Believing That AI Should Be Crowned The Eighth Wonder Of The World

Seven Wonders Of The World

You might vaguely know that the original list of wonderments was derived by the ancient Greeks and today we refer to that particular set as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Though there is some historical debate about the earliest versions of the list, most would collegially agree that the set consisted of these primary wonders: (1) Great Pyramid of Giza, (2) Colossus of Rhodes, (3) Hanging Gardens of Babylon, (4) Lighthouse of Alexandria, (5) Mausoleum in Halicarnassus, (6) Statute of Zeus, and (7) the Temple of Artemis.

That classic list was formulated by the Greeks and consisted of what they knew about the world at that moment in time. Some have pointed out that the list is somewhat parochial since the selected wonderments were only what the Greeks of that era happened to know of. You can readily assert that the list was regionally based and also bounded by the mindset and cultural norms of the list makers at that time.

As a result, there are plenty of other lists that have cropped up throughout the ages.

There is a daunting slew of such lists, variously coined as the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages, Seven Wonders of the Modern World, New Seven Wonders, and the like. Seems like everyone wants to be able to make a claim to their own variant of the Seven Wonders selections. There are tangents that some lists opt to fork out onto. For example, there are the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, Seven Wonders of the Solar System, Seven Wonders of the Underwater World, etc.

Contested Aspects Of The Wonders

Let’s go over some of the contested points about the Wonders lists.

First, some say that we can have as many of these Seven Wonders lists as we might wish to devise. The more the merrier. Others insist that all these various lists have watered down the grand notion of a Seven Wonders list. We ought to have one and only one such list. All the other offshoots and wild contrivances should be discarded or at least not be granted the same shining attention as a duly denoted and all-agreed one-and-only-one grandiose set. Trying to reach a global consensus on just one Wonders list would be asking a lot. Humans love to make lists and relish arguing over lists.

Second, some vehemently argue that the Seven Wonders must be natural wonders, while others contend that the Seven Wonders should be human-made. That’s a dramatic difference of opinion. Do we forsake natural wonders and go with solely human-made wonders? If we instead go with natural wonders, doesn’t this undervalue or overlook the immense and impressive accomplishment of human-made wonders?

I realize that you might be thinking that the easiest resolution is to allow for the list to contain both natural and human-made wonders. Well, not necessarily so. You are going to have outspoken critics declare that a human-made wonder cannot be considered as magnificent as nature. Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, those that are strident proponents of human-made wonderments will contend that nature is merely nature, thus no need to place it on a list. The list should be a globally acknowledged set of humankind’s accomplishments.

Expand The List To Higher Counts

Another heated topic is the fact that we seemed preoccupied with having just seven items on these lists.

If the list was perhaps 20 items long, we could put all manner of both natural and human-made wonderments on the list. No need to cut corners. We can make the list as long as we wish. Think about the original list of seven, and start adding Stonehenge, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal, Empire State Building, Panama Canal, and so on. Perhaps the list should contain fifty or maybe one hundred items.

Nope, comes the reply, the list must be seven. Only seven. Anyone who advocates for more than seven has no backbone. They aren’t willing to do what is right. The right thing to do is keep the list short and sweet. Only the best of the best gets onto the list.

The Magic Number Of 7

How did we end up in this force-fit of only seven wonderments?

History suggests that the ancient Greeks favored the number seven. Seven came up quite a bit. At the time, the number of believed planets was five and by adding the Sun and the Moon, you came up to the magic number of seven. Cognitive scientists will tell you that humans seem to have a preference for lists that are composed of five plus or minus two items, possibly an innate characteristic or somehow wired into our brains.

I’m betting that you know people that swear by the lucky number seven.

Now then, once the ancient Greeks started all this with their list of the Seven Wonders of the World, tradition appears to have overtaken any future such lists. If you are going to try and forge a new list, you would seem wisest to pattern on the oldest list. Make your list have seven wonderments. We seem to have jammed ourselves into the seven.

