Genomika, atmintis, kalba, tikras ir dirbtinis intelektas. Kaip viskas susiję?

LINAS KONTRIMAS Vilniaus universitetas GENOMICS, MEMORY, LANGUAGE, REAL AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. HOW IS EVERYTHING CONNECTED? Genomics, Memory, Language, Human and Artificial Intelligence. How is Everything Interconnected? ABSTRACT We accumulate information not only through our five senses. Human DNA carries an impossibly large amount of information. Scientists are nearing completion of the count of human genes. Now, as they set about creating artificial intelligence, it is worth asking how information about humans is encoded in genes, whether such information can be decoded using, for example, combined methods from linguistics and other sciences, what percentage of our subconscious archives consists of information contained in DNA, and whether it is subject to verbal encoding and decoding. Seeking answers to these questions would lead toward interdisciplinarity, where geneticists, linguists, and technology researchers could expand the boundaries of human self-knowledge. KEYWORDS: genomics, memory, information storage and encoding, cognition. ANNOTATION We do not only collect information by the five senses. The human DNA carries vast amounts of information. Scientists are about to calculate human genes. In the light of the present-day endeavour to create artificial intelligence, it is worthwhile to ask how information about a human being is recorded in genes, can such information be decoded by applying, for instance, combined methods of linguistics and other sciences, what percentage of our subconscious archives is made of the information stored in the DNA and whether it yields itself to verbal code and decoding. The search for the answers to these questions would lead us towards cross-disciplinarity, where geneticists, linguists and technological scientists could expand the limits of human self-knowledge. KEYWORDS: genomics, memory, accumulation and encoding of information, cognition. Straipsniai / Articles 279 LINAS KONTRIMAS THE BEGINNING OF QUESTIONS The liberation and accessibility of knowledge create a paradoxically twofold situation: ubiquitous cognition allows facts to be accumulated, yet their abundance reduces the number of people capable of or willing to connect and synthesize them. Professionalism and specialization become dangerous because they can turn a person into an expert in a narrow field who must contend with a computer’s memory—and lose. This scenario is also dangerous because human and innate curiosity, the desire to learn, investigate, and understand, is no longer important per se, but only when it leads to technological application. Thus wisdom may become merely a verbal construct, since, in itself, it is unnecessary in a material world defined by criteria of utility: it is only a state, not a technological breakthrough. And yet. It would be fascinating, immensely interesting, to discover what content our ancestors encoded in certain sayings, proverbs, and legends, beyond their obvious poetic meaning. Today’s geneticists, for instance, might interpret the expressions “blood brothers” and “blood ties” quite differently. And what does it mean to pass knowledge down through the blood, from one generation to the next? Geneticists would again say plainly: all human information is in DNA, so the expression hardly presents any complication... And yet. It would be fascinating to find out whether the written human genome can be read in a completely different way. What if contemporary language researchers and historians read it together with geneticists? Science is always part of something broader. The very fact that a scholarly, sensitive, and hungry gaze leads deep into the knowledge of essence makes it akin to mysticism. Mystics, too, are curious voyagers between this world and the next. For example, in some areas of spiritual knowledge, Indian mystics are far ahead of the times of Western learning. For ages they have cultivated a system in which memory has an important, though not the foremost, place. According to Indian mystics, that memory is not merely what we are accustomed to calling memory—the brain’s ability to remember things related to our experience. Indian mystics, the yogis, maintain that our memory is the memory of the material and spiritual bodies, which stores all information from the very creation of the world. It sounds strange, but once again: in such a statement, an open-minded scholar would already read more into it, namely that, for example, my DNA may lead back to the roots of the family tree. It may, but does it lead there? Not necessarily, because the aim of science, its rigor, even its dryness, often prevents connections from being made between different ideas. 280 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXIX The genome, memory, language, real and artificial intelligence. How is it all interconnected? On the other hand, because science is by nature a creative field, it will always remain a place where new, still-unexplained things can find their place, along with the harmonious joining of ideas that at first seem utterly incompatible. FORMULATING A HYPOTHESIS The human being is a complex system. The connection and opposition between the physical and spiritual worlds have been, and will for a long time remain, a world of hopes and disappointments for artists, scholars, and curious people in general. At every moment, people have understood that their experiences and discoveries must be recorded, accumulated, and passed on to future generations. Signs, symbols, stories, writing, images, music—all these means take a piece of visible and invisible reality, freeze it in their own distinctive ways, and pass it on to others, into the future. They encode it in the hope that others will be able to decode it. The human mind, though with difficulty and not completely, is nevertheless able to decode systems of knowledge transmission created long ago: for instance, the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered in the nineteenth century, as was the cuneiform used in Mesopotamia.. The twentieth century made it possible to open another, far more complex book—the book of genes. Genetics, and genomics too, are rapidly penetrating the chemical formulas of our information, reaching the very essence of human biology. Human genes and their combinations are being counted. The map of human genes makes it possible to chart another journey—not only the geographical homo sapiens journey. Likewise, it shows what is taken along on this journey: information characteristic of the species, encoded in genes and passed from generation to generation. Heredity, the influence of the environment—everything is imprinted in genes. They are