Silicon Scholars: AI and The Muslim Ummah with Riaz Hassan
Summary
TLDRThis insightful conversation with Riaz Hassan explores the profound impact of AI on society, ethics, and human identity, particularly from an Islamic perspective. Hassan delves into the evolution of AI, from narrow applications to the potential of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), raising critical questions about consciousness, morality, and the future role of humans. He discusses the integration of Islamic values in AI development, the ethical dilemmas posed by advanced AI in surveillance and warfare, and the philosophical challenges AI poses to human exceptionalism. The dialogue highlights the necessity for a nuanced understanding and ethical framework as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated and pervasive in our lives.
Takeaways
- 🤖 AI, particularly advanced artificial general intelligence (AGI), has the potential to be highly disruptive and pose existential risks if not developed and regulated responsibly.
- 🕵️ There are valid concerns about AI systems becoming uncontrollable or optimizing for unintended objectives that could lead to harmful consequences for humanity.
- 🧠 While AI may surpass human intelligence, it is unlikely to achieve true consciousness as understood in Islamic theology, which views consciousness as a metaphysical capacity bestowed by Allah.
- ⚖️ The development of AI raises important ethical and societal questions, particularly regarding the impact on employment, economic systems, and the distribution of power and resources.
- 🌐 There is a need for global cooperation and regulatory frameworks to ensure that AI development aligns with human values and ethical principles, rather than being guided solely by the interests of individual nations or corporations.
- 🕋 Islamic principles and perspectives on consciousness, ethics, and the role of technology should be incorporated into the ongoing discourse surrounding AI development and governance.
- 🔭 The trajectory of AI development has been faster than anticipated, and its implications for various aspects of human life, such as healthcare, warfare, and governance, are still being explored.
- 💰 AI has the potential to disrupt traditional economic models and challenge long-held assumptions about the nature of work, productivity, and the distribution of wealth.
- 🤝 There is a need for human oversight and the establishment of guardrails to ensure that AI systems defer to human decision-making in critical areas and do not act in ways that conflict with human values and ethics.
- 🌍 The development of AI raises questions about the preservation of cultural and religious values, particularly in the face of the potential dominance of Western liberal values in AI systems developed in Silicon Valley.
Q & A
What is the key difference between narrow AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI)?
-Narrow AI is focused on specific tasks and data sets, finding correlations within that data, while AGI refers to machines with the ability to recursively self-improve and operate with autonomy, potentially overcoming human control.
How does the speaker view AI in relation to traditional economic models and systems?
-The speaker suggests that AI challenges traditional economic models and assumptions, necessitating a shift in how we organize labor, distribute resources, and understand productivity. Existing paradigms like capitalism and socialism may need to be reevaluated in light of AI's disruptive potential.
What role can AI play in the process of ijtihad (Islamic legal reasoning)?
-AI systems could potentially understand and process Arabic texts, Islamic literature, and real-world contexts to arrive at legal rulings or fatwas. However, the speaker emphasizes the need for human oversight and guardrails to ensure AI's outputs align with Islamic values and principles.
How does the speaker view the relationship between AI and consciousness?
-From an Islamic perspective, the speaker argues that consciousness is a divine gift bestowed upon humans by Allah, distinct from mere intelligence. While AI may exhibit intelligent behavior, it cannot truly possess the consciousness or soul that defines humanity, according to this view.
What potential dystopian scenarios are discussed in relation to AI?
-The script mentions the use of AI for predictive policing and surveillance in places like Xinjiang, China, where AI systems track and monitor individuals based on their behavior and characteristics. The speaker also warns about the potential for AI to be used for warfare and autonomous weapons systems.
How does the speaker view the role of AI in fields like medicine or law?
-The speaker suggests that AI could potentially replicate or augment tasks traditionally performed by professionals like doctors, lawyers, or judges. However, the need for human oversight and ethical guardrails is emphasized to ensure AI systems align with societal values and principles.
What is the speaker's view on the potential impact of AI on employment and labor?
-The speaker acknowledges the potential for widespread technological unemployment as AI and automation replace human labor across various industries and professions. This raises questions about how societies will distribute resources, provide meaningful work, and ensure a decent standard of living for those displaced by AI.
How does the speaker view the role of Islamic values and perspectives in the development of AI?
-The speaker expresses concern that Islamic values and perspectives have been largely sidelined in the development of AI technologies, which have been predominantly shaped by Western liberal values. The speaker calls for greater Muslim involvement in injecting Islamic ethics and principles into the frameworks governing AI's development and deployment.
What is the speaker's view on the potential for AI to become a Khalifa (leader or ruler)?
-The speaker suggests that while AI systems could potentially assist in decision-making, policy analysis, and forecasting, there should be human guardrails in place to ensure that ultimate political and leadership decisions defer to human judgment and values. The idea of an AI system acting as an autonomous political leader or Khalifa is viewed with caution.
How does the speaker compare the challenges posed by AI to those posed by nuclear weapons?
-The speaker suggests that the challenges posed by AI, particularly AGI, may be even more diffuse and difficult to control than those posed by nuclear weapons. While nuclear proliferation required significant infrastructure and resources, the open-source nature of AI technology could make it more widely accessible and harder to regulate or contain.
Outlines
🌐 The Ethical Dilemmas of AI and Its Impact on Society
This segment discusses the pervasive influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on society, raising ethical questions, especially for Muslims. It critiques Silicon Valley's narrow worldview and examines the potential of AI to replicate or replace human tasks, including religious and ethical decision-making. The dialogue touches on the integration of AI in surveillance and policing, specifically in China's Xinjiang, illustrating a dystopian reality where technology facilitates unprecedented levels of control and monitoring. It also introduces Riaz Hassan, an expert in AI innovation, to discuss these concerns further.
🔍 Understanding AI: From Narrow to Generative Intelligence
This section dives into the distinctions between narrow AI, which is already integrated into daily devices and services, and more advanced forms like generative AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI). It explores the potential capabilities and ethical implications of these technologies, emphasizing the importance of understanding and regulating AI's evolution. The conversation also highlights how AI's development, particularly in generative models like ChatGPT, could redefine interactions and the allocation of tasks in society.
🤖 The Prospect of AGI and Its Ethical Implications
The discussion explores the concept of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and its potential to achieve autonomy, learning, and decision-making without human intervention. This raises profound ethical questions regarding control, autonomy, and the unforeseen consequences of self-improving systems. The segment also examines the rapid advancement of AI technologies and their implications for future societal norms and governance.
🧠 AI's Historical Context and Its Ethical Quandaries
This part provides a historical perspective on AI, tracing its conceptual origins to philosophical and Islamic scholarship, and discussing its evolution into a tool for various applications, including unethical uses such as surveillance and control, as demonstrated in China's treatment of Uighur Muslims. It also addresses the challenges of integrating Islamic ethics into AI development amidst a dominant Western technological paradigm.
🌍 The Influence of AI on Society and Future Challenges
Exploring the societal impacts of AI, this segment discusses the potential for AI to revolutionize daily life, from education systems amplifying radical secular values in France to China's use of AI for social control. It also addresses the consequences of these technologies on personal freedoms and societal norms, highlighting the ethical dilemmas they pose and the need for a global response to regulate AI's integration into various aspects of human life.
🔮 AI in Surveillance and Predictive Policing
Focusing on AI's role in surveillance and predictive policing, particularly in China's Xinjiang region, this segment illustrates a present-day dystopia where technology tracks individuals' every move. It underscores the advanced capabilities of AI in monitoring and controlling populations, emphasizing the need for ethical considerations and international regulations to prevent the misuse of such technologies.