Eagerness For The 8th Wonder

That being said, you might know that a popular means of referring to something that should be given special focus as a potential wonderment is often generally referred to as the Eighth Wonder of the World. By referring to something as the Eighth, you are creating an atmosphere that this is an item of sufficient merit that it could be considered part of the seven.

If you outright proclaimed that the item should be placed directly into the seven, you are going to get harsh blowback. Why? Because this implies that one of the seven has to be taken off the list. This is simple mathematical logic. There are seven items. You want to put a new item in. You’d have to remove one item to make room for the new one.

A newcomer wonderment is going to get all manner of criticism when it tries to overtake a wonderment already on the list. How dare you remove the existent wonderment to make space for this new one? The odds are that a lot of people are devoutly devoted to the wonderment that is being displaced. The new wonderment faces an incredible uphill battle from the get-go.

Therefore, the easier route would be to just emphasize the next wonder as the Eighth Wonderment. All you are contending is that this potential wonderment is good enough to augment or potentially tag onto the list of seven.

Why AI Is Being Considered As A Contender

We have now covered then that the Wonders of the World list has a lot more complexity and confounding cultural and societal conditions than perhaps meets the eye. Let’s unpack the controversial viewpoint that AI is a possible contender as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Some believe that AI is going to be of such an immense consequence that nothing else on the Wonders of the World list is adequately comparable. AI is more of a wonderment than any other prior human-made construct. AI is even more of a wonderment than any natural-made construct (these are fighting words, as you’ll see in a moment). AI deserves to be on the list. In fact, some suggest that you can replace the entire list with just one item, namely AI.

Let’s take a somewhat more middle view and at least consider whether AI deserves to be on the list and take the vaunted seat of the 8th Wonder of the World.

We shall explore the matter this way:

• Is AI suitably wonderment worthy?
• Are we crossing that bridge too early?
• Will we know when it is the right time?
• Can the globe reach agreement on this?
• Does it matter if human-made or natural-made?
• What will AI have to say about the matter?

Let’s dive into those key points and see what we can uncover.

Is AI Suitably Wonderment Worthy

You might be scratching your head as to the rationale underlying an assertion that AI should be counted as a Wonder of the World. Most of the human-made wonderments that seem to get onto the Wonders list are mighty structures such as the Great Pyramids or the Empire State Building. AI is neither a building or a grand artifact.

Sure, there are efforts afoot to craft robots, and there are autonomous vehicles such as self-driving cars that are being devised, but the label of AI wonderment is not being assigned to those items. The AI is the software that underlies the actions of those various devices and mechanizations. We even refer to today’s systems and hardware as oftentimes being AI-powered. Thus, the AI is running on a computer platform of one kind or another, yet our attention is not especially gazing at the tangible implementation or “embodiment” as much as the AI software that makes it go.

Whatever this AI is, and however it seems to manifest itself, why do we believe that it is monumental enough to be classified as an Eighth Wonder or something akin to that designation? Here are a few reported famous quotes that might address why AI is worthy of the wonderment titling:

• Stephen Hawking: “Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history.”
• Ray Kurzweil: “Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.”
• Nick Bostrom: “Machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make.”

Contemplate those rather bold claims. AI is said to seemingly be the most significant construction in human history. AI will be the last invention that humanity will ever need to make (which, in case you are puzzled about that proclamation, the core notion is that AI will be able to take over inventing henceforth for us; we won’t need to lift a finger since AI can do inventing for us, possibly even better than we can).

Assuming that those ostentatious contentions come to pass, you would assuredly seem hard-pressed to grumble that AI is being touted as a candidate for naming as an Eighth Wonder. What else beats it? Can you name anything else of that stature?

Are We Crossing That Bridge Too Early

A notable problem is that perhaps we are premature about wanting to add AI to the list. We do not yet have AGI (artificial general intelligence). We do not yet have ASI (artificial superintelligence).

We don’t know if sentient AI will be possible. Nobody can aptly predict whether we will attain sentient AI, nor whether sentient AI will somehow miraculously spontaneously arise in a form of computational cognitive supernova (usually referred to as The Singularity, see my coverage at the link here).

