A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Singularity: Why We Cannot Do Without Auxiliary Constructions

Chapter 12
A Psychoanalytic Approach
to the Singularity: Why We Cannot DoWithout Auxiliary Constructions
Graham Clarke
All of us should ask ourselves what we can do now to improve
the chances of reaping the bene ﬁts and avoiding the risks.
Stephen Hawking is Terri ﬁed of Arti ﬁcial Intelligence,
Hufﬁngton Post 5/5/2014.
12.1 Introduction
I am going to be looking at the technological singularity from a psychoanalytic
perspective based in the object relations theory of Ronald Fairbairn ( 1952 ). This is
because the unconscious phantasies associated with technological triumphalism andthe celebration of reason over all human emotion even unto our own extinction
betrays a schizoid form of thinking.
We are all subject to accident, illness, loss and death and coming to terms with
these is immensely dif ﬁcult. In order to compensate for any or all of these poten-
tially traumatic losses we develop hopes, dreams, wishes and phantasies. Further-more, we elevate some of these defensive and illusory hopes to the realm ofcertainty, even to the point of giving up our lives for them. Of course there may be acovering narrative that this sacri ﬁce is worth it because we will reap our reward in
heaven, the after life, reincarnation, or we will join some god or gods on another
plane of existence entirely and live in some form of paradise, limbo or hell. It was
the degree to which the technological singularity approximated to this sort ofthinking that concerned me most originally. The claims that predictions of thetechnological singularity are well founded scienti ﬁcally are dubious and there are
many critics of this approach because it makes claims of scienti ﬁc respectability
G. Clarke ( ✉)
47 Lord Holland Road Colchester, Essex CO2 7PS, UK
e-mail: graham@essex.ac.uk
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2017
V. Callaghan et al. (eds.), The Technological Singularity ,
The Frontiers Collection, DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-54033-6\_12209
based upon little evidence or involves a mish mash of scienti ﬁc claims and
imaginative ﬁction (Modis 2006 ; Hofstadter 2007 ,2008 ,2009 ; Chomsky 2014 ). It
was in order to ask questions about the rationality of this approach that led to mylooking at Ray Kurtzweil ’s own view of the singularity from a psychoanalytic
viewpoint and to see in it a desperate wish to be reunited with his dead father.
The fact that as originally posed, the singularity was a determinate break in the
history of the world, an end to man as the agent of history and the ushering of a newera of immortal man-machine hybrids, or similar, also gave rise to a considerationof other such millenarian systems of thought that are familiar throughout history.That millions have died in pursuit of their own devotion to some imagined paradisethat will be ushered in through the triumph of some speci ﬁc form of thought
whether the Rapture, Ragnarok, Nirvana, the Communist Utopia or Fascist Thou-
sand Year Reich is enough to concern anyone. The fact that it explicitly became
associated with the abnegation of the body, its dismissal in favour of some ‘pure
reason ’that could be ported to a machine without any disastrous consequences for
thought or the notion of a person reminded me of the dangers of schizoid thinkingthat form a strong part of Ronald Fairbairn ’s object relations theory.
It seems to me that there are a number of important topics, which need to be
addressed openly if we are to successfully manage the development and use ofsuperintelligent machines. These relate to signi ﬁcant questions that theory builders
in this area of AI need to ask themselves before proceeding to attempt to implement
systems that may well have the potential to destroy the world or the world as a ﬁt
place for human beings to inhabit. The parallels with the development of nuclearand biological arms are a case in point. The current rapid move towards autono-mous machines that are programmed to kill on their own initiative is already so faradvanced as to require international and national agreement on this sort of researchand deployment as a matter of urgency in my opinion.
The research and development of machines and organisms that can impact upon
the biosphere and compete with the natural environment should also be subject to
international scrutiny and agreement. The idea that if we can do it we should do it isnot one that should in any way hamper our taking a very serious look at any use ofmachines, superintelligent or otherwise, mechanical or biological, for the effectsthat they might have on the biosphere as a working system e.g. Gaia, or on theability of national and international human societies to develop conditions for theﬂourishing of all of their citizens. That this may entail a retrospective look at
systems we have already put in place and their ordered curtailment or abolition
should not prevent our pursuing this as an immediate and important goal.