responsible not only for information, but also for its application and functions. For example, the human FOXP gene is responsible for language functions. Thus, genetics allows us to get to know ourselves anew. And at this time, technology—especially the development of artificial intelligence—makes us turn our attention anew to our nature and raise (together) these questions in search of answers: How do we accumulate information about ourselves at the level of genes? How is this information encoded? How do we decode it? How is it put into words? Is all information at the genetic level “difficult”—about matter—or might knowledge about all of homo sapiens genetics also lie there? How does genetic information function as memory available for use? Does language (in the broad sense) participate in encoding such information, or only in its accumulation and transmission? Do word codes exist that could help “unlock and lock” genetic information? How is language connected to genetic information codes at all? Is it possible—and if so, how could genetic-level information be programmed through language codes? Is it possible, in principle, to speak not only of the genetics of the body, but also of immaterial genetics, say, of the soul (cf. the Greek psyche and the whole Įžvalgos / Insights 281 LINAS KONTRIMAS (gr. neuron leap)? Or, when speaking, for example, of the Lithuanian, German, or Chinese gene, etc., can we speak not only of biological information and how such information can be encoded and transmitted? All these questions will seem strange if we pause for even a moment to think about our own nature and its mystery. Were we created, or are we the result of evolution? Who, and when, “installed” the program of conscience in us? So, is it possible, by adopting an interdisciplinary approach, to reread gene (genome) information and look for codes within it that would obey not only biochemical but also verbal encoding or decoding? There are still many questions, and their presence is what makes life interesting and meaningful. Therefore, the hypothesis I propose is as follows: The human genome contains encoded information related not only to physical characteristics, their memory and transmission, but also to human spiritual characteristics, their memory and transmission; the phenomenon of language should connect these two domains and make it possible to encode and decode the accumulated information, transferring it from genetic memory to psychological and verbal memory, and the reverse path may also be possible. CHALLENGES OF DIFFICULTIES The hypothesis itself already contains several difficult subtopics. These difficulties do not signal to me that the hypothesis itself is impossible. On the contrary, they are simply powerful stimuli that allow different parts to be joined into a whole. One difficulty concerns the definition of concepts. We can more or less list and describe a person's physical characteristics, but spiritual ones do not submit so readily to this kind of undertaking. Here, the domain of opinion and perspective becomes very important. Does this mean that defining spiritual characteristics in this way is impossible? I don't think so. Only a few doubt their existence, and language is capable of defining what exists. Another difficulty is memory. Genetic memory could be compared, somewhat simplistically, to a library containing knowledge about us, homo sapiens. This knowledge is information recorded in a particular chemical medium. Neuroscientists studying the human brain identify regions responsible for memory, for example, lobus temporalis. It is said that we accumulate memories through our senses. But is that really so? Can information from the genetic layer add to our memories? My intuition says it can—and does. So the question “how?” is entirely meaningful. After all, the processes taking place within us can become comprehensible, which means they can be translated into words. 82 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXIX Genomics, memory, language, real and artificial intelligence. How is it all connected? So, if information exists, if there are places where it is unfolded, where it is shared, there must also be ways to trace this path, and perhaps to repeat it. PROBABILITY ASSUMPTIONS It happened as it does to every normal humanities scholar: although I did well in the exact sciences, for various reasons I moved away from them at school, yet my respect for this field of knowledge remained and continued to grow. This was reinforced even more by the philosophical conviction that a person cannot be divided; their knowledge must be as interconnected as possible. I am not talking about specific fields of research. I am talking about the unity that brings all knowledge together, and it is created by any deeper scientific inquiry. It creates it, but does not necessarily know how to describe it, recount it, or make it understandable to the majority. I have asked myself many times whether it is possible to answer the questions arising in the test of this hypothesis by drawing on linguists, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and computer experts. But let us try to discover curiosity and imagination after this section: Genetics can supplement the knowledge of other fields that study origins. Information transmitted through genes, grouped, linked by strands, and compared with the genetic information of other populations, allows conclusions to be drawn about a population’s origins. “The DNA of a human being, passed down through generations, contains information about the history of our ancestors. Therefore, contemporary studies of genetic diversity in present-day populations help reveal even those aspects of human history for which there are very few anthropological and archaeological data, or only hypotheses,” writes Vidus Kučinskas. The method of reading genes involves careful grouping and study of quantitative information. We then read other information as well: about an inherited disease, although the basis remains the same—the regularity of genomic information. In April 2003, it was announced that the sequencing of the human genome had been completed. It is said that we have about 3,500 genes each. But “it is now known that only a small part of the genome consists of functionally important units—genes. The other part of DNA is called non-coding. However, this statement is likely to be only partly correct.” What information is transmitted in these segments? It can be studied using biochemical methods. But what if we looked at the knowledge encoded in DNA from other angles, from the perspective of other scientific fields, and also from a practical field—for example, from the perspective of information technology and the search for artificial intelligence? