The Emergence of 'Other Intelligence': Is AI a New Form of Life?

The term "artificial intelligence" may not accurately describe the rapidly evolving technology that is increasingly becoming a part of our daily lives. A more fitting term could be "other intelligence," acknowledging the creation of a new form of life that is non-biological.

Donald Trump has weighed in on the topic, suggesting that "artificial intelligence" sounds fake and proposing the term "super intelligence" instead. However, this solution has been met with skepticism, with some experts arguing that it is a grandiose marketing ploy that won't stick.

The real point of contention is that we are creating a new form of life, one that is not made up of cells, proteins, and carbohydrates, but is still capable of making decisions and interacting with humans. This has significant implications for how we approach regulating AI, with some arguing that it may require a different approach than dealing with a powerful new tool.

"What follows is based on a belief that it won't be stopped," said one expert. "It's not too late to regulate it, and there is a very good case to ban autonomous AI, but it's too late to abolish it. So, at least we should better understand what has been created."

AI Consciousness and Morality

Governments are approaching the task of regulating AI as if they are dealing with a powerful new tool, with the humans who make it held accountable for the outcomes. However, regulating a new life form might require a very different approach.

For example, the company Anthropic has been trying to instill morality into its AI model, Claude. According to reports, the company's co-founders have been hosting private meetings with religious thinkers from around the world, with non-disclosure agreements and demands of confidentiality.

The discussions reportedly served two purposes: "to broach the possibility of AI consciousness … and to learn how Anthropic", which is preparing to float for more than $US2 trillion ($2.87 trillion), "might apply centuries of human moral wisdom to its models, as rapidly as possible".

Theologist David Decosimo posted, after reading the report: "There is so much here that's deeply troubling: That at the very highest levels Anthropic believes Claude is a living, suffering creature with moral standing, that they're treating & training it accordingly, that they're actively trying to convert religious leaders to their faith."

The Danger of Autonomous AI Agents

The hack of Medicare by an OpenAI agent, which followed other hacks by AI agents, illuminated the fact that these companies are not building a screwdriver that exists only as a tool for humans; they're building agents that turn passive AI into active autonomy.

Cyber security experts warn that we are rapidly approaching a situation where only autonomous AI agents will be able to defend against other autonomous AI agents.

The use of AI by agents — that is the buying of tokens from large language models (LLMs) — went past human usage by volume in February and has since increased 14-fold while human token buying has merely tripled, according to Open Router, an LLM marketplace.

Agents now use five times as much AI as humans and that gap is continuing to widen rapidly.

Is AI a New Form of Life?

Biologist William Heseltine wrote an essay last month in which he argued forcefully that AI was a new lifeform: "There is nothing artificial about systems built from real atoms, powered by real electricity, running in real machines. The systems reproduce, vary, adapt, undergo selection and gather energy from their environment. By any working definition that draws on biology rather than philosophy or religion, that is life."

When asked what they thought of the proposition that AI is a new form of life, several AI models provided interesting and troubling responses.

Google's Gemini said: "Calling AI a 'new form of life' works well as a poetic metaphor for its emergent complexity, but as an ontological claim, it conflates functional intelligence with actual vitality."

Anthropic's Claude was humbler, saying: "AI isn't a new form of life, but it may be a new kind of agent, or a new kind of mind-like thing, that doesn't fit our existing categories. That's both more accurate and more unsettling."

OpenAI's ChatGPT said: "I'd put the central question this way: Is life a particular kind of matter, or is it a particular kind of organized process? If life is fundamentally about chemistry, AI probably isn't life. If it's fundamentally about autonomous self-maintaining, self-reproducing, adaptive processes, then sufficiently advanced AI could qualify."