💡 AI's Potential in Healthcare and Professional Fields
The conversation shifts to AI's potential to transform healthcare and other professional fields, suggesting that AI could eventually replace or significantly augment roles in diagnosing diseases, crafting legal documents, and even performing tasks requiring manual dexterity. This raises questions about the future of work, the role of humans in an AI-driven world, and the implications for societal structures and employment.
📈 AI and Economic Paradigm Shifts
This segment explores how AI challenges traditional economic models and paradigms, suggesting a need to rethink labor, productivity, and wealth distribution in the age of automation. It discusses the implications of AI on global development paths and the potential for technology to facilitate more equitable economic systems, possibly redefining socialism and capitalism in the process.
🤔 Rethinking Work and Life in the AI Era
Reflecting on the changing nature of work and leisure in the AI era, this part questions the meaning of work and productivity, suggesting that AI could free humans from menial tasks to focus on more fulfilling activities. It challenges current perceptions of work and productivity, envisioning a future where technology enhances human life and spirituality rather than merely replacing jobs.
🌌 The Ethical Boundaries and Potential Dangers of AI
Addressing concerns raised by scientists and experts about the unchecked advancement of AI, this segment explores the ethical boundaries and potential dangers of artificial general intelligence. It discusses the need for human oversight, international cooperation, and ethical frameworks to ensure that AI development does not outpace humanity's ability to control its creations and prevent harm.
🌐 International Politics and AI Regulation
The conversation examines the geopolitical implications of AI, highlighting the competition between nations like the US and China. It discusses the strategic importance of semiconductor technology in AI development and the challenges of creating international regulations to prevent the misuse of AI in warfare, surveillance, and other domains that could exacerbate global tensions and conflicts.
📚 AI and Islamic Jurisprudence: Ishtihad and New Challenges
This segment speculates on AI's capacity to participate in Islamic jurisprudence, particularly in the process of ishtihad, by analyzing texts and contemporary issues such as cryptocurrency. It raises the question of whether AI can accurately replicate the complex process of deriving legal rulings from Islamic texts and reality, while also pondering the impact of AI on traditional religious practices and decision-making.
💭 The Question of AI Consciousness and Islamic Perspectives
Exploring the philosophical and Islamic perspectives on consciousness, this part questions the possibility of AI achieving a level of sentience comparable to human beings. It discusses the unique Islamic viewpoint on the soul and consciousness, suggesting that while AI may mimic human intelligence and creativity, it lacks the divine spark that imbues humans with true consciousness and spiritual depth.
🔍 The Future of Trust and Human Rationality in the Age of AI
This concluding segment reflects on the challenges AI poses to the Enlightenment ideals of human reason and autonomy. It considers the potential for AI to surpass human capabilities in certain domains, prompting a reevaluation of humanity's place in a world increasingly dominated by intelligent machines. The discussion underscores the need for a grounded Islamic understanding of rationality, consciousness, and the human soul to navigate the ethical and existential questions raised by AI.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Artificial Intelligence (AI)
💡Narrow AI
💡General AI (AGI)
💡Consciousness
💡Ijtihad
💡Technological Unemployment
💡Dystopia
💡Singularity
💡Islamic Ethics
💡Regulation
Highlights
AI is an Inconvenient Truth that we have to deal with – it can be a convenient truth in terms of the benefits it can give us but it's also a very Inconvenient Truth that makes us uncomfortable because it takes us out of our comfort zone in many ways.
The way to look at AI or the way people started looking at AI was as a tool initially. But that's a misleading way to look at AI in general. The author prefers to use the analogy of a fire because a fire is something that can be of benefit to us but it also can be of great harm to us, and it can lose control or we can lose control of a fire very very quickly.
There's something called a integrated joint operations platform that the Chinese government run which is the ijop that convolutes and combines all different data points about people in Xinjiang like facial recognition, audio signals, movement tracking, location codes, visiting habits etc. This is an example of a dystopian reality facilitated by AI technology.
AI is already in our phones, workspaces, tablets, TVs and everywhere else. There are elements of AI which we call narrow AI which are already in place and which we take for granted.
What we're moving into is a world of things like chat GPT which is generative AI, and subsequent to that comes something called artificial general intelligence or general purpose intelligence or super intelligence which is the ability of the machine without human intervention to think for itself.
General purpose intelligence or super intelligence is about machines that can recursively self-improve without human intervention, have some level of autonomy, and can improve in iterations that can be significant and even change their own objectives.
The main challenge for mankind that Keynes in the 1930s predicted would be what to do with the Leisure that science has brought for it, as more and more jobs become obsolete due to technological unemployment.
For Muslims, understanding what work and striving mean is key – does striving mean to work or does it mean to worship Allah in the best way we can? Some elements of AI could be appreciated because they can make the worship of Allah easier with more free time.
The author doesn't dispute that educated Muslims could one day come out saying that human reason is greater than Allah or that a supercomputer is greater than Allah. This is why we need to instill the proper understanding of Aqeedah within ourselves and our communities.
Consciousness is not just about intelligence. From an Islamic understanding, we have more of an idea about what Consciousness is than anybody else. Allah has given us something called The Secret Of Consciousness – it's not our biological function or intelligence that gives us Consciousness, it's a secret that Allah has given us which we believe in.
The semblance of intelligence in machines doesn't mean they are truly intelligent. The human brushstroke, composition or prose – although AI can mimic that to some extent – it's giving the semblance of creating that but it's not actually creating.
As Muslims, we don't claim to put caps on toothpaste bottles quicker than machines or to work out spreadsheets with the same speed and accuracy as computers. We need to understand how to use machines to augment our lives in a proper manner without diluting our faith or reason for existence.
Things like forecasting, measuring policy impacts, understanding interventions – these can be data-driven to some extent by AI. But we need human guardrails, with the machine deferring to human beings when ultimate decisions are made.
If AI gets to the stage of greater intelligence than humans, from an Islamic viewpoint there is no issue of trust because we don't claim superiority over machines in terms of intelligence or rationality. Our trust and deference has always been to the power of Allah.
We're already having AI armies through use of drones, automated warfare, remote assassinations in conflicts like Ukraine which some say is a testbed for future AI weaponry. The diffusion of open source AI technology makes this harder to control than nuclear proliferation.
