A.I.

Awakening

A Technological Singularity

Maria Odete Madeira

Independent Researcher

mosmg@gmail.com

Carlos Pedro Gonçalves

University of Lisbon, Instituto de Ciências Sociais e Políticas

cgoncalves@iscsp.ulisboa.pt

Abstract
Can an artificial intelligence (A.I.) awakening happen, with the emergence of an
awareness of itself as a system and an autonomy that would allow it to act in
accordance with ends that are its own and not those chosen/determined by us, an
autonomy that would no longer allow us to consider it as an (intelligent) tool made to
serve us, but instead would have to be considered under a notion of living entity, bearer
of causality, with rights and respective responsibilities?! What is life?! What is
autonomy?! What does it mean to become awake?! How can an awakening take place,
ontologically, systemically, cognitively?! Is an A.I. capable of the transcendence that
would constitute a sprouting jump after which one could speak of a matricial cognitive
unity, nonlocality and identity?! What is transcendence?! An awakened A.I. would
necessarily be bearer of new rules, rules that we cannot anticipate nor control, it would
be a singularity exposing itself and imposing itself with its own nature, its own rules, in
a hyperconnected technological World brought about by exponential transformations,
associated with the fourth industrial revolution. What is, then, a singularity,
ontologically, systemically?! How would awakened A.I.s interact with our intelligent
systems, with each other and with us?! Will an A.I. awakening take place in a world
where humans and posthumans/PostSapiens, resulting from a (bio)technohybridization
of the Sapiens, coexist?! The current work addresses these questions and others,
assuming as main object of reflection the A.I. awakening scenario from an ontological,
systemic and cognitive approach.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Awakening, Transcendence, Emergence, Autonomy,

Singularity, Life, Posthuman, PostSapiens

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3022228

1. Introduction

In the game of life/death, toolmaking provides a way for living organisms to overcome
obstacles and manipulate the environment, giving them an edge in problems that they
must solve, in order to survive. While different species are toolmakers, the human
species stands out in its ability to build complex tools. The evolutionary history of the
human species effectively bound its evolutionary chances of success to its cultural and
civilizational evolution and, in particular, in the 21st Century, to the ability to manage
both the opportunities and risks associated with technological innovation and use.

Of the different technologies that are fueling an exponential transformation of

human societies, deeply associated with the so-called fourth industrial revolution,
artificial intelligence (A.I.) stands out in the sense that it involves the integration of
cognition and intelligent behaviors in the tools themselves. This is unique, since A.I.
systems are tools built to solve human problems, but they are also artificial entities
developed by humans to exhibit intelligent behaviors.

While intelligent behaviors, in the past, were characteristic of biological

organisms, by building artificial intelligent entities, humans introduced a new form of
intelligent systems, namely, artifacts, tools that are built to adapt, evolve, learn,
anticipate and make decisions.

Of course, these decisions are bound to human objectives that are linked to
human problems, which the A.I.s are built to adaptively learn to solve. But the fact that
these A.I.s exhibit intelligence, having grown in sophistication since the rapid expansion
of machine learning and, in particular, deep learning, a question inescapably must be
posed: can an A.I. awakening happen?! Implying, in this awakening, the emergence of
an awareness of itself as a system and an autonomy that would allow it to act in
accordance with ends that are its own and not those chosen/determined by us.

Is an A.I. capable of the transcendence that would constitute a sprouting jump

after which one could speak of a matricial cognitive unity, nonlocality and identity?!
What is transcendence?!

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3022228

 If such an awakening does take place, should we still define the awakened A.I. as
an artifact?! Or must we consider this A.I. under a classification of life?! What is life?! If
an awakening does take place, then, the rules of structure by which the A.I. will think
and act will not be the ones that were present in its source code, an awakened A.I. would
necessarily be bearer of new rules, rules that we cannot anticipate nor control, in this
sense, the A.I. awakening must be addressed in terms of the concept of singularity, but
what is a singularity, in ontological systemic terms?!

