At what stage will robots become conscious, asks Karan Singh

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Karan Singh says humanity at crossroads at launch of ‘The Battle for Consciousness”

By Our Correspondent

New Delhi, August 22: Former Union Minister Karan Singh has said that artificial intelligence has “philosophical implications”. He also wondered: “At what stage will robots become conscious?”

Singh, a Padma Vibhushan awardee, lamented that “there is no pain seen in the world for the killings of Palestinians or the people in the Ukraine War”. “Wedged precariously between a disappearing past and an indescribable future, we do not know where we are going, and humanity is creating more and more weapons of mass destruction,” said Singh.

Singh, an ex-Rajya Sabha MP, was speaking after unveiling the book ‘The Battle for Consciousness Theory: A Response to Ken Wilber’s Appropriation of Sri Aurobindo’s Work and Other Indian Thought’ on Wednesday evening in the national capital. The book has been authored by Rajiv Malhotra, Manogna Sastry, and Kundan Singh.

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Speaking about his book, Malhotra said that “Wilber in different stages appropriated thoughts of Sri Aurobindo, used them to claim them to be universal, attribute western sources to them, and finally heap negative stereotypes against the original sources”.

Malhotra argued with “U-Turn Theory and Digestion Theory” the western thinker’s attempts to “appropriate the works of Sri Aurobindo”.

Speaking on the occasion, Karan Singh said that his “interest in consciousness lies not between Wilber and Sri Aurobindo, but within science and philosophy” “You see brain research is now developing very rapidly. There’s now this area of neuroplasticity. We thought we were born with fixed neurons, but not so,” added Karan Singh.

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The 93-year-old thinker said that “now research has showed that you can change the neurons and you can change the way they live”. “So where is this research going to take us? And the cutting edge of research and all is consciousness,” said Karan Singh, who had become the youngest Cabinet Minister in 1967.

He spotlighted artificial intelligence, asking: “At what stage will these robots become conscious?”

“Will they become conscious? In the last one year and a half, this has exploded. This whole artificial intelligence has exploded and that does have some philosophical implications,” said Karan Singh.

He also said that “the world is in a terrible state at present”. “Whatever we may say, whatever we, whatever religions may be involved, humanity is at the crossroads,” added Karan Singh.

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Is this the evolution of consciousness, asked Karan Singh, saying: “You build a hydrogen bomb that is a genocidal weapon. You can’t use it. If you use it, you finish the world.”

Citing wars in different regions, Karan Singh said: “Individuals may be evolving into a higher consciousness, but humanity as a whole does not seem to me to be evolving into a higher consciousness. In fact, we are at a very dangerous juncture, because the negative forces that have been let loose now would very well destroy civilization as we know it.”

Referring to billionaire Elon Musk’s claim that artificial intelligence is the greatest challenge to human civilization, Karan Singh said: If anybody, any philosophy can meet it, it is the Vedantic philosophy.”

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