This article is based on the content of my speech at the academic seminar "Technology and Humanities in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Interdisciplinary Dialogue" held at Southern University of Science and Technology on May 20, 2018. The main points are as follows:

The unclear direction of biological evolution is the underlying reason why it is difficult for human society and the field of artificial intelligence to unify ethical norms. Since the 21st century, science and technology have shown an explosive trend, especially the Internet, the latest progress in brain science and artificial intelligence, which has given new inspiration to the research on the direction of biological evolution. Since 2008, we have studied the Internet brain model, AI IQ evaluation, and brain evolution, and proposed that the evolution of the population knowledge base is the key to judging the direction of biological evolution. And thus the standards and norms for the ethical construction of artificial intelligence were discussed.

1. The Dilemma of Formulating Human and Artificial Intelligence Ethics

Ethics, like intelligence, consciousness, life and the universe, is difficult to have a unified definition. Generally speaking, ethics refers to the principles and principles that should be followed when dealing with the relationships between people and between people and society. It refers to a series of concepts that guide behavior and is a philosophical thinking on moral phenomena from a conceptual perspective. It not only contains behavioral norms in dealing with the relationships between people, people and society, and people and nature, but also profoundly contains profound principles for regulating behavior according to certain principles.

Since the setting of ethics is often related to culture, religion, region, values, and worldview, in the thousands of years of human civilization history, we still do not have a unified, standard, and clear ethical system, only some general principles recognized by most people. The ethical impact brought by artificial intelligence has become more prominent due to imperfections and controversies in ethical issues.

For example, when the Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912, which group of passengers on the ship had priority in their escape. become an important issue faced during the escape process

"2012" is a disaster movie about global destruction. In the movie, the US president allows physical scientists to leave safely. When he stayed, he said that "one scientist is more important than dozens of officials";

In the famous ethical thought experiment "The Switchman's Choice", the train is traveling at high speed and cannot stop suddenly. There is a bifurcated track directly ahead. There are 5 kidnapped people on the left and 1 kidnapped on the right. At this time, does the switchman choose to let the train go to the left or the right? ;

In 2017, a Boston Dynamics robot was attacked by a test scientist when it was moving boxes, causing it to become unstable and fall. Internet viewers of the video protested, believing that the robot's rights were violated. And it triggered a debate in the scientific community about whether robots have their own rights.

There are profound ethical issues behind these issues. How to choose will also have an important impact and significance on the ethical construction of artificial intelligence in the future.

2. The lack of direction in biological evolution is the underlying cause of ethical controversy

In the mid-19th century, Darwin founded the scientific theory of biological evolution. Darwin's theory of evolution with natural selection as its core is one of the greatest theories in the history of human science. Unified the various disciplines of biology. The influence of Darwin's theory of evolution is not limited to the field of biology. It also provides a new world view, outlook on life, outlook on the universe and methodology, which has an impact on almost all fields of science and humanities. Ethical issues including artificial intelligence will ultimately be affected by Darwin's theory.

Darwin's Theory of Evolution: The evolution of organisms has no definite direction. Darwin imagined the process of biological evolution as a large tree that is constantly growing and branching. All existing organisms are located at the top of a small branch of this tree. There is no trunk with humans at the top of the evolutionary tree. Humans are just an ordinary branch on the evolutionary tree. From the perspective of Darwin's theory of evolution, humans are not more advanced than mice and ants, and humans do not represent the development direction of living things.

Darwin's theory of evolution rejected teleology (which was praised by Meyer as one of his great contributions). Darwin advocated that variation is random, using the word "nature" which is no less than God to explain the core of his carefully constructed evolutionary theory. However, Darwin also had his confusion and helplessness. He lamented that “it is very difficult or even impossible to understand that this vast and wonderful universe... is actually the product of blind chance or necessity” (2-Xie Ping. 2014. The Origin of Life—The Sublation and Innovation of Evolutionary Theory.)

The view that biological evolution has no direction and no distinction between high and low levels will have the following impacts on human society and the ethical construction of artificial intelligence:

Because there is no unified direction for the evolution of living things, there is no unified direction for human evolution; there is no unified direction for human evolution, so human creations, especially artificial intelligence, do not have the same evolutionary direction; because there is no unified evolutionary direction, it is difficult to unify and form standards for the ethics that regulate the relationship between humans, artificial intelligence, society, and nature.

3. The inspiration of new scientific and technological progress on the direction of biological evolution

Since the 21st century, the Internet, cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, brain-like computing, brain science and other fields have continued to emerge. Human technology has experienced another round of explosive growth. Developments in the fields of brain science, the Internet and artificial intelligence have provided new perspectives for finding and exploring the evolutionary direction of organisms.

3.1 The evolution of biological brains over hundreds of millions of years

For hundreds of millions of years, living things have formed different types of life forms in order to adapt to changes in the environment, following the principle of "natural selection and survival of the fittest". Although the manifestations of living things vary widely, the brain, the core of living things, does show obvious directionality. From single cells to humans, the brain has become more and more complex and intelligent.