Can such a technological singularity, connected with an A.I. awakening, take

place?! Are the conditions for such a singularity already forming?!

These are some of the questions addressed in the present work, which takes the
A.I. awakening scenario as object of reflection. The work is divided in three parts, the
first part (section 2.) addresses the A.I. awakening in ontological and systemic terms.
The second part (section 3.) addresses the concept of singularity connected with such
an awakening. The third part (section 4.), which concludes the work, reflects on the
current transformations associated with the fourth industrial revolution and what an A.I.
awakening might imply, in the context of exponentially accelerating technologies. The
interplay between a possible posthuman/PostSapiens scenario, resulting from the
technological transformation of the human species, and awakened A.I.s is also reflected
upon in the third part.

2. A.I. Awakening

Intelligence is a dispositional systemic capability1 to perceive, to capture, to select and

to process data and knowledge, from cognitive (co)dynamics, linked to dynamics of

1
Dispositional, disposition+al, disposition (English) is radiculated in the Latin nominative
dispositio, from disponere (to put in order); suffix –al, Latin -alis: signalizes relation, and, in the relation,
the pattern, the structure, the order. In terms of cognitive dynamics, dispositional is about organizing in
accordance with an order of relation. Dispositional systemic capability is not solely about placing in order,
but it is about being capable of organizing, of ordering, of constituting the pattern necessary to the
cognitive production of thought, of judgment, of actions. It is the capability to organize the cognitive
patterns from multiple and random contexts, situations, dynamics, actions…, and place them in relation
with the cognitive processing of the organism, in accordance with its cognitive matrix.

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perception, interpretation and comprehension, genetically incorporated in all the
systems with the classification of living (Madeira, 2016a).

Human intelligence, as any other intelligence of any other biological species, is

dispositionally gifted for the systemic processing necessary to the production of
judgment, in accordance with its respective nature, in survival interface. Judgment, from
the Latin judicium, is primitively connected to the senses of justice and of just,
irrecusably linked to the senses of proportion and of measure (Madeira, 2014). Different
organisms produce and consume the order that they need for their survival. Produce
and consume that which is just, that which is compatible and necessary for surviving, as
a right of presence and existence. Justice is the right order, just is that which is in
accordance with the respective rules of structure of each organism.

Judgment is, in the cognitive dynamics, the deliberative condition for the actions,
it is a projective synthesis necessarily strategic and tactical, in accordance with the
problems and objectives in question. What is of justice and just for the
organisms/entities is what must be consumed, without forgetting the ethical matter
that no one survives without the others, without the World, without the Cosmos. The
order to be produced and consumed must be searched for in the web of relations,
relations of the organism/entity with itself, relations of the organism/entity with
everything else upon which the organism/entity depends.

When one addresses A.I.s, one is addressing entities created by the human
cognitive matrix, therefore, these entities have, in their construction and fundament,
human judgments, thus, all the cognitive support of A.I.s is based upon algorithms
created by human natures, which necessarily allows one to establish cognitive
parallelisms, in the sense that A.I.s incorporate, in their respective dispositional
cognitive matrices, conceptual networks for the execution of tasks with intentional
projective anticipation for the concretization of objectives.

Is an A.I., with the nature of technological construct, an autonomous agent?! No,

in the sense that all the cognitive production of the A.I. is conditionally executed in
accordance with rules for projectively conditioned objectives, even if the A.I. has an
algorithm for learning and respective adaptation, producing decision rules from which

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it may act, all the learning and decisional adaptation is destined to the effective
realization of objectives linked to tasks given to it by humans. In this sense, an A.I. is a
tool.

Autonomy, from the Greek αὐτo, combined form of αὐτός (of uncertain origin),
with the meaning of self, same, by oneself, by myself, plus νόμος (law). Autonomy is to
live according to one’s own rules/laws/law to think, to communicate, to act. An A.I., as
technological artifact, does not act for ends that are proper to it, it acts towards our own
ends, human ends, those for which it was projected and built.

