Inventing Friendship

Inventing Friendship

By John Taylor; 2006 June 23

A computer scientist and entrepreneur by the name of John Koza -- I am told that koza means "goat" in Czech -- has strung together a thousand networked computers to solve problems using a specially designed genetic algorithm. He calls it an "invention machine" and he believes that it successfully automates the creative process. ("John Koza has built an Invention Machine," By Jonathon Keats, Popular Science, May 2006, p. 66) A year or two ago his networked electronic brain won the first patent for a non-human inventor, a milestone in computer science as great as the Turing Test. Like Thomas Edison, the machine is rapidly innovating in a dozen fields at once. Its inventor is taking it to the next step, coming up with a patent that becomes a commercial success. This would be another non-human first.

Koza's electronic inventor has come up with a new wide-field telescopic lens, a crooked wire antenna for space probes, and so forth. The program combines artificial intelligence with genetic programming by breaking down both the parameters of a problem and the program elements that solve it into small bits and "breeding" them with each other over many generations, just as evolution fiddles with the genetic code. After a day or a month, the perfect solution rises to the top.

Most interesting for me is how the invention machine is being directed to solve tangled political problems. It found a way around the world's worst democratic structure, the "electoral college" that directly elects the American president. Without this ridiculous institution the current president, already considered by a broad consensus to be the worst in history, would never have made it into the Oval Office. The invention machine discovered that if a critical mass of eleven states were to pledge to vote for the winner of the popular vote, the electoral college would be nullified. Surprisingly, so desperate have Americans become that this suggestion is actually being taken up, Illinois being the first state to take the pledge.

As a person with a passionate interest in things creative, I think this is a tremendously important development. It will change the role humans play in creativity, a role that is already a partnership rather than a master-slave relationship. For a long time I have thought that as machines catch up in raw intellectual capacity we will have to change our values around completely. Instead of brute calculating ability, something we are not good at anyway, we will learn to admire and promote the mushy virtues that humans exclusively are good at, like compassion, humility, indeed all the virtues that Baha'u'llah listed in His tablet to Mirza Mihdi, being "a friend to the stranger, a balm to the suffering," and so forth. But there is more to it than that. Let me quote a passage from the article in question,

"As genetic programming becomes pervasive over the next decade, the process of finding good solutions to difficult engineering problems will become efficient in the way that once-arduous tasks such as 3-D rendering have become routine. But, as with 3-D rendering, the real challenge will lie in deciding what to create. This is no trivial matter -- to invent a car, even with an invention machine, you must be able to conceive of wanting a horseless carriage in the first place. In the future, as solutions become plentiful and cheap, the real test of creativity will come in the search for problems." ("Invention Machine," p. 82)

Sticking to this example of the automobile, certainly if such an invention machine had been available at the turn of the last century, electric automobiles would have won out over gas burners, and personalized mass transit would have beaten both in most areas. What was needed then, as now, was not so much better choice of problems as the wisdom to be critical and say, "No, let us not invent anything at all here." The invention machine will really prove its usefulness when it is designed to be critical, to take in the environmental effects, the unexpected pitfalls of local solutions. For example, nanotechnology, new and exiting as it seems, can easily create toxic waste to dwarf present pollution problems, severe as they already are. So for every nanotech invention let the invention machine loose with one million dollar preventive cleanup question: "Will this cause more recycling difficulties than the narrowly defined solution itself merits?"

Koza is right to turn the invention machine to political problems. I think that this is the ripest area to apply its innovation skills. Work an automated inventor into the whole consultative process.

Here is an idea: Use the inventor as a lawyer-on-the-spot to draw up dynamic contracts with every person you meet. As things are if a person breaks a promise, they are impervious. If they do not turn up for an appointment, they do not pay for it. If it is not illegal, who cares? We have no sanctions or incentives on either side to do what it takes to be a good friend. If one party does not give due and timely notice, that is, if they stand you up, they should pay. The injured party should be able to put a bad mark on some virtual escutcheon between them, lower their stock, drop their emotional intelligence quotient a little bit. Brownie points and black marks should be struck up automatically, to avoid further ill-will. And they should outlast the relationship; that is, if somebody has been a lousy friend before the danger should be clear from the beginning to all who start new contracts with them.

At the same time, if a friend is putting you lower on their list of priorities than you are them, let it be clear and written, searchable and analyzable by your automated lawyer. Let the machine interview both sides and come up with adjustments to the contract, as needed. The creative digital assistant would never let an acquaintance dare call you a friend until they have earned the title, until they have given up something to be with you. Clearly, without real-time assistants, teachers and mentors drawing up and maintaining such elaborate contracts would be extremely time-consuming. Lovers already spend far too much time talking about "the relationship" with one another; think how hard it would be to do the same with long term friends, much less casual acquaintances. But there is a great need nonetheless. In our society friendships are in great need of contractual bolstering. Especially with men, the center of relationships fall apart and in old age they are left alone, friendless and embittered. Suicide rates for senior men are frighteningly high. Men especially are in need of contracts to survive, or we naturally revert to what was once called the "state of nature," complete isolation without a covenant to civilize us.

We are talking here about the automation what could be called creative covenantal relationships. These are increasingly the mark of everything we do in this age. The first thinker to turn to this kind of relationship was J-J Rousseau in his Social Contract. It is not a coincidence that those in a state of nature find it a difficult book to understand. Here is what one professor wrote about it on the internet:

"Rousseau's Social Contract is infamous for the difficulties which it imposes on its readers. Some see it as an application of social contract theory to the problem of legitimating majority rule; others see it as romantic collectivism, in which the individual is somehow swept up in the collectivity and thereby made free; still others see it as a blueprint for totalitarianism."

The social contract is none of these things, it is a precursor to the divine covenant set up by Baha'u'llah. We will talk more of this later. Meantime, consider this amazing prayer and prophesy. Imagine a day when kings and queens seek after and value good friends, rich or poor, before power and influence. Yet it must come about if God says it will.

"Glorified art Thou, O Lord my God! Thou hast, in Thine all highest Paradise, assigned unto Thy servants such stations that if any one of them were to be unveiled to men's eyes all who are in heaven and all who are on earth would be dumbfounded. By Thy might! Were kings to witness so great a glory they would, assuredly, rid themselves of their dominions and cleave to such of their subjects as have entered beneath the shadow of Thine immeasurable mercy and sought the shelter of Thine all-glorious name." (Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations, 208)

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com