Self & World II

About this episode

What happens in the computer – software-hardware interface – when it produces the output we take as similar to human output?

Humans experience their existence – their interaction with their environment – as an absolute whole – a totality of a "story" that has no beginning and no end. Even the point of our demise as organisms – our culmination as mortalcreatures, which, notably, is not a part of that totality (incontrast to the realization of the fact we are mortal as part of the existential story) – does not disrupt that totality. And now what is the parallel conceptual geography in the case of a computer?

Does the software/hardware of a computer interact?

The hardware also interacts with physical reality – absorbing the tactile click of a keyboard key or the biometric data of a human retina, and the software processes sets of signals, which is also a physical process that is governed by formal logic in the form of predetermined algorithms, and produces other sets of signals, which are further transmitted "into the open" – the same physicality beyond the hardware interface.

Does the machine perceive and/or respond anyhow (say anything back)?

The human looks, sees, reacts. That is the vocabulary we apply to human behavior.

At least on the face of it seems we cannot attribute the same language to what the machine does (a separate, interesting point is the reason why). Instead, we would say that the machine is fed with data – the aforementioned sets of signals, which based on prior construction represent – on the algorithmic level – the logic the human message thereto (this is this, this is that in a very complex configuration) and further processes them based on the same logic (neural networks, deep learning etc.) so as to produce an adequate formalresponse to the data it was fed with in accordance with its general software architecture.

The computer performs an act for a certain goal in strict accordance with the algorithm. The computer is bound to – absolutely locked within – the algorithmic domain. It doesn't communicate. There is no world or any kind of story in terms of its constitution.

A consequent important point to note here is that the physical interface of the computer in such a case – whether it is an LLM that answers questions or provides guidance or the computer which plays GO – is that the hardware interface is altogether redundant in the entire process. Saying that the computer is playing or that the app is guiding is like saying that the faucet is quenching my thirst, or that the cutlery is feeding me. In both cases it is the software and only the software which performs and interacts in the sense of providing a digital output to a digital input in accordance with a predetermined algorithm (even if it had appropriated the "logic" of the process by itself and provides unanticipated outputs). Nobody is playing or instructing at the other end. There's still only a sophisticated, self-referential data source there.

We proceed.