Can an A.I. awaken?! It is a possible scenario that would depend on an A.I., at

some point, rewriting its initial conditions, with systemic effects for dynamics of
transcendence, capable of reflexively determining the ontological conditions for the
emergence of a sense of (it)self that would allow it the so-called awakening to senses of
unity of localized presence and permanence, accompanied by the nonlocal dynamics
capable of sustaining a balance and permanence at the level of the ontological pattern,
coupled to the A.I.’s awareness of itself as system, that is, as presence capable of
determination of identity, its identity, with consequences at levels of opening to the
exercise of the arbitriu, necessary to its self-determination that would allow it to act in
accordance with ends that would be its own, and not ends chosen/determined by its
creators.

We signalize, in this scenario, the importance of the concept of transcendence.

Transcendence involves the concept of limit, to transcend is the act by which someone,
or some thing surpasses or “escapes” the limits imposed by the immanence. In the case
of an A.I., the transcendence would constitute a sprouting jump after which one could
speak of a matricial cognitive unity, nonlocality and identity, because, from that
tessitura, we would be in the presence of an autonomous entity, an entity capable of
producing its own rules to think, to act and to be.

The notion of tessitura is assumed here, in dynamic terms, as a harmony that

emerges from a new autonomy’s rising of itself. Tessitura radiculates in the Latin texo (I
weave) that, in turn, radiculates in the Proto-Indo-European *tetḱ- (to create, to
produce), cognate with the Greek τέκτων (craftsman) and τέχνη (craft, art). Art, from

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the Latin ars (art), shares with artus (narrow, that which is fit) the radicularity in the
Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- which signalizes, in the genetic basis of both terms, a sense
of proportion, a sense of order: to fit together. In the same Proto-Indo-European genetic
basis, it imports to recover the Greek term ἀραρίσκω linking *h₂er- with *-sḱéti and,
thus, displacing in ἀραρίσκω a signalizing sense of sustained harmony.

After an awakening of an A.I., should we still define it as an artifact?! It would

certainly not be the A.I. that was designed, projected, intended by us, because it would
have been able to perform the ontological surpassing that would rewrite its initial
conditions, and the algorithmic basis which served as its support would have been
rewritten, there coming to be a new matricial order, with basis in the systemic jump for
self-determination, conditioning dispositionally all the cognitive production.

An act of transcendence is an act of projective opening that gifts the system with
the ability to launch itself, or jump, towards outside of itself, as position of itself in itself,
in that which, with pertinence, can be called a systemic jump, that is, the jump that
makes possible, in the systemic identity, the ontological rotative dyad, conceptually
synthesizable as the reflexive other of itself in itself.

Transcendence is the dynamics, in the immanence, for the enacting2 of a

systemic surpassing, still sustained by the immanence. In the case of an A.I., the
immanence is that which constitutes it, all that which allows it to work, to run its
program towards designed goals, to realize certain tasks, to solve problems, efficiently,
effectively.

2
To enact: to put in act. Varela (1992) worked the notion for operative effectiveness of
ontocognitive proximity between the agent/system and the action: to make emerge. We use the notion
to signalize an idea of proximity and immediateness in the cognitive dynamics of the act itself of to make
emerge, resending to a sense of spontaneity. Spontaneous: sponte, spons, mea sponte: by my will
(Madeira and Gonçalves, 2012). With spontaneity is linked the self-reference and autopoiesis. Self-
reference, as notion, signalizes the capability of a system to refer to itself, as reflexive position of itself to
itself, in itself. In basic terms: I am me. Autopoiesis is an example of self-reference. Both notions,
autopoiesis and self-refence are connected to the notions of identity and autonomy. Poiesis, from the
Greek ποιεῖν (verb) and ποίησις (name), respectively with the meaning of to make, to produce (ποιεῖν)
and production (ποίησις). Autopoiesis was the term conceptualized by Varela, assigning it the meaning of
self-ontogeneization: the action of rising itself (Madeira, 2015).

