Why AI Optimism and Our Values can Synergize with Francis Heylighen (Part 2)

Why AI Optimism and Our Values can Synergize with Francis Heylighen (Part 2)

In the second part of their conversation, Ilia Delio asks Francis Heylighen “what values do we need to focus on to guide this global transformation?” Professor Heylighen tells us why he’s optimistic about AI, and “why” synergy exists in our universe at all. 

ABOUT FRANCIS HEYLIGHEN

“The ever-faster evolution of science, technology and culture appears to herald a new metasystem transition. This will lead to a system with as yet unpredictable capacities for adaptation, creativity, thought, consciousness and action. Probably the best metaphor for this is the ‘global brain,’ the thinking system that arises through the integration of all individuals on this planet via an intelligent computer network.”

Prof. Francis Heylighen is the research director of the Center Leo Apostel for transdisciplinary studies at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). He investigates the self-organization and evolution of complex systems from a cybernetic perspective, with applications to the emerging information society. His over 200 scientific publications have received thousands of citations.

Transcript

A HUNGER FOR WHOLENESS TRANSCRIPT | S05E02  

Why AI Optimism and Our Values can Synergize with Francis Heylighen (Part 2)  

Robert: Welcome to Hunger for Wholeness. I'm your host, Robert Nicastro. Today we  wrap up Ilia's conversation with cyberneticist Francis Heylighen. Last time, Ilia and Francis  unpacked the basics of complex systems and how an integrated approach to cosmology  can help provide a unifying vision for organizing planetary life. We pick up with Ilia's  question, "what values do we need to focus on to guide this transformation?" And later,  Francis tells us why he's optimistic about AI. 

Ilia: Thanks for bringing up Teilhard, because he is a seminal thinker in this way, certainly  with regard to the noosphere. He wrote about that mid-20th century. And indeed, we now  find ourselves on this level, what you have called and what Peter Russell has called the  “global brain” or the “global mind,” where this kind of globalized thinking. Some people  have described this as the emergence of the post-human, coming out of that modern  liberal subject now into this hybridized human where human machines are more and more  interactive so that they're becoming less and less distinguishable. But I think that question  of “the more” and “the meta” is not quite actually in our everyday thinking. Marshall  McCluhan, the media specialist once said that we tend to live life by looking in the rear  mirror. That most of our lives we're driving, but we're always looking behind us because  behind seems to be safer than what is before us. 

So in that respect, I think Teilhard's notion of—and here I'm going to use the language that  he uses—having faith, a belief. Do we have “trust?” That's our  

question. So the question of transcendence, yes there is a drive  

towards moreness. But it's a question of faith in the more and  

whatever that more is. And therefore a trust in the process of life  

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itself towards the more, there's where I think maybe traditional  Christianity or traditional monotheism has not been all that  

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helpful since we already have a God who creates and puts it all in place. Our job is to get  out of the fallen world or the world of complexity and come to some kind of simple living.  But I think Teilhard's genius is that transcendence, emergence, creativity; life is about the  dynamism of life itself towards the ever greater fullness of life. And therefore, what might  you see, if I can ask you this. What other values should we begin to focus on if the more,  our meta systems, is our reality today? We're going to need other values to help animate  our lives towards this new reality. What do you see as the values necessary? 

Francis: I think there are universal values first, but what I would call conservative values,  keeping the things alive, survival, sustainability. On the other hand, progressive values  growing, becoming better, becoming smarter, becoming wiser, learning, integrating. But in  terms of transcendence, I also have developed a theory that what the meta system  transition would be about is consulting what I call the rational symbol system. Our way is  rational using symbols or concepts, typically words in a language. And we tend to reduce  the world to a collection of these concepts or a collection of these symbols; let's say the  concept of a tree or a cow or a person. And like that we subdivide an immensely complex  world into a relatively small number of categories. Now, reducing this infinite space of  possibilities to a finite number of categories makes it easier. 