The topics I am going to comment on are as follows: AI and intelligence,
consciousness, reason and emotion and psychoanalysis. The bulk of my commentswill be to suggest that (a) we need to keep an open mind about the level ofunderstanding we have of all of these issues and thus entertain the possibility thatany or all of our assumptions might be wrong, and (b) we ought to be explicitly210 G. Clarke
monitoring and requiring research into all of these particular areas to be licensed
because of the implicit danger there is to the whole of the planet and our place in itfrom the unregulated development of this sort of research.
12.2 AI and Intelligence
My computer is many times more intelligent than I am from the perspective ofbeing able to carry out tasks that would require human thought had they not beenautomated. Indeed the computer might be regarded as a machine that automatesaspects of human thought via speci ﬁc software and hardware and thus potentially
increases productivity in speci ﬁc domains. Since these machines are already many
magnitudes faster than we are at carrying out such calculations what is the extra thatsuperintelligence signi ﬁes? Is it some dialectical point at which an increase in
quantity becomes a change of quality? The computer can process so much, so fast,that it seems to be able to play chess better than the best chess players we haveproduced, but is it playing chess? Another equally important question to ask is whatis so-called superintelligence for? If it means there are machines that can outper-form people at complex speci ﬁc tasks then this wouldn ’t be particularly remarkable
since we already share the world with such machines. The important point being
that currently these machines are under our control. Superintelligence seems to beabout machines that can do a lot of things that we think are important better than wecan do them, but without our management or control. This is obviously open tointerpretation and argument and will be limited by the ways these superintelligencesare embodied, thus the concomitant interest in robotics since that promises toprovide the superintelligence with a body to inhabit and through which to movearound and interact with the world. If that body was also self-reproducing and
self-repairing and capable of continuous upgrading throughout its life this might be
regarded as suf ﬁcient to threaten to replace human beings under certain circum-
stances. Such a robot on Mars for instance may be tailored to be far more robust andsuitable to that environment while at the same time capable of performing morecomplex tasks considerably more quickly that its human counterpart but would youmodel such a robot on a human being or endow it with any speci ﬁcally human
characteristics? And, what would be the point of making such a robot for everydayuse? Yes, we want to free everyone from unnecessary back-breaking and
mind-numbing toil without autonomy if at all possible but a society that cannot yet
afford to have all of its citizens educated, housed or medically cared for adequatelyand involved productively in its own self-reproduction and development maymerely make several of its least well off citizens even worse off by deploying robotsof any kind as could be argued is the case already. Indeed it prompts the question“what is a life for? ”If we can address that question before rushing willy-nilly to
replace ordinary human beings by machines we might then be able to develop asociety and a culture in which man and machine might complement each other.12 A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Singularity … 211
12.3 Consciousness
According to some neuroscientists consciousness is a brain stem function and
doesn ’t need the cortex at all. Of those who think the cortex may be the seat of
higher level functioning, like the personality, there is considerable difference in the
estimates of the complexity of the cortex. If, like Penrose and Hammeroff ( 2015 )
you take into account the quantum level processing of the micro-tubules in the brainthis then leads to a much extended time scale for the development of the technologyto be able to match the connectivity and complexity of the cortex.
There are also developments in psychoanalytically informed neuroscience that
suggest that the infrastructure of both emotion and consciousness is in the body as awhole (embodiment) and that the brain stem as opposed to the neo-cortex is the
locus of consciousness as has been suggested recently by neuropsychoanalyst Mark
Solms and affective neuroscientist Jaak Panskepp.
It is commonly believed that consciousness is a higher brain function. Here we consider the
likelihood, based on abundant neuroevolutionary data that lower brain affective phenom-
enal experiences provide the “energy ”for the developmental construction of higher forms
of cognitive consciousness. This view is concordant with many of the theoretical formu-lations of Sigmund Freud. …From this perspective, perceptual experiences were initially
affective at the primary-process brainstem level, but capable of being elaborated by sec-
ondary learning and memory processes into tertiary-cognitive forms of consciousness. …
The data supporting this neuro-psycho-evolutionary vision of the emergence of mind is
discussed in relation to classical psychoanalytical models. (Solms and Panksepp 2012 ,
Abstract.)