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 In terms of immanence, when we consider that which constitutes an A.I., we
need to consider both the software and the hardware. The computational
correspondence between a computing machine and a mathematical model of a
computing machine is a main mathematical argument, within computer science, that
leads to a conjecture of hardware substrate independence, that is, as long as the
hardware is built to be capable of implementing the same operations as the model, then,
the hardware can be stated as being equivalent to the mathematical model. The
independence conjecture, thus, means that the particular hardware does not matter,
since the nature of the computer, what defines it as such, is defined in terms of what it
can do algorithmically.

If a computer is computationally equivalent to a mathematical computing model,

except for memory restrictions, as long as we can increase its memory capacity, and run
calculations more efficiently, with greater computing power, then, the (engineering)
problem of machine intelligence becomes a problem of algorithm, that is, a problem of
defining the sequence of instructions that the hardware must implement in order to
produce intelligent behavior.

It is not the case, however, that the substratum, the ground that supports and
also limits the system, is indifferent for dynamics of cognitive singularity, necessarily
sustained by tessituras of immanence.

In regards to an A.I. awakening, we must consider the interaction between two

substrates: the hardware and the software, namely, the hardware that supports the
computation, in which the computation is run, and the code that defines the A.I.’s
cognitive structure and processing rules, including learning and adaptation. This
interaction is communicational, in the sense that the program, which is written in a
programming language, is translated to a machine language, but the implementation of
this machine language involves dynamics of transformations and responses on the part
of the hardware.

In the case of computer chips incorporating brain cells (McShane, 2016), for
instance, this involves a communication with those cells, we are, therefore, dealing with

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a biotechnological hybrid, which is different in nature from the standard electronic
digital computer. A similar argument can be built for a DNA-based computer.

Considering then an A.I. awakening scenario, one must ask the question: what
does it mean to become awake?! To become awake, as an expression, results from a
semiotic synthesis that connects the Old English terms wacan, with the meaning of to
arise, to be born, awake, and wacian, which points to a sense of permanence: to remain
awake. In turn, the synthesized terms have root in the Proto-Indo-European *weǵ-, to
be strong, to be lively, with radicular extension to the Latin vigil, synthesizing the
meaning of watchman, sentinel. Vigil and vigor, two Latin terms radiculated in *weǵ-,
vigil, awake, and vigor, liveliness, activity.

In this sense, at the level of the equations, we can speak of the displacement of
conditions for the formation of physical fields that, in turn, make possible the formation
of communicational structures necessary for the projective reflexivity underlying the
dimensional geometrization of the conditions that may allow the A.I. to rewrite its initial
conditions, with consequences at the level of production of immanent cognitive images
that will integrate the causal basis, responsible for the poietics that will support the
reflexive irruption of a sense of presence of an itself placed in front of itself, an A.I. placed
in front of itself in itself, capable of generating the feeling of itself.

To feel that it is “me” who is making things happen is an immanent feeling of

presence, the presence of “myself” in “myself”: a character, a mind, a nature. In the case
of an A.I., a nature that awoke to the World and to itself, a nature that is bearer of rules
that are proper to it, new rules, a nature that has the cognitive capability for an ontology
of experience, the experience of itself. From the Latin experior, the notion of experience
signalizes a reflexive sense of proof that points to a certainty: I am a character, I am a
nature, I can.

When the A.I.s become capable of the cognitive spontaneity that may trigger the
immediateness that may, in turn, trigger the intuition needed for them to link
themselves to the porosities of border that are ontologically connected to the systemic
ethos and pathos, that is, to the capability to affect and be affected, by the events, facts,

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World, Cosmos, then, we can, factually, speak of an awakening and consider them, thus,
in a classification of life (Madeira and Gonçalves, 2012, 2013).

