What is “Soul” or “Aatma” or “Rooh”? Can we replicate it in Artificial Intelligence?

Soul is an abstract that is open to imagination. Unlike other abstract ideas like a Dream or a Thought, which are much more clearly defined, Soul is open to interpretation. Its an extension of one’s consciousness (the understanding or awareness about yourself) which connects you to another even more abstract concept of GOD. Again, while most people will say that GOD is the most commonly used Idea for centuries of Human history, we should agree that its a very open-ended, faith-driven and open-to-interpretation and thus an abstract idea. Soul loosely defined as the connection to GOD within self is similar..

Soul, or Rooh(Persian), or Aatma (Sanskrit) is also feared by people. In movies, its compared to another abstract idea called Ghost. Basic difference being that Soul is the consciousness of a person while they are alive and Ghost is the remnant consciousness after their demise.

That is the cue for what it takes to explain the Soul in basic principles. We as human’s are gifted with 2 aspects of being alive:

1. One is physical presence about the visible body parts either externally or internally. Each body part has a usefulness, quality, primary function for sustenance and an age associated with it. After they start aging beyond their Warranty period, they start giving in and in due course the Body itself becomes unsustainable and accepts Death as its fate.
2. Second is Cognitive presence of a complex web of ideas, memories, visions, dreams, goals, relationships, sentiments and consciousness. This entire stream of your presence is hidden like a computer Algorithm or a Software code and yet it drives the larger characteristics of how the human behaves perhaps even more than the first aspect.

So, what is Soul? Is it even real? We don’t really use it in any of our day to day activities unlike Thoughts or Emotions which are abstract but easily distinguishable, first hierarchy of abstracts that our mind creates. They are so elementary that even animals are shown to have them. But since the computer of Human Brain is much more evolved, we have way deeper hierarchy of Abstracts than the first and the obvious ones. The deeper abstracts are more like algorithms or concepts or recipes which derive how the next (more close to physical) layers of Abstracts behave. Soul seems to be a Deeper core of our Psyche which determines how the person thinks, or behaves or literally lives his/her life. This structure of human mind seems very natural and similar to many hierarchy or Tree structures which we see in real world and thus Soul in concept seems very real albeit abstract.

Now comes the biggest difficulty of human consciousness. How do we explain the fallacy, the gap, or the void during the transition time? While our Physical body parts are clearly distinguishable and distinctly constituting our clearly separate physical body, but our Abstract parts are widely shared with the larger human communities. Emotions, Relations, Dreams, Goals, Memories etc are all heavily intermingled between us, our close ones and sometimes even large masses of people. Like an idea of Love is between 2 individuals while National pride could be shared by Billions of people. So, like any transition time, when we face transition from Life to Death, we very commonly face this dilemma. When the person dies, then his/her shared emotions however a bit distorted, might stay alive in other minds after the person is no more. Like a relay race, you have transferred the baton and it might make huge difference in future. So, how can this extreme Bundle of energy, filled with emotions, ideas, thoughts, goals and memories be suddenly vanished with death? It seems falsifying the “Law of conservation of energy”

In many religions, Soul comes as a solution to this fallacy. They say when a person dies, Soul {as a form of energy or light :) } leaves your mortal body and goes to reunite with the creator. We aren’t going today into the ramifications of the much larger and open to interpretation concept of GOD or creator, but logically do you feel that emotions or ideas or memories of someone can be transferred to some larger Database directly or indirectly. Direct transfer seems improbable. The abstracts of a person were housed in their brain which once destroyed haven’t really shown to transfer anywhere. But indirectly through the shared thoughts, emotions and bonds with other people, you might still be able to transfer a lot of your abstracts including ideas, dreams, goals and even energy to a recipient if someone does try to take the effort and capture it. So, does the Person’s consciousness or soul keep living after they are dead?

Apparently derived from the above logic, I feel Soul or Aatma or Rooh lives after death. Although it doesn’t seem that it would meet some GOD sitting in heaven but it might meet a GOD sitting collectively in many people who were in the influence circle of this person who died.

Coming to the final question. Can a concept similar to Soul be ported to AI? I feel consciousness or awareness of what I currently am and where I want to go in future comes from an amalgamation of what I learnt from the outside world and how I used it (based on my Inner Guidance) to decide my next course of action. Modern day AI is extremely efficient in learning from outside as of today. So, if we code a core set of values, rules and guidelines then I don’t see why Human created AI be any lesser than a Human being?

Today AI can see, hear and sense things like us. A bit more complex system maybe able to observe chemical reactions as well. Then, we could also program the basic rules that give rise to first level abstracts like emotions and thoughts. For instance, we could teach a machine how to “Take Care” of someone by always providing them whatever they need including food, healthcare, education by simply sharing these requirements with Restaurants, Hospitals and colleges. A machine could even sense if a person is unwell or set Goals for a business by analyzing and interpreting data, including competitive study as well as employee behaviors. So, I believe its very much possible to create Human-like Consciousness

And on a lighter note, I feel that this Artificial Consciousness will unlike the movie Artificial Intelligence predicts, be non-destructive to human race. With thousands of Nuclear bombs created by humans with buttons held by irresponsible Leaders, humans are a far bigger threat to the planet than a well-thought and carefully planned Artificial Mind or Soul