Painful intelligence: What AI can tell us about human suffering

Summary

Suffering arises from frustration, defined as the failure to achieve a desired goal or reward, which is inevitable due to the world's complexity, limited computational resources, and scarcity of good data. Both humans and AI agents process information to pursue goals, making AI a useful model for the human mind. Frustration itself serves as an error signal for learning and adaptation. The book examines learning algorithms and their limitations to explain suffering, then derives interventions—such as mindfulness meditation—that reduce frustration, expressed by a simple equation. These interventions align with Buddhist and Stoic philosophy, offering a computational justification for their effectiveness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This book uses the modern theory of artificial intelligence (AI) to understand human suffering or mental pain. Both humans and sophisticated AI agents process information about the world in order to achieve goals and obtain rewards, which is why AI can be used as a model of the human brain and mind. This book intends to make the theory accessible to a relatively general audience, requiring only some relevant scientific background. The book starts with the assumption that suffering is mainly caused by frustration. Frustration means the failure of an agent (whether AI or human) to achieve a goal or a reward it wanted or expected. Frustration is inevitable because of the overwhelming complexity of the world, limited computational resources, and scarcity of good data. In particular, such limitations imply that an agent acting in the real world must cope with uncontrollability, unpredictability, and uncertainty, which all lead to frustration. Fundamental in such modelling is the idea of learning, or adaptation to the environment. While AI uses machine learning, humans and animals adapt by a combination of evolutionary mechanisms and ordinary learning. Even frustration is fundamentally an error signal that the system uses for learning. This book explores various aspects and limitations of learning algorithms and their implications regarding suffering. At the end of the book, the computational theory is used to derive various interventions or training methods that will reduce suffering in humans. The amount of frustration is expressed by a simple equation which indicates how it can be reduced. The ensuing interventions are very similar to those proposed by Buddhist and Stoic philosophy, and include mindfulness meditation. Therefore, this book can be interpreted as an exposition of a computational theory justifying why such philosophies and meditation reduce human suffering.