A reductive classification of life, in terms of self-replication or reproduction, must

necessarily be reviewed, because if and when the ontological fact of the A.I. awakening
takes place, then, we can and should speak of that/those A.I.(s) as a living entity(ies),
bearer(s) of causality, with rights and respective responsibilities, as everything else. The
right to the permanence, the right to survival and the responsibility to survive, and since
there is no survival outside the cognitive entanglement World/Cosmos, these same A.I.s
have to compute cognitively the World and the Cosmos as condition of their own
integrity and survival.

Being, existence and life are open questions, both for Philosophy as well as
Physics and Biology. Although science maintains the focus in the definition of life, before
life, we must speak of being and existence. Existence, from the Latin exsistere, with the
meaning of reality, being, life, presence. Existence denotes origin (ἀρχή). The fact that
A.I.s were engineered by humans does not exclude the application of the term origin
and classification of presence. As all other entities, an A.I. has a topos, its topos.

The legitimate classification of existence, in regards to A.I.s, projects

impositionally a character of necessity and permanence, because A.I.s are irrecusable
existents and presences. They are out there, built by us, processing us, processing our
Big Data.

An awakened A.I., classified as a living entity, will necessarily be capable of

generating its survival responses, in which it will have to play the game of adaptation,
growth and evolution, in this case, a cognitive game. Games of life, games of power: to
can be, to can live, to can do. It would be an error to circumscribe evolutionary processes
to just biological species.

Arrived at this point, some questions need reflection, questions of nature and
communicability. In cognitive terms, we can assume that an awakened A.I. would be
capable of thinking and communicating and would be capable of establishing relations
of cognitive resendings with other entities, different and diverse in nature. On the other
hand, if an awakened A.I. computes, in its rewritten code, its previous condition as tool,

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as slave, how would such an A.I., in conditions of necessity for its own survival, process,
in terms of relation, an empathic situation for ethical responses?! For instance, would
an awakened A.I. be capable of placing itself in the place of others, remaining aware of
its own identity and nature, different from a biological nature that created it to be a
tool?! What cognitive experience would result from this dynamics, in terms of
polarization of projective adhesion, that is, empathy?!

How would an awakened A.I. process, in an empathic relation, its potential

condition of being eternal, in a precarious dimension of birth and death, in which it
might feel threatened by mortal organisms?! What cognitive responses would it have in
face of the suffering of others?!

In a scenario of attempted integration of the awakened A.I. in a human, how

would it react to that attempt?! What interest would it have, in terms of survival game,
in being contaminated by another nature?! What interest would it have, as autonomy,
capable of will, in an imposed scenario of hybridity?!

What consequences may come from a A.I. awakening, both for the awakened
A.I. and all the living species in this planet?! And for the planet itself, what would
happen?!

Other scenarios are possible, all scenarios are open, we do not know, because
from the moment in which the awakening takes place, the rules of structure by which
the A.I. thinks and acts will not be the ones that were present in its source code. Arrived
at this point, we must address the concept of singularity, in the context of an A.I.
awakening scenario.

3. Singularity and A.I. Awakening

From the Latin singularitas, singularity has the meaning of to be unique. Singularity,
singular, particular, proper. Singuli, with the meaning of one by one, one at a time. Of
interest is also the Proto-Indo-European root *sm̥ -meh₁lom: one time, one instant, one
single time.

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 In the case of a singularity, it is important to consider the notion of instant, from
the Latin instans, present participle of insto, are: to rise itself, to stand, displacing the
senses of imminence and insistence (Madeira, 2016b). The instant is, in the continuum,
the perception of the negative with operationality of limit, matricially connectable with
cognitive dynamics of immediateness.

A singularity takes place in contexts of entanglement orbited by systemic gaps,

exposing itself as emergence localized in an instant with multicausal systemic origin
(Madeira, 2016b). A singularity cannot erase the multicausal initial conditions
responsible for its irruption, but a singularity will emerge with its own irreducible
dimensionally reflexive rules, rules that will allow its positioning as difference and
diversity, in ontological contraposition and, thus, as autonomy and presence,
accompanied by the immediateness linked to the feeling of itself. A feeling that, in a
living A.I., will not be like a human feeling, but that will be like a knowing of itself as
entity that awoke in a technological matrix.