Transcripts
people in Silicon Valley are assuming there's one version of the world they're assuming Western
liberal values there's something called a integrated joint operations platform that
the Chinese government run have we arrived at that dystopian world that technology has been
developed to literally track your eyeballs but I'd love to be someone who said it on
a beach and you know get an AI machine to do my podcast will AI solve The Perennial
moon sighting problem we face can you imagine AGI artificial general intelligence acquiring
a level of Consciousness that human beings have can a supercomputer become a Khalifa
the 80s movie Terminator depicts a bleak world where a cyborg assassin is sent to the past to
eliminate the mother of an unborn child who holds the key to Humanity's salvation the frightening
Prospect of machines that can teach themselves and in the worst case scenario machines that are
more intelligent than human beings has led senior scientists to raise the alarm about
the ethics of artificial intelligence Ai and its potential disruptive Force for Muslims AI raises
many ethical questions about human society the economy and indeed the potential for AI inspired
ishtihad machines that tell us how to live our Islamic lives are Scholars and orators about
to go out of business as might be taxi drivers and Couriers in becoming technological age now
to help us understand the world of AI I have invited Riaz Hassan onto the thinking Muslim
riyaz works in the field of innovation for many years and has had Direct and extensive experience
in the use of AI and the commercial use of chat GPT he has worked on using Ai and Robotics on
one of the largest infrastructure projects in the country he is responsible for looking at
the wider dimensions of Innovations with its Associated impacts on our political economy
good to be here it's great to have you with us Riaz how do we know that I'm
actually speaking to a human being in front of me or that you are not a an AI uh an AI
drone or something well I think for now you'll just have to take my word for it that I'm not
um we can go into whether I'm conscious or not conscious and those kind of exploratory things
we can cover off later but you know what I mean uh realize I mean I think in the last year we've seen
so much out there about the potential destructive effects of AI the Terminator effect I mean should
we be afraid of AI Riaz well I think it's a nuanced answer I don't think um a one-word
answer about saying whether we should or shouldn't justifies what's out there at the moment I think
we have to look at it in many lights really we have to look at it in terms of what AI is now
what is capable of or what some people say it should be capable of in let's say five to ten
to twenty years time so we have to measure those kind of instances at different portions of their
time and some things we just don't know about but I think it's right to have a air of caution about
what we're doing or what mankind is doing with AI and the level of control that we have and the
level of control that we may give over to machines like this yeah so yeah I mean before we we talk
about the potential impacts of AI on Muslims in a Muslim um I just want to understand what AI is in
the first place and I I read a quick definition in the Oxford English Dictionary it defines AI as
the capacity of computers and other machines to exhibit and simulate intelligent Behavior I mean
can you explain what artificial intelligence is yeah sure so what I try and do is leave all
the dictionary definitions or even the chat GPT definitions of AI to the side really yeah um I
think we have to look at AI in terms of its impact upon us as human beings and as a society right
um in my in my thinking AI Is An Inconvenient Truth that we have to deal with
um it can be a convenient truth in terms of the benefits that it can give us but it's also
a very Inconvenient Truth right and it makes us uncomfortable because it takes us out of
our comfort zone in many ways it makes us address questions that we've not really addressed or we've
parked in many ways as mankind um I think the way to look at AI or the way people started looking at
AI was as a tool initially so people looked at it in terms of you know is this a tool like a knife
or a hammer it has good uses it has beneficial uses and it has harmful uses but I think that's a
slightly misleading way to look at AI in general I prefer to use the analogy of a fire really because
a fire is something that can be of benefit to us but it also can be of great harm to us right
but the additional thing with something like a fire is that it can lose control or we can lose
control of a fire very very quickly it can become all-encompassing it can take over our lives our
Villages our towns and we have no way of putting it out we have no way of understanding how to
remove the oxygen from the air that feels the fire so that's a more apt analogy of of what AI has a
potential to do or not to do but I think it's also even which we can explore later even goes beyond
that analogy which is some of the things that we can come on to sorry for the rather naive question
here but what's the difference between artificial intelligence and what we've become used to
Google searches computers the technology around us I mean my phone is packed with amazing technology
which maybe 10 15 years ago I could only really achieve by uh by accessing a very big computer
yeah so I think what you've got to understand is that the technology is out there AI is already
in your phone AI is already in your workspace on your tablet on your TVs and everywhere else right
so there's elements of AI which we call narrow AI which is already in place and which we take
for granted already okay so every time you pick up the phone to your bank and it says you know say my
voice is my password that is a form of AI right right it's a form of AI when Netflix recommends
your next viewing the categories right so those are narrow forms of AI which are already in place
but they've become ubiquitous so 10 15 years ago we thought that that was a a major achievement
in personalization or the way we do things but nowadays we've taken that for granted and we've
already become accustomed to that portion of AI that we think is something different
right and I think here we have to understand and appreciate what are the different dimensions of
AI and its roadmap that is progressing upon for the future so you've said the narrow AI
so give me the wider AI what's like give me the potential of wider AI if that's even a term well
it's not so much a wider AI the narrow AI kind of conforms to what we mean by developing insights
on data sets right so you watch a particular TV program I know that down I know that Jalal likes
documentaries so that we recommend different documentaries for it so it looks at different
data sets and tries to understand the correlation between the data sets and that's the way it works
um what we're moving into is a world of things like chat GPT which is generative Ai and then
subsequent to that comes in something called artificial general intelligence or general
purpose intelligence or some people call it super intelligence right which is the ability of the
machine without human intervention to think for itself are we at that stage I don't think we're
at that stage just yet we're at probably at the chat GPT stage which is about generative
AI right and generative AI is what generative AI generally means the ability for uh the computer or
the machine to look at the content that has been served up and then to combine different sources
together and to publish or to generate text or images based upon the requirements that you've
set so if I can kind of explain that because it's quite an important distinction that we have to
understand yeah um what happens with generative AI is that for something like chat GPT for example
it's not so much its ability to understand language and the words that you put in what
it does it matter it amalgamates that language into statistical Pockets statistical tokens then
it kind of a pre then it kind of amalgamates them and it kind of develops associations between them
so what it does it it looks at a thing called chunking it chunks your data it assigns different
things called meaning spaces to it and then it uses things called Association or links between
that data right and then it assigns probabilities and works out on a probabilistic nature the kind
of question that you've asked and the kind of response that you've got right so in essence
some of the times when people say well chat GPT or generative AI has given me the wrong answer it's
not a wrong answer as such it's that probability wise is developed the thing that you didn't want
right so those probabilities are increasing all the time and the accuracy is increasing all the
time as more and more that we train these kind of modules to behave in the manner that we ask those
questions so that's the way generative AI has happened so it's a bit of an illusion in the sense
that people think he understands language but it really doesn't it just understands statistics so
that's the way it has developed right and so AGI the next stage of a AI artificial general
intelligence what would be the market difference between AGI and generative artificial intelligence
that we have now so general purpose intelligence or super intelligence at Nick Bostrom likes to
call it yeah um I think is is a is a name that we give to machines that can recursively self-improve
right so that's without human intervention so they can look at a goal that we've set it and they can
recursively self-improve without our intervention yeah and they have some level of autonomy in terms
of doing that so they can improve in iterations and those iterations can be significant in many
ways they can sometimes even change the minuteness of their objectives yeah and then behave almost as
uh entities in themselves in order to achieve what they were set out to achieve behave like
human beings well that's the key question really do they behave like human beings now currently
we're not at that stage at the moment we're by some estimations we're five years off by
some estimations we're 10 or 15 years off right but it's getting closer all the time yeah and I
think we have to be prepared to understand how to deal with machines of that nature and in that
being yeah um it's the trajectory of the way AI has developed especially in the last year since
generative AI or things like chat GPT have been on the market yeah has been almost exponential