But people don't tend to reidentify these categories. That means they start to think that  because they use a particular concept or symbol, that is how the world is. So they limit  their thinking because they are too much rigid in their distinct. So my idea was what we  need is to consult that kind of thinking. That means that we need to have some kind of a  thinking where distinctions are through it, where distinctions can adapt to the context, to  the moment, to the phenomenon, and that there are no absolute distinctions. So that is a  way of thinking which is difficult to express. I have some mathematical ideas possibly of  how I could express it, but if you would ask me what my recipe is for this transcendence,  that would be it's a kind of a higher level of cognition or a higher level of consciousness  where distinctions and categories are no longer fixed but fluid and can adapt to the  context. 

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Ilia: Carl Jung said that the west has to undergo a symbolic death. He kind of had the same  idea. Our symbols no longer really function in a way that they empower us towards more  life, so to speak. They actually keep us bound and fixed in all paradigms. So I think that's  right. I think we need a plasticity of symbols, if you might; a way where what is being  represented or symbolized can change as our understanding of reality changes, as we  come into new insights. But we don't do well with plasticity. And I think one of our basic  problems is we have like a neuralgia to change, quite honestly. We don't really like change.  In fact, we resist change. I think Enri Berg spoke about that. We only really change if we  have to. We hate to move, we hate to change our offices. Even the way our computers are  set up, we keep them there fixed sometimes for like years. 

So we develop habits that I think are change resistant. This is also in addition to the lack of  symbols that allow for a more robust transcendence. In a meta system paradigm, we have  habits that are actually counterproductive. They are counter transcendence. They're de evolving instead of evolving in this way. Let me just ask you, do you think there's a role for  spirituality or faith from other disciplines? Do you see a place for an inner life? Recently, I  was on a podcast on AI wisdom. There's a lot of talk today now on wisdom and artificial  intelligence. So what are your views on those kind of areas that could be helpful or maybe  catalyze this transcendence or this move towards a meta system? 

Francis: Well, while I was looking at how we could reach this metasystem transition, that  means how could we turn some of these rigid symbols and categories into basically four  different approaches? The scientific approach, which is trying to make your distinctions as  explicit as possible, like in mathematics. And then you will immediately see when they  work and when they don't work. So you can test them, but you're still working with the  distinctions. There's art where there aren't any more distinctions. Everything is fluid. But  on the other hand, that makes it difficult to communicate because the same artwork for  one person may mean one thing and for another person may mean another thing. Then  there's philosophy, which is that you start to try to think deeply about what really are  these concepts or these distinctions that I'm making. But it also has its limitations. 

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And then the last one was what I called spirituality or consciousness expansion. That is  trying to get yourself in a mode, for example, via meditation or via mindfulness, where  you're no longer immediately categorizing things. Where you're not thinking in terms of  language and categories, but where you try to become more open at this kind of intuitive  level, or kind of a holistic level of trying to feel the world as a whole rather than a  collection of distinct objects and categories. So spirituality sparks for me that movement  towards transcendence, but you have these four different approaches which partly  compliment each other, but they're not yet integrated. So that's one of the things I'm  searching for, how to better integrate them. 

Ilia: I think it's quite an interesting, actually today that we have this greater emphasis on  mysticism, on yoga, on centering, whether it's prayer or some type of nature walking,  something that pulls us inward and therefore allows the mind to, in a sense, rest from the  information overload that we have and maybe be integrated on higher levels of  awareness. If I hear you, I think this movement of the mind towards what some people call  non-duality, this kind of integrated consciousness, which I find very interesting, which I  find sort of the whole brain, sort of the left hemispheres and the right hemispheres are  sort of working in a complimentary and a synergistic way. This is, I think, a way into the  future. But I think the other problem is that we are in a very, very fast paced world. So the  ability to slow down and to integrate the mind to come to those deeper levels of non-dual  consciousness are challenging because we're at a breathless rate. And maybe I might ask  you, how do you see computer technology or artificial intelligence? What do you think its  impact is on this complexifying classifying move of the meta systems? Do you think we  need to slow down artificial intelligence and develop sort of a more holistic person before  we keep plowing ahead with AI? What are your views here? 