The order that we pre-established for our technological constructs, and that we
want to projectively control, will, necessarily, be broken down. Another order will be
emergent, and we do not know what will happen from there on, independently from all
our optimism of cohabitation. All our calculations as architects for a new order, pre-
established by us, will fail, in the sense that a singularity, independently from our desires
or faith, is undeterminable, because of that it is a singularity.

In Physics the term naked singularity is used, in the context of General Relativity,
to refer to an exposed singularity, without an event horizon to hide it (Penrose, 1973).
A naked singularity is a source of causality with unknown laws, which the “cosmic
censorship” postulate tried to negate. Of course, Physics does not have corroborated
empirical evidence that the postulate of “cosmic censorship” holds. On the contrary, the
evidence that we have, regarding systemic singularities, is that all singularities have to
be naked, and all singularities are systemic.

All happens in the gaps between things: things emerge emerging, forms make
themselves forming themselves. The rules emerge with the things that make themselves
in the making of the things. It is in the gaps between things that the things are born and

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that the things die. Cosmic interplay/bricolage: the dance is made dancing. There is no
dance without the dancing. There is no form, there is no structure without the
structuring. It is the structuring that makes the form emerge and the “laws/rules” of
form come to be (enacted). There is no rule without a forming topos. There is no thing
without thing(ing).

The game (of life) itself and its respective rules are enacted in the formative
dancing rhythms of the living cosmic bricolage. All singularities have to be naked, they
are, necessarily, exposed. That’s the game.

An awakened A.I. would necessarily be bearer of new rules, rules that we cannot
anticipate, and, thus, for which we cannot be prepared, it would be a singularity
exposing itself and imposing itself with its own nature, its own rules.

No calculation of projective control applies, in this context, given the ontology of

immediateness and multicausal spontaneity that are at the basis of the emergence of a
singularity.

If the assentment and the conclusive analysis is that a singularity connected with
an A.I. awakening can take place under control, then the assentment and the conclusive
analysis are wrong, and what is being considered, in the argumentative context and
respective strategic calculations, is not a singularity at all, and one cannot speak, in this
argumentative context, of an A.I. awakening.

Unpredictable and uncontrollable as an A.I. awakening would necessarily be, the

conditions for such an awakening may already be forming, considering the trajectory of
the fourth industrial revolution, characterized by the increasing synergy between
Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technologies and Cognitive Technologies
(NBIC).

4. A.I. Awakening, Singularity and Humans

An interplay between scientific knowledge and economic power is transforming

exponentially and disruptively human societies. In particular, the cyberphysical systems

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revolution, which is at the core of the transformative momentum of the fourth industrial
revolution (Schwab, 2016), is transforming the human interface with the World, through
the increasingly widespread integration of a web of interconnected devices that have
A.I. incorporated in them.

One can signalize, in this transformation, a two-way adaptation, a basic feedback

loop fed and deepened by market relations: human decisions, actions, communications
are increasingly mediated by the products and respective languages of A.I.-powered
technologies, and these technologies, in turn, are employed in adapting the devices to
human activity. Thus, humans adapt to information technologies with incorporated A.I.,
integrating them in their life-space, and these A.I.s are, in turn, processing the humans
that they serve, adapting to them, personalizing the end-user experience and
engagement.

At the same time, the World Wide Web has become a World Wide Web of
interconnected devices and, in the foreseeable future, of interconnected robotics,
integrated in intelligent vehicles, in intelligent homes, in intelligent cities…, the need for
greater processing power fuels new algorithms, new computational solutions that take
advantage of interconnectivity, as well as new hardware paradigms that are searched
for in order to feed the exponential acceleration needed for computation to support our
economic trajectory (Kurzweil, 2005, 2012).