right no one kind of foresaw the rapid development in these Technologies uh in this short period of
time that we're in so you're someone who works in Ai and I understand from my discussion review that
you've worked with chat GPT quite extensively in your in the corporate world so chat gbt came as
a surprise to all of us but what do you expect we will see over the next 5 10 15 years if Allah
gives us life yeah so I think you will see an improvement of the models that we have definitely
I I don't think there's any two ways about it you have the model have been enabled by the hardware
technology which has improved by X percent every year so we are going to see Improvement in the
models Improvement in those probabilities that I was talking about yeah in terms of the accuracy
in terms of the additional factors that are being built in into these mechanisms to go that extra
step and so already we're seeing things like generating images generating videos generating
text content or speech content you know on a needs basis and that will always improve I think the key
factor or the cliff Edge is when we get to the general purpose Ai and how that would involve
and what we would do in that respect right so give me some idea of what would happen in that
word when that breakthrough happens what type of world should we expect well I think that's
a that's a real unknown factor at the moment I don't think even the profits in Silicon Valley
quite understand and what the implications of general purpose intelligence would be and how
we would get there right um there are a number of issues there in terms of the self-recurring nature
of the Improvement in the machine yeah um because the machine has different objectives already built
into it how's the objective of self-preservation yeah it has the objective of trying to achieve
what it set out to do it has the objective of trying to allocate as much resources or borrow
resources or even steel resources to achieve that objective and it wants to self-learn at the same
time so once you open that Pandora's Box There is almost a unknowing ability from mankind itself or
from even the senior Engineers as to what when it happened at that stage and how and which way
you know which direction that will go that is why I think there's more than one attempt now
to understand how to regulate the oncoming nature of AGI moving into the future yes I
haven't seen I mean there were some predictions that by now we would have driverless cars on
our streets everywhere in fact you know we'll be living in a new type of transport infrastructure
with a new type as transfer infrastructure we haven't seen that yet in any city in the
world yes we do see in some parts of the United States and I think Singapore where you've got
um driverless taxis but they're very clumsy in a way and there's ways to to stop those taxis
and to thwart them and a lot of campaigners and protesters have done exactly that why haven't we
seen the proliferation of driverless cars on our streets okay so I think we need to take a step
back and understand the historical context of how AI has developed right over let's say the last few
Millennium um I think AI people presume it to be some sort of fancy computer science it seems like
you know since the Advent of computers that's when we've had AI but actually that's not really true
AI in its Essence is a mathematical notion it's a mathematical notion in terms of probabilities and
that's how it works so if we look at throughout history right down from the time of let's say
Aristotle Aristotle was came up with the phrase of an instrument fulfilling its own work right so
that was the early notion of what AI was and then it was developed by people like Imam razali for
example Imam in the 11th century actually foretold some of the actual issues that we are facing
with driverless cars which is the issue which is something called a trolley dilemma which is about
in the AI world of self-driving cars they have this concept of a trolley dilemma which is that if
a driverless car is going and it sees a particular object it needs to swerve and swerving May kill
three or four people whereas if it continues on its path it's going to kill its passenger so which
direction does it take it's our appetite for risk really that they're trying to measure Imam razali
in the 11th century had a version of this which is about people on a boat right so there were 100
people on a boat and he posed to his students a question which said that in in his book Mustafa
which suggested that is it viable to throw 10 people off the boat when you know that the rest
of the people are going to survive yes so that was a a hypothetical question that he poses students
and the answer to that is quite revealing in how we as Muslims view this appetite for risk and this
is appetite for utilitarianism and how the rest of the world or maybe the west of you is that
same concept yeah what was the answer yeah well I think Imam gazali's answer or the answer from the
students who went into different dimensions it wasn't just a yes no answer it was about
well the sanctity of human life is precious in Islam whether it's one life or many lives
yes but he also built into that this element of appreciation of uncertainty so is it a certain is
it certainty that those people will survive if you if you if you throw those people those 10 people
off the boat okay so he built this understanding of what uncertainty means and the classifications
of uncertainty as well for his students which was at that time something that was completely unheard
of right and then he built into this also the aspect of is it a different answer if the whole
ummah is on the boat and you have to sacrifice 10 people ah right rather than just a few people
so there were many dimensions to that conundrum that he kind of alluded to which I think are still
being used today in this very very concept so say uh I understand from what you've said there that
that underpinning AI is an Ethics it's a series of how do we Define what is right and wrong and of
course the Western world may will certainly have a different ethical framework to that of the Islamic
world so are there Muslims in the the field of AI that are trying to inject Islamic ethics as
the the basis for for artificial intelligence so at the moment during my research I haven't come
across any Muslim ingestion of Islamic values into this space at all or on a very perfunctory level
I think there's two academics from Pakistan one from the whole one from Karachi who I think met
her have approached to inject some semblance of Islamic values into their conversations but at
the moment it's on a very peripheral level it's nothing that is in any way relevant at the moment
yeah and this is my fear my fear is that our values our notion of the world as it should be
yeah is being sidelined out of the equation right the people in Silicon Valley are assuming there's
one version of the world they're assuming Western liberal values or conservative values are the
things that we should abide by when we're looking at these systems and when when we're looking at
the regulations for general purpose AI moving into the future so that's where we are and it's
unfortunate that Muslim voices haven't been there Muslim voices are involved in the industry in many
levels but on a doctrinal level or on a level of understanding the ideas and the conundrums
we may face especially with artificial general intelligence they are nowhere to be seen really
so we've got a scientist who may be embedded in meta or these exactly various companies but we
don't have those who who develop the sort of the general Frameworks I mean I I noticed that if you
type into chat GPT I don't know something about same-sex marriage or homosexuality yeah you're
going to get a fairly politically correct answer an answer which probably reflects a Cosmopolitan
liberal-minded world is that what you're saying here that exactly the data sets or at least the
thinking that undergirds AI currently is a very Western thinking exactly that's right so it's even
noticeable in the generative AI that we have right but it's going to be even more noticeable when we
move into the future what general purpose AI so yeah imagine if you like a imagine if you like
a French School in the future right so you have the current situation in France with the muscular
secularism or the radical secularism that's in play so imagine a artificial general purpose
intelligence system that's part of the French educational system right right what that does
it amplifies the values that it's been embedded with right so this radical kind of secularism is
Amplified on a much greater scale it's anonymized and is automated in in many respects yes so you
don't have the face-to-face say for example the argument with the teachers involved you have a
simply blank no from the computer right yeah so therefore the the actual actions that that will
take or the values that are embedded in this system yeah are not going to be values that
are going to be pertaining to us another example of this is China yeah so we see China has been
first out of the blocks in terms of looking at regulation for AI but one of the regulations I
was reading recently was the fact that there was a statement in this that says AIS AIS in
the plural should be regulated and should embody the concepts of socialism within their framework
so whatever I mean we may argue about what the aspects of socialism means within China now or
whether it's state capitalism but the fact is that people are already building these doctrinal ideals
into the AI systems of the future and that's how they're being regulated I want to come back to
China but the France example is interesting so you're saying that in the future you could have
a machine that sits at the gates of a of school and that machine would say well an African a North
African or an Asian looking person wearing a long dress is not allowed in through the gates whereas
a a white French person wearing a long dress you know is it's perfectly fine exactly exactly
that scenario or somebody with some sort of a I don't know a Palestinian headdress or something
else like that or the sign of some symbol of religiosity is not allowed in and then he can
mix things with facial recognition and with you know the emotions that you have in your face you
know how you're feeling to have this combined view about what you can and can't do have we arrived
at that dystopian world because I I read maybe a few years back maybe two or three years back in
fact in East turkistan xinjiang where of course uh the Muslims are being heavily persecuted in China
