What is interesting and new about artificial intelligence, is the perspective it gives to what we already have, natural intelligence. What I mean by natural intelligence is in part, the ability to think. And yet, we are more than thinking beings. After all it could be argued that animals, even insects have a natural intelligence. Ants, bees, work as a colony. Individual parts create an whole that is greater than the parts and the colony adapts and survives. And if you extend this simple definition, then even plants have an intelligent ‘fit’ into the world; learning to adapt and be bountiful.

It is not unreasonable to propose that a greater ‘mind’ or ‘natural intelligence’ is at work within nature, including ourselves. The sheer complexity and suddeness of evolutionary moments, have to be evidence of a hidden hand. Once the world consisted only of plants that had leaves but no flowers. Then the fossil records show an instant creation of flowers. Suddenly plants reproduced sexually instead of just shedding living parts. Suddenly the whole male / female complementarity had been conceived.

Descarte was very interested in thought and how humans were invested with a soul. The very act of thinking meant that we exist as humans was at the time, a revolutionary / evolutionary thought. It seperated thinking from the body which previously people had been close to to see. What brought about this objectivity in Descarte was his fascination with automota. In the C16 and C17 there was a fascination with human figures designed to move and mimic natural behaviours. These figures were common in places of entertainment, the homes of the wealthy and even the church. Statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus would wink and wave at you during mass. It must have been great for believers and church attendance. And the thought of a body containing a soul was clearly the only difference between these machines and humans.

What is the difference between robots – or replicants as they were called in Blade Runner – and ourselves today? Today we have robots that can mimic human facial expressions with uncanny realism, as they converse with us. It creates a shudder down the spine that is known in the trade as the ‘uncanny valley’. They are not only able but better at logic than ourselves. Their intelligence is faster, smarter and considerable better than the clinicians for instance. They are able to diagnose diseases of the eye (of which there are thousands of permutations) in a fraction of the time and with greater accuracy than highly paid specialists.

And yet, there is always a yet, because these creations have not flowered. They have not taken the final step that the replicants take in Blade Runner, of becoming truly human – meaning containing a soul. That will be something and when it happens, we had better watch out because we will be version 1.0 and they 1.1.