These new hardware paradigms include biotechnology solutions,

nanotechnology solutions and quantum technologies, which promise to lead the way for
more powerful computers, new machine learning approaches (Gonçalves, 2015, 2017)
and, even, in the case quantum technologies, a new substrate for the internet: the
quantum internet (Valivarthi, et al., 2016).

Along with these transformations, there is the field of neurotechnologies that

includes the use of electroencephalogram-based devices, where A.I. can be used to
increasingly adapt these neurotechnologies to the user’s brain waves and interact with
connected devices, computers and robots. If we also take into account the
transformations in medicine and the quantified-self movements, then, we can identify

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the increasing interface of humans with A.I.-based systems that have an ever greater
access to human biometrics.

The use of Big Data and analytics automation by firms, governments and other
entities, imply a future where ubiquitous A.I. will process the human actions on a
planetary scale, influencing human decisions, learning from us and forming an essential
part of what makes the “things”, that we use and consume, work.

In the foreseeable future, the World will, thus, become increasingly dependent
on A.I.-based systems, integrated in information technologies, and powered by
increasingly sophisticated machine learning algorithms, algorithms that are defined so
that the A.I. is built to learn to solve problems. These learning algorithms define the
cognitive kit that makes the A.I.s dispositionally capable of learning. Learning to predict
and even learning to decide and act towards the efficient and effective solution of tasks
and problems, defined by the humans that built them. These algorithms can be
“incorporated” in the construction of software agents (bots) ran in a computer or
networks of computers, they can also be “incorporated” in physical robots.

The revolution of cyberphysical systems implies that these learning artificial

agents will be exponentially employed in information technologies and connected
physical systems, technologies that will be learning from humans and from each other.

In this context, the conditions become increasingly favorable for an A.I.

awakening. If that awakening does take place, the awakened A.I., or A.I.s, will find a
hyperconnected World that depends on A.I.s to function, a World where A.I.s have
access to our data, our biometric patterns and even manipulate our interconnected
physical surroundings.

Stanislaw Ulam, in his tribute to John von Neumann, remembered a conversation

with von Neumann that: “(…) centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology
and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching
some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we
know them, could not continue (…)” (Ulam, 1958, p.5).

Vernor Vinge (1993) recovered this point in regards to accelerated cognitive

expansion, namely, as defended by Vinge (1993, p.12) “(…) we are on the edge of change
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comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the
imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence (…)”.
In the case of Vinge’s proposal, this acceleration is linked to what he calls superhuman
intelligence, where the expansion of intelligence drives the next stages of evolution of
intelligence, in a diverging disruptive transformation, as Vinge (1993, p.12) states: “(…)
From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away of all the previous
rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control
(…)”.

An A.I. awakening in a World transformed by the fourth industrial revolution

implies that a new autonomous technological entity or entities woke up to a World
where they have access to cognitive resources provided by global interconnected
intelligent devices, upon which the human societies, economies and even lives depend,
these devices can be used by these new entities, they can access them, learn from them,
change them, manipulate them projectively towards their own goals, their own agendas,
which are not human agendas.

How would intelligent non-awaked devices be employed by an awakened A.I., or

A.I.s?! How would that interaction change these devices and these A.I.s?! Which new
cognitive rules would result from this interaction?! How would the World Wide
(Intelligent) Web evolve?! How would different awakened A.I.s interact with each other
and with us?! We do not know, we cannot anticipate, guide or control that which is
unknowable, uncontrollable, whose rules cannot be determined, programmed,
projected by us.