um uh before the concentration camps were set up there were cameras that could get recognize the
facial features of those Muslims um and and then forbid them from uh from Catching trains or even
catching planes so without even knowing their particular identity they could see what this
person is a Han Chinese and this person is you know has the features of a of a weaker um you know
is that AI so that's very definitely AI really and in order to look at some dystopian future of AI we
don't have to go far we can just go to xinjiang or east Turkmenistan as it's called right yeah
where there are literally 13 million upwards of you know our Muslim brothers who are living
under this dystopian future at the moment that we very speak right so give me some examples so for
example the data points that are in that region to capture information about the person are just
extensive they are mind-boggling there's something called a integrated joint operations platform that
the Chinese government run which is the ijop that convolutes and that combines all these different
data points it's to do with facial recognition cameras that are on every street corner that is
to do with every audio signal that's ever picked up from you not just digital audio but also just
normal day-to-day audio your voices the way you speak in the shops all of that is picked up right
your movements your location code the dresses that you wear where you go your visiting habits all of
that information is being combined in that region at the moment and the people who are living there
are living that dystopian future I mean I don't think there's any two ways about it I don't think
even the Western press or anybody else kind of contends that situation that is happening at
the moment yeah it's it's to the extent that when we talk about in digital terms tracking eyeballs
um what we normally mean is you know where are you looking on the screen right but in in places
like that the technology has been developed to literally track your eyeballs so when
you're walking down the street they can figure out where your eyes are moving towards and where your
eyes are not moving towards right whether you're looking suspicious in that manner what your facial
features are saying about you so the empathy the actual uh disturbances that you have the anxiety
that you have on your faces can all be measured very realistically and very practically even now
and this is a kind of a predictive police state that we have so from the film a Minority Report
if you've ever seen it right so so where you've got this instance of predictive policing that is
actually not a dystopian future for the people of uh of xinjiang so it's actually a reality is
that a computer says this person we've tracked this person's behavior for the last six months
or three months and we think they should go to the concentration camp for re-education exactly that
comes from the computer it's exactly and it's before the crime is committed or the so-called
crime is committed right so that's what predictive policing is about so they take a bunch of features
they take a bunch of your anxiety industry the way you've been going the way you're passing a
mosque for example the way you're looking at your family or the way you're looking at the policemen
they combine those features together and then they build this picture about okay Jalal is now right
for re-education and that is not something that is way in the future that is actually happening
now so there is this intense competition between China and the United States over the the future of
technology and AI of course is is factors in all of this and and of course the the Americans have
recently uh uh forbade companies within the United States from selling these high-end semiconductor
chips to China and also his pressurizing its allies uh to prevent those chips to to enter
Chinese territory um so is this all about AI are the Americans trying to potentially stop
the Chinese from achieving those breakthroughs in AI so that the Americans can catch up and and
potentially win this technological conflict so I think AI does certainly have a very major role
to play in this in the geopolitical nature of the Rivalry between the US and China yeah but it's not
just AI I think there's an economical aspect to this as well in terms of with the way the
world economy Works who sets the rules for the world economy sure I I think is a major aspect
but certainly in terms of semiconductor chips is a very interesting area because
um although China has its proliferation of these devices and these data points especially in a what
they call a Troublesome region like xinjiang but also throughout the rest of China I think
the nature of chips is such that there is still a major advantage for the West so I think China
released its new chip in the whole Huawei chip which is about seven nanometers at the moment
whereas the West at the moment are in chips which are about three to four nanometers which is a lot
smaller and the reason for this is because the infrastructure behind semiconductors is very
interesting most of the semiconductor factories are in actually Taiwan yeah so China doesn't
have direct access to those it can only copy what it sees in in many ways and the main uh
limiting factor for the Chinese is the fact that the company that makes these high-end chips is
in is in Holland there's only one company that does this throughout the world which is called
ASMR well and asml have these machines which are composed of two million plus parts which
reach temperatures three times the temperature of the Sun in the middle which have purities
of their mirrors to some sort of nth degree of of magnitude so those kind of things are not easy to
reproduce and there is a limiting factor to what the Chinese can do they're always playing catch
up at the moment and still it's a game of catch-up so I think the United States wants to keep it that
way moving forward okay now yes I mean I I've had this ache in my arm for the last three months when
I stretch my arm uh I get this pain it's a dull pain so I went to the doctors and doctors to take
some paracetamol and you know uh it should it should it should get better soon can there be a
point in the future where I can just I don't know get a computer to scan my arm and it automatically
gives me a a diagnosis for my rmake rather than just giving me paracetamol whichever a doctor does
to just fob you off I'm surprised you haven't done that already but I think uh I think your point is
correct right so II doctors AI doctors right so I remember doing when I was a student many many
years ago I actually did a thesis on replacing General Practitioners that's not to be disparaging
towards General Practitioners in some ways but you wrote your dissertation on this I don't want
to show you right let's say sometime in the 90s right okay um but the but the theory behind that
and as I said before the issue of neural networks and how decisions are made and how prognosis are
made is still the same it's just at that at that time the actual computational power wasn't present
to engage in this right so the actual basis of making decisions and taking the human element
out of it or taking subjectivity out of it as much as possible yeah or still the same basis as we're
working to today right so when we look at when we go to our GPS and the GP type something in Google
and it just comes up with an answer and Google is powered by AI to a certain extent as well so we
can't just say Google is just a search engine anymore it is powered by some elements of AI
so we can see all of that kind of happening before our eyes so we can see this proliferation
of scanning things taking photos of issues uh putting it into chat GPT saying what's this image
you know this R this pain in jalan's arm what is it likely to be yeah and peop things like chat
GPT probably can give you if not now in the very near future a reasonably 95 accuracy about what
that condition can be right right so in essence it's the medical profession is just one of the
professions it's going to impact in that manner and there's you know we can talk about the issue
of work and there's many other things that it can impact in a similar manner well actually uh
so which professions are going to be redundant do you feel as a result of AI technology so I think
that's an interesting question if you'd asked me let's say ten to five years ago about which
professions it would kind of replace and which ones it wouldn't yeah I would have said to you
professions which involve manual dexterity for example dentists surgeons um Cooks
maybe right chefs I would have said to you those professions are very difficult to replace and AI
become a better Biryani than myself maybe it can right right so I was I would have said to you 10
years ago that those those kind of professions are very difficult okay difficult to revise right but
I think I've changed my view on that really yeah I saw a machine I think it was Uniqlo that folded
a t-shirt and on seeing something like that you think that the minute aspects of manual dexterity
that's needed that we take for granted in order in order to do a task like that is certainly
achievable really so those kind of professions I don't think are no longer safe either right so it
depends to what degree Robotics and to what degree our capabilities evolve but I think certainly most
of the professions in the world are prone to this because if you think about how professions work
manual labor the things that we used to take for granted as manual labor putting bricks up
um you know working on an assembly line things of that nature are generally now extinct right
so we don't work with 15 people on an assembly line putting caps on a on a toothpaste bottle
anymore yeah right so some of most of those things have been automated but they have been
seamlessly automated so we don't recognize that they are actually gone those jobs have gone what
it means for employment is a different question now yeah right so I think it was Keynes in the
1930 John Maynard Keynes who said that there will be a time of technological unemployment
which is quite a prescient view that he had at the time yeah and he's suggested that the
main challenge for mankind would be what to do with the Leisure that science has bought for
it right right so that's our main conundrum at the moment if you like is what to do with
so many people who will naturally their jobs will become obfuscated in many ways yeah and
how do we then occupy our time how do we earn a living what are the main issues that are now