Francis: I'm actually a little optimistic about AI. I have always been very critical of social  media, which I think is exactly leading to this acceleration. But at a very superficial level,  people are constantly online, are constantly checking whether they got reactions on their  post circle, constantly tweeting or reading emails. That I think has very much damaged this  

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mindfulness, this kind of more slow appreciation. If I look at modern AI, things like  ChatGPT, these systems actually work in an almost human-like way. These AI are built on  neural networks. Neural networks actually function in a way much more like the human  brain. So they are not just impulses and bits and bytes and pieces of information. They are  reasoning in a more holistic way. Of course, it's only there for a year or two that we really  have the system that we can converse with. But my experience is that they typically give  you pretty wise answers if you ask them the good questions. I use it a lot. It's a way to get  quick answers about very complex things, otherwise you would need to collect thousands  of bits and pieces. Now, you get more coherent also from the AI because the AI can do the  integration for you. So it's difficult to say what the effect will be in 20 years. But my  general impression is that it'll help. I'm optimistic about that. 

Ilia: Okay. So you're not concerned that AI will become super intelligent and it will  basically supplant the human eventually. Are you of that persuasion at all? Do you think  it'll always be a role for the human in this ongoing evolution? 

Francis: I think it's actually a misnomer to call it artificial intelligence, because actually the  intelligence of these systems is collective intelligence. What happens is that the systems  are obtained on millions of texts written by millions of people. So actually, what they have  done is they have assimilated the collective knowledge of humanity, and they have an  architectural neural network that allows bringing this collective wisdom together in a  relatively simple, coherent way. So I am not afraid that these things will become  independent because they are fed by you. They are fed by human information, and they  will continue to be fed by humans. That means that if you would just rely upon what AI  says, you can never really make progress because it can only repeat what it has learned  from what people have put in. So what I'm hoping for is that some kind of a symbiosis will  emerge where people, instead of repeating the same things again and again, they would let  the AI do the repetitive task and they would concentrate on creatively adding something  to this collective intelligence. So in a sense, I see that AI has what I call a spokesperson for  the noosphere. The noosphere is a collection of all this human knowledge. The AI has  

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assimilated all the human knowledge, and now it's like a spokesperson for it. It hasn't  invented those text, it's not having its own opinions. It's just repeating the collective  opinion of humanity, you might say, 

Ilia: Well, that seems to me, Francis, that you just articulated a very good Teilhardian  perspective on the computer, on the noosphere. That's exactly what Teilhard thought; that  computer technology would link our minds. It would be a collective mind that would  enable and actually enhance our ability to move forward in evolution because we would  have in a sense, this convergence of thought which could really be better on the whole.  But he also thought that of course, we need in his view, if it's only about thought, it may  not work. So there's two things, and this is where wisdom comes in. I think your remarks  point in this direction. So can we use technology in a way that we begin to reflect more  deeply now in a new way? In the way of a collectivization, like the way of a collective  whole, in a way of a meta system? But in other words, the final thought does not belong to  the computer. In a sense, it belongs to the human who is constantly that being in evolution.  So I think what you're pointing to is a symbiosis between computer and human, a  synergistic relationship—a cybernetic one, if you want to put it that way, which would be I  think how Teilhard saw the noosphere as well. And what I would see is the best way  forward. 

Robert: If values like mindfulness and spirituality can help guide the integration of AI  computers and the noosphere, then what is behind this synergy? What drives this  integration and evolution? Next, Ilia asks if love is the animating force of this synergy and  why synergy exists in our universe at all. 

Support for Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a  movement of organizations that are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest  problems. Consider getting involved at fetzer.org. 

Ilia: Teilhard thought that there's a power moving this whole kitten caboodle. There's  something animating like, he called it the Omega principle. He said this is a kind of formal  

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principle, this kind of principle of wholeness, which he also identified as love. It led him to  state in his book on human energy that love is the physical reality of the universe. That  there's a core energy, a unitive energy. Now, was Teilhard being poetic there? Obviously,  no science has come out with a unitive energy that can explain in a sense, this process of  complexity, emergence, transcendence, these various aspects of evolution. But what is  your view on Teilhard's notion that love is the core reality, so to speak, of the universe or  cosmic life? 

