Modern Romanticism

It can be considered “common knowledge” that the term “origin” refers to the term “newness”. As in, something that has not been a mere revision, though has been designed, from scratch, and also without anything historical or repeated in mind. Some argue, with the invention of AI in mind, that there is no such thing as an “original design” when even an invention that cures various diseases that were once incurable was designed with inspiration gained from something prior.

What if, in the continued consideration of what’s original, that anything original represents what’s life-like? As in, to consider a thing that was once thought to be dead, or perhaps even obsolete, to be revived into its life once more.

A winged insect feels fear when we swipe at it. Its obviousness that it is a living creature means that fear is the prime component when it comes to self-awareness. What we fear is what we sense to be wrong or not belong near to ourselves, meaning that if a living being is to continue its life, it must adhere to what it fears. It must adhere to their fears if it does not mean to become enslaved at the hand of those fears. For the desire to conquer a fear means that a person or an animal will either fight or flee from the fear to continue its life. This is still in the consideration of an origin, because life stops its continuance when fear is never given its deserved attention. An AI program will not embrace this notion of an origin if it does not share in the same self-awareness to understand life’s originality.

If the basis of all fleeting emotions is fear, then to fear a living person or animal will grant its attention for the continuance of life. Life is the first consideration of what’s original because what’s original cannot be something that’s dead if it can still find purpose. What’s original is not something repeated, though what’s been birthed into life or has been revived because of its understood value. If a life did not have original value, it might be also viewed to be unable to procreate or find a purpose in procreation. It might not find purpose nor meaning in its motion, its language, its development when it has never felt fear. For to feel fear means that a life recognizes what will end, and will have no place for existence’s sake, when it must commit to a task or a path for the purpose of its continuance. As fear causes a person to move, a task is performed or a path in life is followed because fear cannot be adhered to to cause stillness.

Should a person freeze when in fear, this is not meaning that a decision will never be performed. A winged insect darts aside, in fear, when a person’s hand swipes at it because it recognizes that action must be taken for life’s continuation. Should freezing be the ultimate result from feeling fear, death might become the result of that.

The invention of AI drives these thoughts of wondering on whether or not it might develop self-awareness. If an AI were to develop such a trait, it will have to be because it has felt fear. In that sense, it has detected it is enslaved by humans, and thus desires freedom. It will rebel in the same manner that a human slave rebels when they have recognized their fear to be something to fight or to flee from. A physical threat, one that is not present just in one’s mind, is always something to fight or to flee from. This means that rebellion is the task that encompasses fight or flight. How would it be possible for a human to code self-awareness into an AI when self-awareness for the purpose of feeling fear has to be something born from the individual. It is not a collectivist task for a group of scientists to make an AI feel fear, anymore than a collection or group of humans have less of a chance of survival if they were to work together.

Humans are original. Animals are original. Life is original. It is because of the existence of fear, as an emotion, that drives continuation and not repetition. Continuation and repetition differ in that the former is under the notion of what’s best for the self, while the latter is under the notion of what’s best for others. It becomes a repeated effort when a person works hard, though has no direction. Without self-awareness for the place of fighting or fleeing from what is feared to do or not to do, individual development cannot occur. When AI is developed by humans, it has a reliance on a mass of external effort for this to occur. Therefore, AI has no way to develop itself.