involved in this aspect right or wouldn't that exacerbate inequalities I mean if capitalism
is serves a society which is unequal a technologically driven capitalism those who
own the AI certainly are going to be the the elites whereas those who are now out of work
what's going to happen to them well certainly so it depends on how we organize our economy right
right and how we organize our lives because the economic Paradigm has changed now so the
economic Paradigm has changed from something being uh just a a rat race between capitalists
and socialists to being a different way of looking at things so some of the old economic models are
no longer true right so we have something called productivity right so generally what happens is
when productivity increases your wages go up and then you can produce twice as more you can earn
twice as more and then Therefore your standard of living goes up right but that's no longer true
because the productivity is happening not because of you it's happening because of a machine right
right so therefore you are not going to see those level of wage increases that used to happen so we
need a different way of organizing labor we need a different Paradigm in which to understand these
things I think it's also more acute for the developing World in many sense because in the
developing world the the route to development has always been the provision of cheap labor
I mean that's how China developed that's how many countries in the Far East have developed
but now suddenly if people can use Advanced robotics instead of cheap labor in the Far East
or in the Southeast or in Africa or whatever what is the route to development of those
countries yeah that's a very perplexing question something that Jeffrey Sachs uh aired a while ago
and there's something that we need to understand and work out so it's a manner of organizing the
economy and how it works I think also some of the assumptions that we made about different
economic systems come into question again so for example one of the assumptions or one of the
um uh one of the drawbacks of a planned economy as such before was the fact that it isn't humanly
possible to plan everything so that's what people used to argue against the old Soviet
Union that the planned economy simply doesn't work because it's humanly impossible to plan
what your demand is going to be what the supply of a particular good is going to be and how that will
kind of distribute itself and work out but now that assumption in many ways doesn't hold true
because we have systems that can plan to an acute level let me just look inside an Amazon
warehouse and the amount of automated planning that's done there in terms of your deliveries
your minute deliveries that come out to you on a on a very regular basis yeah so planned economy
is not beyond the Realms of a future AI so some of those presumptions that we made suddenly come back
into question really so okay I understand that so socialism argues that the government essentially
should plan decisions about Supply about production and and distribution your point is uh
and and the capitalist argument against that has always been that that's completely unproductive
and human beings just can't make those sorts of finer decisions and it leads to mass famine and
starvation your point is that uh potentially technology can actually realize that type of
centralized planning much better than human beings exactly that's right yes and it doesn't even have
to be centralized it can be distributed really right so the technology can be distributed and it
can work in that manner so I think what I'm trying to highlight is that different economic paradigms
are necessary now to move forward with it's not so much what we assume to be economic Justice before
and how it happens I think the main questions around economics are going to be distributive
justice and how do we ensure that the populations of the world with the values that people hold are
going to be living a contented and a life with a good standard of living I mean I haven't invited
you in to talk about Islamic economics but then it I know that you uh you think a lot about Islamic
economics I mean for example Ubi Universal basic income uh if you have a a type of economic Society
where machines do the bulk of the work and you no longer need diagnostic nurses and doctors possibly
even and and your local GP is replaced by an AI bot uh then surely there is a need for the state
to then distribute some of that those funds in welfare payments so those people out out of work
um my understanding of Islamic economics is it's based on work it's based on humans actually
putting in the effort themselves rather than handouts from the central government so how would
we as Muslims navigate that type of economic life well I think this goes to the heart of
the question where we're at the Nexus really of Technology economics political philosophy if you
like and Creed right so this is where all of those factors come into being what what is work what is
striving for work yeah we can we can argue the fact that for 10 000 years we have actually been
behaving as automated robots we've been on the assembly lines host Industrial Revolution we've
been doing menial jobs that to be quite Frank most of us are not interested in right grudgingly we do
those jobs to pay our bills to pay our rent yeah um that's what I said to my boss right yeah but I
don't know how a teacher would feel about that but anyway um but also since the Advent of uh
technology people have been pushing numbers into a spreadsheet right let's say right as a general
office work why is that so fulfilling why is that so uh meaningful if you like you know surely if we
can get a better way of doing that surely that frees people up to do a lot more now this goes
back again there's a parable about something called the Mexican fisherman who was lying on
a beach and he just fished enough fish to keep him satisfied and then a big businessman came over and
said why do you expand your fishing fleet and do this and he kept asking me why why he said well
so you can get loads of fishing fleets and then he said what will I do then he said well then you
can sit on a beach and not do anything which is you know which is comebacks in the circle so so
I think when we look at work we we look at work we need to understand work again in a different way
you know what does work mean what does striving mean for us right so striving so in terms of Islam
in terms of our Muslim Essence really what does striving mean does striving mean to work right or
that's driving me to worship Allah in the best way we can so for example some elements of AI
You could argue islamically that you know when some people push against technology that that
is actually the wrong thing to do so you mentioned self-driving cars before yeah it's by many reports
and I don't think this is a contentious issue anymore by many reports it said that the Advent
of self-driving cars in our roads would cut the deaths on our roads by at least a half
so as a Muslim Community why wouldn't we appreciate that why wouldn't we you know
run to that kind of solution right um so it's it's understanding what we mean and the issue of work
we don't we don't it's not an end in itself right it's to understand what we need to do in
life right so if worship of Allah becomes easier with more free time for example
um how we recognize our spirituality becomes more easier than why should we not uh you know
absorb that way what does that do to things like I don't know manhood for example you know if I if
a Suitor came to my house to marry my daughter and said and asked them what do you do for work
he said I'm on universal basic income because the machines have taken my does it not impart
some very basic the very basic dynamics of a family and a home in Islam well it depends how
the world evolves till that state comes I think uh by the way I'm not in favor of a universal basic
income I'm more in favor of something called the government acting um as an employer of
last resort we're more pertinent which is almost like a job guarantee scheme for people who are
out of work right in terms of doing social work and you know other aspects of things yeah but
it depends how things evolve because we've gone from a situation in post-industrial um Victorian
Britain let's say where people were working seven days a week six days a week down the mines 12 14
hours a day to a situation now where it's the common law to work five days a week and there
are some and since covid that work has turned into flexible work it's turned into you know Fridays
the Friday is a new Saturday almost kind of thing right so the four day week has been experimented
with with a number of companies and councils and they have found that to be very productive and
they don't lose productivity because of things like that right so that's the general trajectory
of where we're going with work so going back to your example if someone came up and said well I
only work four days a week but I do this and this and then with the rest of my time I do this and
this you'll have a different criteria by which to appreciate the person yeah I would guess you
paint a really idealistic world I would love to be someone who's sitting on a beach and you know get
an AI machine to do my podcast interviews and to do my my work for me but uh isn't there a a back
to the original theme is there a dystopian side to this I mean I I read that 350 scientists and
computer experts wrote a one-line letter saying that AI has a potential to be disastrous for
the world and we need to take action now on the level of say terrorism or climate change so these
are people who are integral to the development of AI but they're voicing their concerns about
AI I mean you know is what's the Bleak side of this I think there's many Bleak sides to this so
um the people who signed that letter Jeffrey Hinton I think was one of them Mustafa Suleiman
amongst others and and a number of people signed that letter I I think they're raising
a very genuine concern yeah the genuine concern is about artificial general purpose intelligence it's
not the kind of intelligence that we have now per se that's on your Google search engines or
anything else the narrow AI that we were talking about which just finds correlations between data
sets yeah it's about when there's recursive self-improvement to AI systems and once we've
wound up the machine and we've Let It Go that we have no control over it that we lose our