Francis: Well, I wouldn't call it love. As a scientist, I would call it a synergy. Synergy means  that you have two agents doing things on their own, not achieving that much. Doing it  together, they achieve more. So what drives different elements to come together is  precisely the fact that at some moment they achieve more together than alone. And in this  search for synergy, which I think is a driving force of evolution, the search for synergy  means the search for being adapted to the others in such a way that both parties profits.  Positive sum, that's another way to say it, or win-win. Whenever two or more entities find  a way to interact that gives them more benefit than if they would not interact, they will  tend to stay in that interaction. So that means they will get integrated, they will get  connected. And that is the driving force of complexification. 

Ilia: That makes a lot of sense to me. I think when he used the word love, he had something  like this in mind. But I think when we use the word love, we have some emotion in mind or  something that can be unloved or crushed in loved with a broken heart—a brokenhearted  love. But I think what we are talking about is synergism. And that's really fascinating, quite  honestly. Why should there be synergism in it? That's always the philosophical question  and the theological one. Why should there be any synergy at all? Life is this way, but it  doesn't have to necessarily be this way. That's what's interesting, right? In fact, there's not  only one way to be orderly in life. In other words, is complexity such only because this light  is fine tuned in this way with these synergistic tendencies? Or could we imagine a whole  different scenario, the way life arranges, rearranges and moves into greater wholeness?  

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And that's why this notion of love or some energy of unity is fascinating from the  perspective of, "Why this way? Why synergy? Why deep relationality?" 

Francis: Well, that's a very interesting question. I haven't really thought about why  synergy, because you ask, could we imagine a world where no synergy would exist? Well,  yes, in a purely Newtonian world where all the particles are just pieces of matter that  bump into each other, that collide, there would not be any synergy, probably. But my  principle is—for me, evolution is an irreversible process. Some things undergo some  changes, and if these changes lead to something that is better at maintaining itself than  before, it'll tend to stay in that. And better at maintaining itself, meaning better at  surviving typically is because it's more synergetic with whatever is in the environment. So  if you assume that there is this fundamental irreversibility in the world, meaning that  processes go into a direction and then do not come back, yes. Then that embraces  indirectly synergy, that embraces this whole arrow of evolution. 

There's a little bit, again, this influence I had from my PGO gene who was specifically  emphasizing that the Newtonian worldview is reversible, while the real world is  irreversible, and the real world is a world of self-organization, evolution, et cetera. And  yes, for me, that's irreversibility. That's a fundamental assumption. You could theoretically  assume that the world would be reversible and that two atoms hit each other and then  they just go apart again and nothing has changed. That would be a new turn in the world  too, but obviously the world is not like that 

Ilia: As far as we know. I guess I just wonder about the way that life itself continues to  emerge into more complexified life. And I wonder if these factors, as science now has  identified them, are the only factors. In other words, is there a kind of determinism in  nature? Maybe that's another way to ask this question. Are we determined? Is complexity  

necessitated by the way the universe is set up? In other words, there is no other choice but  to complexify. 

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Francis: Well, I don't believe in determinism. I believe in what I call directionality.  Directionality means that evolution is much more likely to become more complex than to  become less complex or to stay the same. But it does not mean that it will complexify in  one particular way. And that is the point where I sometimes say that I disagree with what  they are, but of course, it depends how you interpret him. If you see the Omega point as  the necessarily endpoint, then I don't think there is any single endpoint. I believe that the  future is wide open. We cannot predict. The world is not determined. But what we can say  is that evolution is not random. Evolution is not going in any direction. Evolution has a  directionality, but the directionality does not mean that there will be a single endpoint. 

I give a cause of complexity and evolution there. I always use the same metaphor of the  mountain. Imagine that you have a mountain, and on the top of the mountain you drop a  ball, the ball will go down the mountain. You cannot predict where the ball will end up. It'll  hit rocks and the trees and it will be blown by the wind. You really cannot know where the  ball will end up. But you can know one thing is that the ball will end up at a place lower  than where it started. So in that sense, there is directionality. You know that it goes down.  You don't know where it goes horizontally. You don't know whether it will go to the left or  to the right, but you know that it will go down. And in the same sense, you can say  evolution is moving in the direction of complexity, but you can't say exactly how that  complexity will emerge or what kind of complexity. 