You cannot reasonably put onto the Wonders list something that doesn’t yet fully exist. Are we too early on this speculation about AI garnering the Eighth Wonder slot? Mull that over.

Will We Know When It Is The Right Time

While you are stewing on those thorny questions about whether it is too early to be bantering back and forth about AI getting into the Wonders list, we can nonetheless proceed onto allied matters. How will we know when this form of AI has been attained?

The straightforward answer would seem to be that we’ll know it when we see it. Unfortunately, this is not quite as easy a recommendation as might so seem. All manner of sets of questions has been proposed and continue to be proposed (a topic I’ve covered in many postings). In addition, there is the well-known Turing Test that some in AI relish while others have some sobering angst about, see my coverage at the link here.

Can The Globe Reach Agreement On This

There aren’t any all-agreed viable means established so far about how we will know that pinnacle AI has been achieved. Without a worldwide semblance of how to gauge this, the odds are that getting a global agreement on an AI that seems to have reached its pinnacle is going to be quite difficult.

There is another intriguing angle to this topic. Does a wonderment that makes the Wonders of the World list have to be for the good of humankind? AI has some tremendous upsides, and many believe that true AI is going to change our lives for the betterment of us all. Perhaps AI will cure cancer. Maybe AI is going to solve world hunger. You name it, the advent of true AI is bound to be a major game changer for humankind.

A dual-edge sword comes to mind. That which has the potential for tremendous good is likely to have the possibility of horrendous outcomes too, see my coverage of dual-use AI at the link here.

Consider these reported remarks about the existential risk of AI:

• Stephen Hawking: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
• Elon Musk: “I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. I mean with artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon.”

Recall that I just asked you whether a wonderment has to be a generator of goodness in order to make the Wonders list. We are already handwringing that AI might wipe us all out or enslave us.

Does It Matter If Human-Made Or Natural-Made

If the Wonders list is for human-made wonderments only, we can presumably comfortably add AI since we are ostensibly crafting or creating AI. But it could be that we concoct AI in a research lab that than on its own cycles into being, as in the AI Singularity. In that instance, humankind should not get direct credit since humans didn’t derive the AI per se.

The retort to this is that if humans did the first part, we still deserve sufficient credit for whatever happens next. We don’t have to know how or why it happened. The very act of starting the snowball rolling down the snow hill grants obvious and bona fide credit to our having started the ball rolling.

Suppose that the Wonders list is for nature-made wonderments only. Does this imply that AI cannot get onto that list? In other words, if humankind devised true AI, it is not a nature-made wonderment.

First, if humankind did almost nothing to get the true AI, we should properly credit nature for doing the yeoman’s work for us, thus, the resultant pinnacle AI is rightfully placed on the nature-made wonderment list. Second, even if humankind did somehow substantively create true AI, we as humans are part of nature and ergo the AI can comfortably be placed on the nature-only wonderment list.

What Will AI Have To Say About This Matter

Given that we are theorizing about pinnacle AI, we would logically be duty bound to assume that this form of AI is going to seemingly be able to speak for itself. In fact, I have explored the ongoing assessments about whether or when AI should be recognized legally as a type of legal personhood, see the link here.

You cannot ask Stonehenge if it wants to be listed as a Wonder of the World. Nor can you ask such a question of the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest. None of the various items conventionally on the wonderment list are able to interact with us and proffer their opinion about being proclaimed as a Wonder.

True AI will seemingly be able to do so. Should we ask whether it wants to be a Wonder of the World? The AI might be bashful and defer to whatever we wish to do. The AI that encompasses badness might declare that not only does it belong on the list, but we are also to disregard the existing Seven Wonders and from now on only construe AI as the One Wonder of the World.

The Final Debate

A final thought for now. At the very beginning of this column, I mentioned that some are shocked that anyone would even be considering whether AI should be listed as a Wonder of the World.

Maybe the all-knowing AI that becomes a candidate for the list might have learned about the famous saying uttered by Groucho Marx. The pinnacle AI might say the same thing that Groucho Marx once reportedly said: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” Imagine our surprise.