The management of superintelligent machines will have to address the question
of consciousness in its entirety. If it is a function of all living matter, then there is a
large question mark over the possibility of any machine ever achieving anythingother than a virtual consciousness.
12.4 Reason and Emotion
One of the most striking aspects of the proponents of the technological singularity isthe concentration on reason and the mechanisation of reason which they argue willgive us magnitudes greater power to reason, but to what end? I am not arguing forirrationality although I do believe that in terms of the arts and culture, and thedevelopment of science, the creative element is more often than not based upon anemotional, accidental or non-rational aspect of the processes involved and we needto be absolutely clear about the relations between reason and the emotions if we areto avoid the excesses of either or both.
Like the neuroaffective scientist Jaak Panskepp, Spinoza thought that emotions
were the grounding of reason. Emotions can be rational or irrational. It isundoubtedly a triumph to achieve an understanding of the sort we have of the worldabout us and our place within it and that is due in part to the development of the212 G. Clarke
scienti ﬁc method one cornerstone of which is to try to achieve objectivity by
reducing the levels of emotional attachment you have to anything within thedomain you are trying to understand or the prior theories you are seeking todisprove and improve upon. But this is a reduction of the real object and as such a
falsiﬁcation of the wider reality —an abstraction. It is here that I think that the
abstraction of the personal self to some entity that might be ported to a machine islikely to ﬁnd its greatest challenge. One doesn ’t need to be reminded of the ways in
which a minor illness, or appetitive lapse, or the invasion by a virus, or animbalance in a gland can invade and distort the mind ’s ability to see the world
clearly even when perfectly healthily embodied in a normal human frame.
The development of superintelligent machines should be able to give an account
of what superintelligence is and why it is useful, how it differs from general human
intelligence or not and what the relationship between reason and emotion is in the
natural world and whether that relationship must, or can, or doesn ’t need to apply in
the world of intelligent machines.
As Pascal wrote “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. ”
There are already well-established areas of research in computer science directed tothe area of affective computing. There is also considerable research effort going intoneuroaffective and neuropsychoanalytic areas. Psychoanalysis is a bio-psycho-socioscience. The importance of the emotions and of your relations to others as a part of
the process of coming to be who you are, and your development as an intrinsically
social relational being, none of which ever get considered if it is only the narrowcognitive and rational aspects that are being considered. The whole question of theemotions needs to be addressed and understood as part of the wider project ofunderstanding what exactly a superintelligent machine is and how it might function.Kurzweil talks about emotional intelligence, rationality, knowledge and intelligencebut rarely if ever about emotion as feelings —rational and irrational. His concerns
all lie at the cognitive end of the spectrum of powers that we possess. No little
surprise then that he discusses the neo-cortex in particular and its pattern matching
capabilities, an area in which his expertise has led to a number of powerful anduseful tools. But what if it was emotions and emotional relationships betweenpeople that were by far the most important aspect of our apprehension of andactivity in the world as Rosalind Picard ( 2014 ) in an interview about affective
computing suggests when she makes a number of interesting and important pointsregarding emotion and computing. She comments “Emotion …plays a constant
role in our experience …it’s always there. ”And concerning the problem of
machines having feelings she argues that “As far as qualia are concerned no one
knows how to build that in a machine now …no one can even see how it is
possible ”(qualia being the subjective or qualitative properties of experience). She
goes on to pose signi ﬁcant questions about the future of robotics.