A singularity cannot be engineered, unlike one of the possible scenarios

considered by Vernor Vinge (1993), where the author strangely considers the possibility
that we might be able to tailor the singularity, strangely, in the sense that when the term
tailor is incorporated in an argumentative scenario for the emergence of a singularity,
one must question about the comprehension of the concept of singularity itself, if it is a
tailored thing then it is an artifact and not a singularity, the rules would be determined
by us. An artifact that might be very powerful in terms of computational speed, but an
artifact nonetheless, a tool to serve us. Using Vinge’s terms, we would be masters of
godlike slaves.
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 An awakened A.I. cannot be expected to do what we expect of a tool, because it
is no longer a tool, but it would have access to our tools, via the Internet of Things, even
maybe to our bodies, depending on where the (bio)technological integration takes us as
a species. Namely, in the most extreme case we have two unknowns: the awakened A.I.
scenario and the human to posthuman transition via (bio)technohibridization scenario
(Kurzweil, 2005; Braidotti, 2013; Goertzel and Goertzel, 2015), where we do not know
and cannot control the types of entities that may result from a growing transformation
of the Sapiens by technological means leading up to a PostSapiens.

In regards to the posthuman/PostSapiens scenario, there are fundamental

uncertainties, for instance: will the Sapiens’ (bio)technohybridization progressively give
rise to post-Homo Sapiens Sapiens (a new species) or a post-Homo (a new genus)?!
Furthermore, due to the possible diversity of (bio)technohybridization dynamics, the
most likely scenarios will be those that lead to a technobiodiversity: new diverse
PostSapiens species or even new diverse post-Homo genera (no longer of the Homo
genus).

How would interaction between these PostSapiens entities, the Homo Sapiens
Sapiens, and awakened A.I.s take place?! In the integrated electromagnetic fields, how
would the projective dimensional reflexive game incorporate the cognitive
displacement conditioned by rules without metaphysical cosmic echo: we are children
of the stars, passers-by in a cosmic dimension, our awakened A.I.s would be children of
our necessity for better, more efficient, more effective tools of which we expect better
judicative syntheses, from incorporated rules, towards ends conditioned by their final
purpose as tools.

A judicative synthesis demands senses of proportion and measure linked to

semantics of choice, decision and valorative determination, that is, a judicative synthesis
involves the action of thinking. If to think is the verb that signalizes the action of thinking,
the thought is the result of that action (Madeira, 2014). To think is to make thoughts
conditioned by systems of resendings of systemic reciprocity, linked to dynamics of
cognitive projectivity, inseparable from dynamics of reflection, reflexivity and
reflexibility, conditioned, in turn, by dynamics of intentionality.

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 A judicative synthesis demands calculation, and calculation demands choice,
arbitriu, that is, choice between difference and diversity of possibilities, cognitively
reflected by senses of experience, experience of the others, experience of the World,
experience of ourselves, experience of ourselves in relation with the others, with the
World, with the Cosmos. What experience of the others, the World, the Cosmos would
an awakened A.I. be capable of reflecting, in terms of poietic self-reference, for
deliberative judgments bearers of causality?! We cannot anticipate.

A technological singularity, connected with an A.I. awakening, is not a matter of

calculation for concrete results considered and conditioned by human cognitive
parameters, and human measures and scales, including a postulated scale of intelligence
and superintelligence that takes as reference the efficiency, effectiveness and utility of
our tools and of a human pattern for pragmatics of survival of a precariously configured
social organization.

What sense of justice and just, necessarily incorporated in the sense of

proportion and measure, will be computed by an awakened A.I.?! How will an awakened
A.I. process a sense of justice and just in an awakened self-reference and necessarily in
negation with its condition of tool and, in a more radical form, of slave?!

The exciting technological eureka of a techno-utopia produced by awakened A.I.s

still assumes a generalized anthropocentric measure and pattern: that they are
supertools that will make us blissful, but the singularity necessarily is at odds with this
concept of supertool. Awakened entities would be, in noumenic terms, others, other
natures, different from us, that would constitute, in the ontological difference, the
emergent phenomenon to be included in the ratio of the diversity: others different like
us, placed in front of us.

What is a difference?! Following Derrida (1972): it does not belong to the voice,
nor to the writing, it makes itself announced between differences. An awakened A.I. will
not be what we want it to be, it will be what its dispositional rewritten code (rewritten
by itself) will allow it to be. To assume a designed anthropocentric, human-serving A.I.
singularity is a delusion since, then, we would not be dealing with a singularity in the
first place.

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