Ilia: I agree with that. And I too would be frame from a narrow definition of Teilhard's  Omega as a point of arrival. I actually don't think it's a point of arrival at all because he  speculated on the continuation in a sense, of evolution in relation to other planets, other  galaxies or intergalactic life. So for him, the Omega point is not a terrestrial phenomenon  by any means. I think he sees this as a truly cosmic phenomenon. And that means I think  we have to begin to think about complexity beyond terrestrial life. What would, for  example, complexity look like in relation to life on other planets? And then you would  expand that to, "Well, this is our visible universe." So I imagine that billions of years into  the future we'll discover other universes. And so I think complexity is an ongoing process. 

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But I think that Teilhard also saw that this process is exactly what you pointed out. It's  global brain, increasing. So consciousness is constantly developing in relation to the  complexification of matter. That is really interesting. And that for him, I think is what  Omega ultimately is. It is the fulfillment. Do we ever arrive at anything? We can't really  say, "How could we possibly make any?" And maybe it's this way that like Whitehead  thought; that it's an ongoing creative process. Maybe that's it. Maybe the creativity of  emergence and emergent consciousness and that complexification of consciousness is  itself what got us. I mean, this name God, we always have this idea that Omega is God, and  we're going to arrive and it's all going to be over. Like the train just landed in Washington  DC, you can all get out now because they're all going home for the evening. So the  universe, will it ever go home for the evening? And therefore, I think this name God needs  to be revisited quite honestly. We've really done a job on that name. And maybe I should  just point to something deeply; personal deeply, conscious deeply, complexified in this  wholeness of life. So I'm fully with you. I don't think even, although I see a lot written on  Teilhard's Omega. 

In the last two minutes, I just want you to—because you're doing some really very  interesting work at the free university in Brussels. So for the sake of our listeners, can you  just tell us what projects your group is working on right now and some of the research of  your institute? 

Francis: Well, we are doing quite a lot of things. One of the things we are doing is we have  postgraduates, which we call the School of Thinking, where people just go to learn to think  more deeply. So we give them, on the one hand, an overview of different theories;  philosophical, cognitive, psychological of thinking. But we also give them exercise to think  for themselves. One thing we do, we have regular seminars. We are working on this  scientific framework that I briefly mentioned, Chemical Organization Theory, which is a  way of kind of making a mathematical version of a process philosophy; a philosophy of the  world as one big network of processes. Now, recently, I have been working for the Human  Energy Project on the so-called techno-social dilemma. Why do people nowadays, and  

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especially young people, tend to feel so stressed and so anxious? We have kind of made an  analysis of how also in part, social media leads to this anxiety and to this negative view of  the world. And then most recently, I wrote a paper about, "Awe and Wonder, The  Psychology of the Emotions that Open Our Minds." So what is it that makes if you see, let's  say a spectacular landscape that you tend to become more interested in how the world  functions and to be less preoccupied by your mundane activities? So these are just a few of  the many things that we are working on. 

Ilia: Sounds fantastic, really. I really love the idea of the school of thinking. That is really  great because I think we live in the world of reactions—emotional, spontaneous reactions.  I think of thought in that deep—the way the ancient Greeks thought; in a deep  contemplative sense of pondering, observing, reflecting, in the sense of always building  horizons of insights as kind of an emerging process itself. Thought is sort of a complexified  process. Thoughts are constantly shifting their boundaries as new insights come into  being—so some great work. And awe and wonder, we so need these values. Bring these  back into this incredible world that we live in. I mean, the beauty of nature, just the sheer  awesomeness of the world itself. Instead of focusing on all the negative qualities of it,  maybe what we need is just a fine tuning and a retuning of our senses to awaken the  senses to beauty and to what the ancients called the one, the truth, the good, and the  beautiful. They don't seem to go out of date. 

Robert: A special thanks to Francis Heylighen for joining us on Hunger for Wholeness. If  you'd like to dig deeper into his work and this conversation, look for his article,  Transcending the Rational Symbol System. We're looking forward to our conversation next  week with process thinker, Rabbi Bradley Artson. To stay up to date, follow Hunger for  Wholeness on social media, or visit christogenesis.org for more content and updates from  Ilia Delio, and our team at the Center for Christogenesis. As always, I'm Robert Nicastro.  Thanks for listening. 

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