I don’t know if robots will ever have feelings the way that we do …it will be some time
before the robots on their own accord go out and seek their rights as robots because theyfeel unjustly treated and if they do that …it would be because we basically built them for
that purpose …we have the choice as the creators of these machines to design them in such
a way.12 A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Singularity … 213
Regarding AI in general and her own developing understanding of the impor-
tance of emotion to AI she says, “AI in its ﬁrstﬁfty years didn ’t think emotion was
important …” And commenting upon her role in the development of affective
computing she says:
As I learned more about how our brains work …beneath our highly evolved cortex there
are sub-cortical structures that are deeply involved with emotion, attention and memory …
Emotion is actually key …If we want to build an AI that works in the real world that
handles complex unpredictable information with ﬂexibility and intelligence then this is a
core part of building an intelligent system.
In a similar vein, Sherry Turkle ( 2004 ), who has argued for many years from
within the domain of arti ﬁcial intelligence for a much closer relationship between
psychoanalysis and computer science, issues this warning:
People may be comforted by the notion that we are moving from a psychoanalytic to a
computer culture, but what the times demand is a passionate quest for joint citizenship if weare to fully comprehend the human meanings of the new and future objects of our lives.
(Turkle 2004 , p. 30)
Having previously spelt out in some detail what is going to be required for any
such close cooperation between the two disciplines she suggests that
We must cultivate the richest possible language and methodologies for talking about our
increasingly emotional relationships with artifacts. We need far closer examination of how
artifacts enter the development of the self and mediate between self and other. Psycho-
analysis provides a rich language for distinguishing between need (something that artifactsmay have) and desire (which resides in the conjunction of language and ﬂesh). It provides a
rich language for exploring the speci ﬁcity of human meanings in their connections to the
body. (ibid. p. 29)
In a number of books and articles Turkle ( 1978 ,1984 ,1995 ,2011 ) has drawn
attention to both the relationship between psychoanalysis and computing and the
increasing threat to human social relations by the ubiquity of human machinerelations. Turkle gave a TED talk on the subject of the book in February 2012,under the title “Connected, but alone? ”Points from her talk echo those in the book:
1. The communication technologies not only change what people do, but also changes who
they are. 2. People are developing problems in relating to each other, relating to themselves,and their capacity for self-re ﬂection. 3. People using these devices excessively expect more
from technology and less from each other. Technologies are being designed that will give
people the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. 4. The capacity for
being alone is not being cultivated. Being alone seems to be interpreted as an illness thatneeds to be cured rather than a comfortable state of solitude with many uses. 5. Traditional
conversation has given way to mediated connection, leading to the loss of valuable inter-
personal skills. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry\_Turkle )
There is a lot of time and money spent on developing so-called caring robots for
the treatment of the elderly and the care of children (Independent 2015 ) when the
sensible and obvious solution to the problem of social care is other people, properlytrained and properly remunerated, other people. We are by nature social creaturesbut the social valorization of care, support, attachment, nurture, education etc. has214 G. Clarke
been seriously eroded by a culture that measures things only by their monetary
value. For which reason we need to re-frame the whole of the caring process fromcradle to grave so that parents, nurses, teachers, social workers, carers etc. arehighly valued and highly paid for the work they do in helping to produce a new
generation of ﬂourishing adults, for caring for the sick and injured, and for helping
to make the last days of sick and ailing adults and children a positive and digni ﬁed
experience instead of trying to replace a humane and caring environment by cheapand tacky robots. If the development of intelligent machines is going to reduce thenecessary workforce for the material reproduction of society then we need toredirect our resources towards the reproduction of our invaluable human resources.
12.5 Psychoanalysis
InThe Singularity is Near Kurzweil ( 2009 ) includes Freud among his imaginary
interlocutors but gives him nothing of any interest or import to say. I would like toredress this imbalance by quoting from Freud ’sCivilization and its Discontents.
Life, as we ﬁnd it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and
impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures. ‘We
cannot do without auxiliary constructions ’, as Theodore Fontane tells us. There are perhaps
three such measures: powerful de ﬂections, which cause us to make light of our misery:
substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make usinsensitive to it. Something of this kind is indispensable. (Freud S.E. 21)
I think that the technological singularity plays such a role for Kurzweil and for
many of the other people who believe in it and transhumanism too, and that itdeﬂects our awareness, intoxicates our imaginations and provides substitute satis-
factions in place of a real assay of our prospects.
