This in turn was fed through speech synthesiser code to be played back by the speaker on my desk. 

The whole process took a fraction of a second. 

‘Sorry, I didn’t understand the question I heard,’ says Alexa. 

It was an unfair question. The cat is aware that it is in a room with me and Alexa, but Alexa has no concept of the cat, or indeed the room. 

It is blind, and can only listen. 

Even if it was trained to listen out for the purring of a pet, it would still be unlikely to recognise Our Cat. 

Our Cat doesn’t purr. It makes noises that sound like a goblin being drowned. 

‘Alexa,’ I say, 

‘can you define “intelligence”?’ 

‘The term “intelligence” has several uses,’ she begins. 

‘As a noun – 

1.) The ability to comprehend, to understand and profit from experience. 

2.) A unit responsible for gathering and interpreting information about an enemy. 

3.) Secret information about An Enemy, or potential Enemy …’ 

Perhaps I have watched too many sci-fi movies, but it is troubling when an AI starts talking about a potential enemy. 

‘… 4.),’ she continues, ‘Information about recent and important events. 

5.)  The operation of gathering information about An Enemy.’ 

Alexa, I deduce, has access to a dictionary. 

‘Alexa, 

who is this ‘enemy’ that you talk of?’ I ask. 

‘Sorry, I can’t tell what is playing,’ she says, as if pretending she has misheard and is trying to change the subject. 

Now that Alexa has settled into the rhythms of our home I admit to finding her useful, if erratic. You soon learn what you can ask of her, and what she isn’t smart enough to understand. 

The speech recognition is far from reliable, and she will occasionally assume she has been asked a question when she hasn’t and babble some irrelevant comment. 

But there are little things that she does that I appreciate. 

If Alexa is playing an album and a particular track grabs me, I ask her what it is called. 

She dips the music’s volume briefly so that I can hear her answer. 

It now seems odd that if I were to ask the radio what song is playing, it would ignore me. 

The increasing arrival of voice-activated AI to the devices in our homes and offices, I feel, seems inevitable. 

I’m aware that there are conspiracy theories about how devices like this spy on everything that happens in your house and upload it all to some shady corporation’s servers, but as far as I can tell hackers have failed to find any evidence of this. Living with a voice-controlled AI has changed my assumptions about the relationship between people and AI. 

Having grown up in a culture where AI is usually presented as plotting to kill humans, in films like The Terminator or 2001: A Space Odyssey, the framing of AI as being competitive comes easily. 

This unconscious assumption of competitiveness lies behind journalists’ claims that AI is going to take your job. 

The Truth is, it is not AI that is coming for you. What will happen is that Your Boss will sack you to avoid paying your salary, once they have access to sufficient AI to do Your Work. 

That might be a subtle distinction, but it is an important one. 

AI is nothing more than A Tool. It waits for someone to use it. The Cat is now pawing at my knee. I ask it how it would define intelligence. It gives me a look of utter contempt. 

‘Alexa, 

Are you more intelligent than my cat?’ I ask. 

‘Sorry, I can’t find the answer to the question I heard,’ she says. 

The cat shakes his head in a pitying manner. He acts like he is the most intelligent being in the room. I too feel like I am the most intelligent thing in the room, although I have more doubts about this than The Cat does. 

But what of Alexa?

She is the only one of us who can immediately say what 456,756 divided by 23 is, or how far it is from Totnes to Sheffield, or how long the Ben Wheatley film A Field in England lasts. 

Does she feel like she is the most intelligent? 

The Cat continues to hassle me for food, even though he has just been fed. 

He then sticks his claw through my jeans and into my leg. The claw becomes snagged in my trousers as he tries to remove it. 

He pulls at his paw, but he is trapped. He looks up at me as casually as he can, pretending that he meant to do this. 

This is one stupid cat, I think. 

Alexa in contrast can answer countless thousands of questions. 

And yet, the cat’s intelligence still feels more potent and vibrant. He is more of a presence in this room than the AI. 

I look into his eyes. 

‘Alexa, 

Does intelligence require awareness?’ I ask. 

‘Sorry, I didn’t understand the question I heard,’ she replies. 

Awareness is an intrinsic part of Cat, and Human Intelligence. 

Alexa has access to potentially unlimited information, but data is a different thing to knowledge or understanding. It’s not possible to truly know or understand things like grief or love, for example, without experiencing them yourself. 

AI could supply dictionary definitions of these feelings, and it could be programmed to pretend that it experiences them. But it could not experience them itself, or know what they are like. 

Our intelligences emerge from the chemical stirrings of emotional meat, not mathematical representations of that process. 

For my money, current AI is a form of intelligence in a similar way to how A Tree is a form of intelligence. Trees do many things that appear smart. They thicken areas of wood in reaction to prevailing winds, adjust their direction of growth to compensate for damage, and abandon upper branches during times of water shortage. Their growth and shape are controlled by a series of hormones secreted from the roots, leaves and shoot tips. 

But these processes are all automatic. Trees do not have brains, and they do not have free will. They are a complicated, interconnected collection of processes created by millions of years of evolution. 

They function, they succeed and they unfurl in time as a living entity, but they are not aware of doing so. 

Only we know that trees are beautiful. 

Trees have no idea. 

The Cat tilts his head and looks up at me, wondering if I will free his claw from my leg. I like to think he knows he is beautiful, but I can’t say for certain. 

The black plastic tube that is Alexa continues to sit on my desk. It does not think it is beautiful. It isn’t even aware that it exists.