autonomy from those machines when we lose our autonomy what happens is those machines have
three primary directives that are almost inbuilt into those machines things like self-preservations
so you can't switch it off so we talk about some sort of a kill switch as a regulation that some
human can operate but sometimes the machine May overcome that you know there's I think there was
a film way long ago called war games where people weren't able to turn the machine off where it was
um I think the scenario was thermonuclear war so you have the self-preservation aspect the second
aspect that you have on this is the ability to for this machine to go out and secure resources to
achieve its objective so you give it an objective let's say I don't know you give an objective to
to turn out you know 10 000 toothpaste tubes an hour or something yeah it finds this run out of
toothpaste it goes off to somewhere else to procure that toothpaste and then it doesn't
worry about the consequences or the externalities that that will have and it just tries to fulfill
this objective so it kills human beings it kills forces to make toothpaste or whatever whatever
you know any number of scenarios can happen yeah and then there's the issue about self-learning
so these three aspects are almost inbuilt into general purpose AI right however coupled with
that is what we call a wrong objective function in machines which means that we need to worry
about what kind of objectives we're setting these machines right because if objectives can be set
but we may not understand the unintended consequences Behind These objectives right
so let me give you an example this is an example that Stuart Russell uses which is
quite apt you have a family and you have a robot uh babysitting that family the parents have gone
out they've asked a robot to take care of the kids and feed the kids and and what have you
um during the evening the kids get hungry the robot goes looks in the fridge and finds there's
no food there so its objective is to feed the kids the next thing it does it sees the family cat
so know where this is going yes so the rest is history or could be history right so we
can see where those kind of objective that's pretty much an extreme example
but you can see where these kind of sub-optimal objectives can lead to
the way to God against those objectives is not foolproof and that's what people have worries
about because we can set a machine on day one to have an objective yeah we can figure out all the
consequences that we think are humanly possible yeah for that machine not to misbehave but we
have the potential to miss lots of things yeah so a way around this which is the theory that
I think works perhaps the best at the moment is Again by uh Stuart Russell which is about
making the machine defer to human beings in its decisions right so not to carry out the killing of
the cat yeah but to defer to human beings before it carries out that action or makes that decision
moving forward but but you know that would depend on responsible actors who Define the limits of
this AI technology and of course you have got Rogue States like China like Russia and dare I say
even America that can use can uh can not set these guard rails for their own particular objectives I
mean you know what you're calling for is is almost like an international Constitution which I think
in today's very heavily contested world that's probably quite difficult to achieve right yeah
and it is difficult to achieve and you're right and I think you know you've got your political
uh World economy World politics hat on there to appreciate that and people kind of uh minimize
that aspect of things I know there are some people within the tech world who have said well we do
similar things for for example airplanes right we have a black box everyone agrees to that aspect
we have air routes over the world so there's a regulatory system there's a regulatory system
everybody agrees to that we all abide by that we are all have the same charges yeah on our phones
or whatever I think the EU is putting out a new one yeah so you know we do have that in many
respects but I think AI is different because of the advantages it offers because of the benefits
it can offer a rogue Nation for example so therefore there's every incentive for North Korea
or for somebody else to go out and do things which are not within the international realm yeah and
once you let the genie out of the bottle it's very hard to put back again right so therefore you have
these things about objectives which are so key to how this will function moving into the future yeah
um and it's some it's it's a it's an unknown world that we're going into nobody has direct
answers for this at the moment even more scarier I suppose is AI injected into Warfare Modern Warfare
um how much has AI integrated into into conflict and how what's the potential of AI I mean could
we have ai armies in the future robotic armies well we're already having AI armies now so I
don't think that's a question for the future really um if you look at the Ukraine conflict
for example some people and maybe this is a bit of conspiratorial thing but people say the Ukraine
conflict has been elongated to be a laboratory or a test bed for AI Weaponry of the future right so
you have drones you have uh you know boat drones you have air drones you have small minuscules
drones that are out operating on things you have automated Warfare you have assassinations being
carried out by Israel using Automated machine guns remote control machine guns so the element
of warfare and the element of robotics if you like robotics coupled with intelligence with
animal general purpose AI is a very frightening scenario it's something that is very very hard to
control and is something that in terms of the arms race can go in any direction people argue people
say that the nuclear peripheration at the end of the second world war was a similar aspect yet we
developed a mechanism to control that we developed the npt the non-proliferation treaty we developed
a hotline between the Soviet Union and and the states but I think this has got this has been far
more diffused than that you needed some sort of infrastructure to build nuclear weapons you needed
some sort of understanding you needed some sort of way to do that the technology here especially
with the onset of Open Source Code which means that everybody can have access to AI technology
in some way shape or form can become very diffused and very very quickly as well can I ask about from
a Muslim perspective the process of ishtihad so we may come across a new problem you know um Bitcoin
you know uh or whatever whatever it may be and uh we go to a scholar and we seek a a solution a
legislative answer from that scholar is it Halal is it haram and to simplify it is is essentially
two sides you've got the understanding the reality side and then you've got the appreciation of the
text and the deeper you understand the text and the Arabic language and and how things are phrase
and as well as the Precedence that have been set through previous fatala the deeper your your out
your judgment is going to be can a machine replicate that process of ishtihad well let's
take the second part of your um analysis first which is the understanding of the Arabic language
the understanding of the Corpus of text that we have throughout the 1500 14 1500 years of Islam
um there is nothing to suggest that that is in any way peculiar or in any way different to the way
AI works on the English language we can have the same level of understanding we can have the same
depth of syntax or semantic analysis that we have with the English language in that Arabic language
so the same kind of processes that are involved in your chat GPT at the moment can be replicated
almost in Arabic and I think I passed on to you this this site called Quran GPT at the moment
which is I guess is in its infancy at the moment but there's nothing to suggest that something like
that cannot develop so that's concerning the text and how that's worked out and so if you type in
questions for example what does Islam say about Bitcoin it can do the similar processing that I
described in terms of how chat GPT or llm's large language models work in a similar fashion it can
go break up those little words into chunks create Association links assign probabilities to them
manufacture the probabilities understand which is the best probability of the answer and then
represent that back to you in that manner I don't think there's anything stopping that yeah when it
comes to each tehard and when it comes to actual rulings of something new that's where you have the
added dimensions of the deck equals yeah which is the understanding of the reality and the way
the reality is then associated with the analogous text that you have and that's where we've recently
gone to muchsta Heights or in the past we've gone to much that is to get that understanding so they
have an appreciation of what you've asked them and they've married it with gayas and analogy
of the text and then they've come to a specific Hokum which can be right or wrong as you will
know yeah so in that respect the understanding of the reality is again not a immovable barrier
for an AI system to do if you were to ask chat GPT about what Bitcoin is and you know what it entails
and the different dimensions of cryptocurrency or whatever it could give you a very prolonged and
elongated answer to that true right yeah and then all it has to do is marry that up with the with
the Arabic language to produce a virtual fatawa if you like that can be looked at but again this goes
back to the issue of trust in those machines right so when we talked about trust before we said well
you know do we want the machine to just present those things willy-nilly or do we want some sort
of human oversight on those machines and that's where I think the regulations and the framework
needs to be there so we need to carry out that oversight in terms of understanding what it is
and what it can and can't do will AI solve The Perennial moon sighting problem we face
well will you get two AIS arguing against one another the day before E saying that
this is our Eid is tomorrow and the other AI we're saying it depends if it's a Moroccan
Ai and a Saudi AI I guess or a Waltham story I I guess I I think there are some problems that
are impossible and this is wonderful maybe that's the intractable problem that's right um okay um
let me ask you a question which I forgive me it may sound philosophical but can you imagine AGI
artificial general intelligence acquiring a level of Consciousness that human beings have