Psychoanalysis is a bio-psycho-social science in my view and it only makes any
sense when these three different factors are included. As an object relations thinker I
am most interested in the social and psychological aspects of this science but I amalso convinced about the necessity of the body for the realisation of these rela-tionships. It isn ’t just that the body is the obvious site of emotions and the vector of
emotional relationships it is also the case that what is unique and interesting abouthuman beings is their speci ﬁc embodiment within a body, a family, a social milieu,
a geographical region, a societal form all with their own histories and dynamics.The downside of this from the point of view of the person living this reality is that
people they know and love, to whom they are deeply attached will get sick, have
accidents, pick ﬁghts, misunderstand them and so on, and die leaving them bereft.
But, being embodied too it follows that they will also be riven by emotionalconcerns and upsets which might well include their own suffering from variousillnesses, bad luck, dif ﬁculties and so on, leading eventually to death. Psycho-
analysis, like religion, is about helping people come to terms with the realities of12 A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Singularity … 215
our lives and relationships and the inevitability of suffering and being able to carry
on productively and ﬂourish.
I am going to brie ﬂy look at the work of Ronald Fairbairn ( 1952 ) who, while
strongly in ﬂuenced by Freud nevertheless criticised the underlying assumptions of
Freud ’s structural model and developed a thoroughgoing object relations theory
based upon twentieth century physics where energy and structure are intercon-nected. His psychology of dynamic structure is a multi agent open system model ofthe mind that is widely in ﬂuential and is a direct precursor of attachment theory and
relational approaches to psychoanalysis subsequently. The overriding imperative ofthe neonate in this model is to make and sustain a relationship with the mother orsurrogate to ensure its survival, not pleasure seeking as in Freud ’s thinking (Clarke
2006 ,2014 ).
In Fairbairn ’s model the original defences are to ﬁrst internalise a signi ﬁcant
other, usually mother, followed by, over time, sorting the relationships with mother,by dissociating those object relationships that are unacceptable becauseover-exciting or over-rejecting. This is followed by the repression of those sets ofobject relations possibilities that are either over-exciting or over-rejecting, pro-ducing a tripartite division of the mind each partition of which is represented by asubject-object dyad. The acceptable object relations becoming the basis of theconscious central self whilst the other selves —libidinal and antilibidinal —form
subsidiary selves comprising the unconscious aspects of inner reality.
One of Fairbairn ’sﬁrst papers in the development of this new approach
addressed the idea that we are all fundamentally split to some degree in conse-quence of our original experience with our ﬁrst objects. Fairbairn ’s clinical
description is of the schizoid character unable to cope with the emotional world ofrelationships, who retreats to a ‘higher plain ’where the intellect alone reigns. This
seems to be a common characteristic of many of the people engaged in promotingthe technological singularity.
Another important manifestation of preoccupation with the inner world is the tendency to
intellectualization ; and this is a very characteristic schizoid feature. It constitutes and
extremely powerful defensive technique; and it operates as a very formidable resistance in
psychoanalytical therapy. Intellectualisation implies an over-valuation of the thought pro-cesses; and this over-valuation of thought is related to the dif ﬁculty which the individual
with a schizoid tendency experiences in making emotional contacts with other people.
Owing to preoccupation with the inner world and the repression of affect which follows inits train, he has dif ﬁculty in expressing his feelings naturally towards other, and in acting
naturally and spontaneously in his relations with them. This leads him to make an effort to
work out his emotional problems intellectually in the inner world. (Fairbairn 1952 , p. 20)
This is to distance yourself from a direct and emotional engagement with the
reality around you for a cleaner and purer place where the world of knowledge
exists unencumbered by the messy reality from which it has been extracted.
The search for intellectual solutions to what are properly emotional problems thus gives rise
to two important developments: (1) The thought process becomes highly libidinized; and
the world of thought tends to become the predominant sphere of creativity and216 G. Clarke
self-expression; and (2) ideas tend to become substituted for feelings, and intellectual
values for emotional values. (Fairbairn 1952 , p. 20)
As a technique, this stepping back to gain a perspective and then applying the
extracted model is an acceptable scienti ﬁc approach as long as you don ’t forget that
the map is not the territory.