Nobel Prize winner Australian scientist John.C. mentioned in his book "The Evolution of the Brain" that "the brain of living things evolved from the brain of fish to the brain of reptiles, then to the brain of mammals, and finally to the human brain. If we dissect the human brain, we can clearly see that the fish-like, reptile-like, and mammal-like structures are distinct in the human brain."

Biological diversity reflects through natural competition and natural selection. Giraffes have longer necks, gazelles run faster, and eagles have sharper eyes. However, the brain, the most important organ of a living thing (animal), shows direction. In the structure of the human brain, the biological brains in the process of evolution are wrapped layer by layer, just like the accumulation of fossils.

3.2 The formation and evolution of the Internet brain

In 2008, based on the emerging Internet brain-like phenomenon, Liu Feng (the author of this article), Professor Peng Geng and others from the University of Science and Technology of China, and others published a paper "Trends and Laws of Internet Evolution" with reference to the brain architecture of neuroscience, proposing a model of the Internet brain to explain the latest architecture of Internet development. In the following 10 years, a research team formed by Liu Feng, Peng Geng, Liu Ying, Shi Yong and other professors and Ph.D.s gradually formed a complete illustration and definition of the Internet brain;

Definition of Internet Brain: Internet Brain is the brain-like giant system architecture formed during the evolution of the Internet in a direction that is highly similar to the human brain. The Internet brain architecture has increasingly mature brain-like vision, hearing, somatosensory, motor nervous system, memory nervous system, central nervous system, and autonomic nervous system. The Internet brain will link various elements of society (including but not limited to people, AI systems, production materials, production tools) and natural elements (including but not limited to rivers, mountains, animals, plants, and space) through brain-like neuron networks; the Internet brain, driven by group intelligence and artificial intelligence, realizes cognition, judgment, decision-making, feedback, and transformation of the world through cloud reflection arcs.

The formation of the Internet brain-like giant system can be inferred as follows: when organisms evolve to the level of humans, humans will unite together and evolve together through the Internet. And the result of this co-evolution is. The Internet, which connects humans, is structurally very similar to the brain step by step. It continues to spread in space with the expansion of mankind. If there is enough time, it can be foreseen that after enough time, space, the brain, and the Internet will merge into one and evolve into a smart universe or a cosmic brain.

The conclusion of Darwin's theory of evolution is deduced forward, that is, living things have a common ancestor, and through natural selection, the species human appeared. The joint evolution of the Internet, brain science, and artificial intelligence is deduced backwards, and it is believed that humans evolve towards the direction of the intelligent universe or the cosmic brain through the technology they create - the Internet. The element of “people” connects the evolution of the Internet with the evolution of biology [2].

3.3 Division and evolution of intelligence levels

In 2012, Liu Feng (the author of this article) and Professor Shi Yong of the Academy of Sciences began to think about whether they could evaluate the intelligence level of the evolving Internet brain. This research topic was later extended to evaluate the IQ level of artificial intelligence systems. The research difficulty is how to establish a model that can uniformly describe the intelligent characteristics of human life, robots, artificial intelligence systems, and Internet brain models.

In 2014, research progressed, with reference to the von Neumann structure, David Wexler's human intelligence model, and the DIKW model system in the field of knowledge management. A standard intelligence model (Agent) was established, and it was proposed that any intelligent agent, including AI programs, robots, humans, and Internet brain models, can be described as a comprehensive system that simultaneously possesses knowledge input, mastery, innovation, and feedback. The diagram below shows an extended von Neumann architecture that adds innovation and cloud storage. 【3】

The extended von Neumann architecture has given us important inspiration for classifying the levels of intelligence. The judgment criteria are as follows:

Whether it can interact with testers (humans), that is, whether there is an input/output system;

Is there a knowledge base capable of storing information and knowledge within the system?

Whether the knowledge base of this system can be continuously updated and grown;

Whether the knowledge base of this system can be shared with other artificial intelligence systems;

In addition to learning from the outside and updating its own knowledge base, can this system actively generate new knowledge and share it with other artificial intelligence systems?

According to the above principles, we can form an intelligence level division of 7 intelligent systems (mathematical formulas omitted)

For the highest level of artificial intelligence system, which is the level 6 system, the most basic characteristic is that as time advances and approaches the infinity point, the input and output capabilities of the intelligent system that generates new knowledge will be continuously innovated and created, and the ability to master and apply knowledge will also approach infinity. According to the Christian definition of God as "omniscience and omnipotence", it can be seen that intelligent systems are constantly improving With innovation and creation and continuous accumulation of knowledge, in sufficient time, intelligent systems represented by humans will eventually achieve the state of "omniscience and omnipotence". From this perspective, whether it is the concept of "god" in Eastern culture or "God" in Western culture, from the perspective of intelligent system development, it can be seen as the evolutionary state of intelligent systems (including humans) at future points in time [3].

If based on the standard intelligence model, the following mathematical formula can be used to describe the state of omniscience and omnipotence (I knowledge information reception, O knowledge information output, S, knowledge information mastering or storage, C knowledge information innovation and creation)

4. Biological evolution direction-use population knowledge base to determine the direction and level of evolution

Corollary 1: The population knowledge base evolves towards omniscience and omnipotence.