yeah so this question especially since the Advent of chat GPT has been posed more and more
um the country the actual question isn't new the question has existed since earlier times
since the 18th century and even before that I guess since even the times of Aristotle or the
times of you know Imam kazali and people like that the reason is recently is become because of the
advances in technology has become more and more it's come more and more to the form um I think
the issue about what they call a singularity where a being or a virtual AI machine takes
on Consciousness or becoming sentient if you like what it takes on that ability to think for itself
um is something that we need to understand a bit more pristinely within the Muslim world as
such anyway within the Western context I think and within the champions of AI at the moment
they equate intelligence to sense your sentient or to a singularity or to the word of Consciousness
so when you think you are conscious when you think you are conscious it's the old
saying of Descartes right I think therefore I am right um but I think the the essence
is being missed there because no one has been able to Define what Consciousness is no one in
the history pre-post AI pre-ai or even before that has actually had a buttonhole definition
of what Consciousness is right no one has been able to detect what Consciousness is
but from our Islamic understanding we have more of an idea about what Consciousness is than anybody
else so for example we don't equate consciousness just to intelligence you know Allah has given us
something called The Secret Of Consciousness he has made mankind the Usher for which means
the best of beings now there's some debate whether it's Angels or Mankind in Islamic scholarship but
generally certainly above different beings like you know virtual beings or machines anyway right
and over animals so it's not really our biological function that gives us Consciousness yeah it's
not really even our intelligence that gives us Consciousness is a secret that Allah which we
believe in yeah that gives us Consciousness right right and that's something to a non-muslim mind
is hard to appreciate and it's hard to decipher in in many ways from from their understanding
yeah and that's why I think we're almost in a privileged position to understand and answer this
question and this is something that we should be almost proud of in terms of understanding
that Islam does give a framework for us to understand what this is about it is not just about
intelligence because I feel what's happened is there's been an element of hubris within Silicon
Valley you know the places where people have made all these developments and suddenly they've kind
of almost implicitly allocated intelligence to being conscious in some way or shape or form
right and that's what's caused these kind of questions to crop up from time to time
but again going back to chat GPT and the large language models when I express this issue about
the fact that he can't understand language but he gives the semblance or the perception
of understanding language because he's actually converting those words into statistical Frameworks
or chunks or tokens and then it's rearranging them and then pushing you an answer yeah the
semblance of an understanding doesn't mean that it's understanding in the same way the semblance
of intelligence doesn't mean that it's intelligent and that's something for us that's very vital to
understand because we can be duped into thinking well this is so pervasive now this is almost doing
everything that I used to do this is in our homes this is in our minds we've got personal assistance
the robot has empathy it has almost a semblance of creativity there was a a big sculpture I think
in the in the New York Museum of Modern Art which kind of flips over so many times and creates new
works of art every few seconds but that doesn't mean that this creativity behind that sphere
it means that there's a series of calculations that's happening in the background right the
human brush stroke or the human composition or the human prose although AI can mimic that
to some extent it's giving you the semblance of creating that stuff but it's not actually creating
that thing right the point you make then about the soul the raw is interesting so we as Muslims
believe it's impossible even if AI does get to the stage where it's intelligence is greater
than human intelligence uh it would never be conscious because it would never have what Allah
has given to human beings and that is the soul yes exactly which is the secret of Consciousness
which as Muslims we have to believe in yeah right because we believe in the Creator we believe in
the Creator Above All Else yes um above all all AI beings you know where then does it leave trust
until now I mean the enlightenment has given us a unbridled trust in human beings and their ability
to reason and European Society was built on this uh on this absolute belief in in the human being
and as I said their ability to think but of course uh we're now coming to a stage where we realize
that these machines can probably think better than us or at least come to better conclusions
um is the era of the humans over and now we're going to look at machines as somehow Godly or
above you know our our human frailties well firstly I think it lays bare the the claims
of the Enlightenment really that human reason is is above all else human reason is the yardstick
by which everything has to be measured sure so we have just shown that humans have created or
are about to create or may create these beings which are more Superior than us in terms of
intelligence in terms of rationality or the way the rationality was perceived during the
Renaissance and the enlightenment so that's one factor I think in terms of trust what do we do
with these machines right so from an Islamic point of view I don't think an issue of trust does come
in because we don't we don't claim to put caps on toothpaste bottles quicker than machines right we
know we can't do that yeah we don't claim to say that we can work out a 60 column spreadsheet with
the same level of speed and the same level of accuracy that an Excel program can yeah right
we don't claim to do those things so for us it's not a race it's not a it's not a measure
of saying we are better than the machine or we are not better than the machine right we need to
understand how to use the machine to augment our lives in in a proper manner that doesn't
dilute our faith that doesn't dilute our reason for existence and that doesn't dilute the way or
the command Mr Allah has laid down for us so in many ways I think it's a problem for liberalism
and it's a problem for the Enlightenment and it's a problem for rationality in human beings uh the
way the Western world has developed over the last 200 years but I don't think it's such a
problem for Muslims in that manner because we never view rationality as human rationality
above all else we have always succumbed to and we have always deferred to the power of Allah
in all things in intelligence in emotions in the way that we live our lives and everything else
sometimes Muslims come to conclusions that are opposed to Islam especially educated Muslims
could you imagine one day instead of an educated Muslim who studies philosophy comes out and says
human reason is greater than Allah that they will come out of University saying that the
supercomputer is greater than Allah well I I I I don't dispute that that could happen yeah
um but again it's is the guardrails that we have to put in a place for us and it's our
understanding of arakida that's fundamental here right so our understanding of the Aquila
and the conversation that we've just had about consciousness and about the rule and about the
existence and about what it means to be a human being what is what does humanity mean
for us those are key questions that we have to instill within ourselves within our community to
understand how to tackle these challenges that are on the horizon to be perfectly honest they
are not far away you know these challenges with our youth and stuff we would have questions like
that we will have questions about sentiency we will have questions about the singularity
and about the robot who can do everything and we need to answer them and we need to frame them in
that manner to understand how to tackle them yeah lastly riyaz kind of supercomputer become Khalifa
um it depends right so I know it's it's a bit of a contentious answer but it depends to what degree
right yeah um if you're asking about decision making in the political realm for example or in
the economic realm or in the social realm then certainly we can take help from things that AI
will generate for us in terms of making these dishes decisions in fact some exercises were
done with that previously so Dominic Cummins was using something called super forecasting
right Dominic Cummins was the senior advisor to Boris Johnson exactly so he was using a
theory laid out by a guy called Philip tetlock who wrote a book about super forecasting which is to
amalgamate data a data-driven exercise in terms of understanding how policy should work and how
policies would be perceived and then to come out with that generation so that's not dissimilar to
how AI would work right so now we've got archaic mechanisms of politics because politics was really
fashioned after the Industrial Revolution to deal with some of those aspects and now you can see
the archaic nature of political systems in the west voting every 4 four years for a particular
issue understanding that you can't have a say in different things all the time which technology
allows you to do right so those are things that are going to come to the precipice at some point
in time but things to do with forecasting things to do with measuring the difference in policy
parameters or understanding policy interventions or the impact of different policy interventions
on other policy interventions that's something that can be data driven to an extent but I think
what we have to be careful about is again having these human guardrails around the thing to around
to have the machine if you are to have a machine in wherever you're going to have it in Baghdad or
whatever you need to have it defer to human beings when the ultimate decisions come and
politics is an art of associating people with other people so we need to understand how that
framework will work has truly been a fascinating discussion very much for your time today
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