There is however an aspect of science that is, for me, brought out best by the
Critical Realism of Bhaskar ( 1989 ) in which the very possibility of doing science is
predicated upon reality existing independently of our hopes and wishes for it andbeing able to return results that we didn ’t expect, which can contradict our
hypotheses and our certainties, which is what makes the experimental method so
important.
If, as Kurzweil argues, there is no distinction between human and machine or
between physical and virtual reality then the possibility for being human will havebeen lost and the possibility for science equally so. For the virtual to be indistin-guishable from the real the level of interrogation that we might subject the virtual towould have to be as multi-layered and eventually unpredictable as the continuinginvestigation of the real is proving to be. It would also have to come apart in exactly
the same way that reality does, but, since it is constructed by us we would have to
be able to know how it all ﬁts together beforehand, whereas science leads to our
discovering anew how it all ﬁts together. If we already know how it works and can
make a virtual world consistent with that then we cannot learn from it.
It seems to me highly likely that what Kurzweil is trying to do by ushering in this
new age singularity is to avoid all those painful experiences by hoping for a worldwithout them. A world where our biological bodies will no longer break down andneed repair and maintenance, in which old age, sickness and death are effectively
banished and in which we will at last come to understand the thinking of perfectly
rational others instead of always being perplexed by the thinking and behavior ofemotional, opinionated, disputatious human beings. Indeed one could argue thatmany or indeed most of our most precious achievements as a species are predicatedupon our grappling with disappointment, anxiety, perplexity and sadness.
Macmurray ( 1961 ) argues that for us to be human we have to be able to make
real choices and that the difference between ourselves and other organisms is thatwe have choices because we have intentionality, that is we can look at a situation
and see a number of possible ways that we might behave that are not predictable
from a knowledge of our biological makeup and our recent history. This is allpredicated upon our not being simple instinct-driven creatures despite Freud.
More to the point perhaps is that the sort of thinking that fuels research towards
the aims that the singularity determines is leading to the ‘nerds’and the ‘bots’
ripping-off the economy and the market being rigged by the so-called ‘Flash Boys ’
(Lewis 2014 ) while the global economy becomes more and more unbalanced with
the eighty ﬁve richest people as wealthy as the poorest half of the world ’s popu-
lation (Wearden 2014 ).
Singularity considerations never address the question of who is going to be
advantaged by it and one has the distinct impression that it is a private fantasy about12 A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Singularity … 217
living forever and avoiding the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ’that is the
prime motivator for individuals concer ned mostly with themselves and their own
survival. While there are some signs that the re is a growing critical response to these
ideas and the hyper-market capitalism t hey encourage in the work of Lanier ( 2010,
2013), Lucas ( 2014)o rP i k e t t y( 2014) the concentration of power and wealth continues
unabated and effectively unopposed to the detriment of all. We cannot do withoutauxiliary constructions if we are to help re direct the economy towards human ends.
InThus Spake Zarathustra Nietzsche talks about the Ubermensch, the Super-
man, who he entreats us to make ‘the meaning of the earth! ’which he immediately
follows with another entreaty, to ‘remain true to the earth ’. I take it that remaining
true to the earth is to remain true to our natural place within the biosphere and tobring all of that to some higher order, some greater harmony. I take it that this is to
recognise the importance of our embodiment and the ways in which we come to be
ourselves through others. I take it that this is to engage fully, emotionally withothers and with our societies to work towards producing communities that valuetheir members ﬂourishing. The technological singularity as currently conceived,
which might happen in some form or another if we are not vigilant, will be thetriumph of reason over emotion, the worst sort of mechanistic thinking in denial ofall of our feelings of community, solidarity, attachment and love. The age of themachines will no longer be human and lacks any unifying project that we might
understand. An Arti ﬁcial General Intelligence (AGI) without consciousness or a
conscience that is more like a disease than a panacea and an AGI with con-sciousness and a conscience, may well attempt to usurp us. Be very careful whatyou wish for!
