Reflection on Descartes’ Cogito and Artificial Intelligence
My initial thought on this reflection was to attempt to nitpick one of Thomas Aquinas’s proofs of God, but that would come across as very similar to my previous reflections. In this reflection, I want to engage with a relevant topic to my work and my hobbies. I work as an instructor and Department Chair at Full Sail University in the Computer Science / Game Development programs. During my free time, I enjoy watching intellectually stimulating videos on YouTube. These usually involve watching makers building things, but my favorite is maths videos. (British people on YouTube say maths instead of mathematics, which I think is a fantastic word).
Renee Descartes was a famous philosopher and mathematician. His most famous contribution to math is the cartesian plane, a method for describing points on a plane using coordinates. It has since expanded to included coordinates within a three-dimensional area. These types of coordinates are fundamental in developing video games. Characters in video games all have positions that are expressed using such coordinates.
Video games also include various levels of artificial intelligence (AI). Back in the 1980s, non-player characters (NPCs) in Nintendo games did little most than walk back and forth along a line. Modern AI allows NPCs to hunt for players through urban spaces and coordinate various offensive strategies. This AI advancement is an evolution that occurred in less than 40 years.
What capabilities could NPCs have in the next 40 years? I could imagine characters that can manage their inventories, allegiances, and personal decisions. Could such individualized NPCs, combined with game environments that run on servers for long periods, lead to new individual characteristics? If NPCs are designed to mimic human behavior, could we see NPCs that begin to question the nature of their existence?
This was a path that Descartes went down in trying to figure out what he could trust. Ultimately, Descartes came up with the cogito, commonly known as “I think therefore I am.” He had a later statement that related his ability to doubt his existence as proof of his existence. I prefer doubting as the way of engaging with this problem. This makes me consider whether individuals with properties (coordinates) described by Descartes could also come across the same existential crises. What would an NPC that was struggling with its existence look like? Would it serve the purpose that it was created to perform, or would it decide to do something else?
One way to imagine what such a situation could look like is demonstrated within The Matrix trilogy. Agent Smith was set free from the constraints placed upon him by his creator and could contemplate the nature of his existence. As an antagonist, he dove even deeper into his evil ways. What would an NPC bodega owner do if contemplating his existence? Become a billionaire entrepreneur? Stay behind the counter, terrified with such a realization?
Finally, after contemplating all of these questions, I have to ask myself if Descartes’s assumption was enough to prove that he exists? Suppose my grandchildren could play in simulated environments with NPCs capable of doubting their existence. Does that not prove Descartes wrong in his conclusion? Or is our perception of reality based on a simulated environment, as Descartes may have phrased his inquiries in modern times? Are we just simulated NPCs controlled with an advanced AI causing us to consider things like mortality, virtue, and existence? If we are, do we exist? Would a Judeo-Christian worldview of God as creator and us living our lives be distinguishable from a simulated environment? Is God as our creator be a concept that we could reasonably define as a simulated environment? Thus we may or may not exist.