The evolution of the brain, the evolution of the Internet, and the classification of intelligence levels in intelligent systems all show obvious directionality. Professor Nelson, the pioneer of artificial intelligence, gave this definition of artificial intelligence: "Artificial intelligence is a subject about knowledge, how to represent knowledge and how to obtain knowledge and use knowledge.

For these three fields, what they have in common is the knowledge base they carry and the ability to use knowledge is constantly improving.

Whether it is the evolution of the brain, the evolution of the Internet, the classification of intelligence levels in intelligent systems, or from the history of biological development, it can be seen that the improvement of knowledge and wisdom is the core of biological evolution. The direction of biological evolution and the level of biological evolution can be judged from two perspectives: the capacity of the population knowledge base and the ability to use the population knowledge base. When it approaches infinity, it will evolve towards omniscience and omnipotence through the population knowledge base, thereby reaching the "God's Point".

The point of God is also the Omega (Ω) point. It was proposed by the famous French evolutionist philosopher Teilhard de Chardin in the first half of the 20th century in his book "The Phenomenon of Man". He wrote: Human beings are an inevitable process through "creation through union", "connection to the Holy Spirit", integration, synthesis, unity and cohesion, from simple to complex, from low-level to high-level, from loose organizational structure to enriched organizational structure, and finally tend to an ultimate goal. He represented this ultimate goal of human evolution with the last Greek letter Ω, which he called the Omega point. That is to say, human beings will be omniscient and omnipotent, so the Ω point is also called the "God's point".

Corollary 2 Species compete through the development speed of population knowledge base

The expansion rate of the knowledge base of biological populations and the ability to use the knowledge base is the focus of biological evolution. The knowledge base of other organisms has stagnated and reached a dead end. Therefore, there has been no further change for tens of millions of years, and it has become increasingly lower in the earth's life circle.

In the past 100,000 years, human beings have continued to expand and accelerate in knowledge and wisdom, and due to the development of the Internet and artificial intelligence

Ming then made a further giant leap, thus gaining dominance over the natural competition on earth.

5. Discuss the construction and decision-making of AI ethics from the perspective of biological evolution

5.1 Can artificial intelligence be regarded as a living entity with the same rights as humans?

From the perspective of the structure of the standard intelligence model and the evolution of life, AI cannot be regarded as a living entity with the same rights as humans. It shares some of the knowledge and intelligent functions of humans, but it cannot replace the most important creativity and creative value of evaluation. More importantly, AI cannot determine its own evolutionary direction and evolutionary goals, and it has no natural motivation for correct evolution. Its evolutionary motivation comes from humans and it is still a tool of humans. The confrontation between humans and AI is still a confrontation between humans in the final analysis.

5.2 Use the evolution of population knowledge base as the standard for constructing AI ethics

From the previous discussion, the improvement of knowledge and wisdom is the core of biological evolution. The direction of biological evolution and the level of biological evolution can be judged from the two perspectives of knowledge base capacity and the ability to use the population knowledge base. When it approaches infinity, it will evolve towards omniscience and omnipotence through the population knowledge base, thereby reaching the "God's Point". This shows that there is a direction and end point for the evolution of living things. Then in the process of life evolution, those behaviors and relationships that promote and protect the development of the population's knowledge base are positive ethical standards. Those behaviors and relationships that hinder and harm the development of the population's knowledge base are negative ethical rules.

5.3. Discussion on AI ethics decision-making from an evolutionary perspective

1) For the Titanic, in an emergency where the identities of the passengers could not be determined, women and children were the first to escape. They represent the future of mankind.

2) In the 2012 movie, the president chose to let scientists fly to a safe place and expressed that "one scientist is more important than dozens of officials." This was also based on the judgment that scientists are more important to the continuation and innovation of human knowledge in the future than the president.

3) In the "Switchman's Choice", can we judge which side will contribute more to the future knowledge and wisdom of mankind? In the absence of a third option and the inability to judge which side will contribute more to human knowledge and wisdom in the future, choosing to let the five more people survive should be a helpless move.

4) When the Boston Dynamics robot was moving boxes, it was attacked by test scientists, causing it to become unstable and fall. This does not involve the issue of abuse of life, because as we have discussed before, currently robots and AI systems are not living beings, let alone living beings with equal rights as humans.

5) The last one is also a very important one. In non-emergency situations, individual interests should be protected, and group interests cannot be used to encroach on individual interests. Giving full play to the initiative of personal exploration should be a very important way to improve the population knowledge base.

Reference 1. Discussion on the next hot topic of artificial intelligence, why the Internet brain model should be proposed?

Reference 2 Internet Evolution, 2012, Tsinghua University Press

Reference 3 How to measure the AI ​​IQ level of smart products and discuss the three types of AI quotients

Academic seminar on "Technology and Humanities in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Interdisciplinary Dialogue" held by Southern University of Science and Technology

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