12.6 Conclusion
If the gold standard of scienti ﬁc endeavour is the experimental method and falsi-
ﬁability then both the singularity and the transhuman hypotheses fail that test. In
Sects. 12.2–12.4 I adopt a sceptical view of the many claims that are made by
supporters of the singularity and transhuman projects and look at alternative con-structions. This seems to me a necessary scienti ﬁc approach towards these claims
many of which are both speculative and from a perspective that is neither provennor agreed. In this way I am concerned to challenge some of the certainties of
different aspects of the current research into AGI ’s with a view to generating a far
greater awareness of the dangers of this research and encourage its regulation
1as
we do research into stem cells, germ warfare and atomic weapons.
In Sect. 12.5 having searched the introductory survey to this book in vain for
any recognition that a depth psychological approach might be helpful to a fullunderstanding of the phantasies surrounding the development of machines that
1This places my approach in the ‘Societal Proposals ’of the introductory survey.218 G. Clarke
might offer us the possibility of living forever or achieving immense power intel-
lectually or physically, I outline a psychoanalytic approach to the theories of thesingularity and transhumanism. In the survey there are a few references to ‘psy-
chology ’or‘psychopathy ’but none that suggest that an important aspect of the
imaginative investment that is being made in these AI related projects may be born
of phantasy and none that suggest that we have an unconscious the workings ofwhich are to some degree hidden from us. These phantasies are in the service ofdefence against all of the ills our embodied selves are heir to —death, old age,
illness, accident, the loss of loved ones, the loss of our children. The title of thepaper “We cannot do without auxiliary constructions ”is a tacit acknowledgement
of this need for defensive means that psychoanalysis argues we have and usecontinually to protect and in some cases delude ourselves. As T.S. Eliot says in
Burnt Norton, one of his Four Quartets, “humankind cannot bear very much real-
ity”.The psychoanalytic section of this paper is intended to offer a new thread to
further discussion of the societal proposals of the introductory survey.
The work of philosopher and cultural critic John Gray is a case in point. When in
a recent book The Soul of the Marionette (2015 ) Gray argues that Kurzweil ’s vision
of the singularity as “an explosive increase in knowledge that will enable humans to
emancipate themselves from the material world and cease to be biological organ-isms [by] …uploading brain information into cyberspace …[that] The af ﬁnities
between these ideas and Gnosticism are clear. Here as elsewhere, secular thinking is
shaped by forgotten or repressed religion. ”(Emphasis added.)
Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the model that Kurzweil holds most dear in his
imagination is that of his ‘resurrected ’father as a companion. It is clear that he was
deeply affected by his father ’s death and strongly motivated to overcome that in
some way. The fact that such attachments and needs are strongly mediated bybiological, psychological and social factors seems to have been lost in his under-standing of the situation. Computer agents without emotional, relational, social and
personal needs and wants are much more likely to be successful in helping us in the
just and fair administration of things. And a simulation of another person is alwaysjust that however convincing or comforting that might be. Kurzweil ( 2014 )
reviewed ‘Her’a recent ﬁlm in which a computer agent with a female persona
makes and later breaks a relationship with a man who suffers all the heartache thatbreaking up with another human intimate can bring. Considering one of the mainproblems of the relationship —the lack of a body for the computer agent —Kurzweil
says“There are also methods to provide the tactile sense that goes along with a
virtual body. These will soon be feasible, and will certainly be completely con-
vincing by the time an AI of the level of Samantha is feasible. ”The actual dif ﬁ-
culties of effecting that relationship fully are not broached and the idea that forexample one might be installed in a ﬂotation tank while hooked up to an agent that
was apparently sharing a fully embodied experience with you seems unlikely tocatch on, even if it was realisable. However long you postponed it, you would stillhave to leave the ﬂotation tank and slough off the second skin, at which time the
Latin proverb —post coitum omne animal triste est —every animal feels sad after12 A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Singularity … 219
sexual intercourse might apply with the following amendment —every animal feels
sad (disappointed, frustrated) after virtual sex too. Blurring the distinctions betweenthe real and the virtual is a perilous path to take in my view.
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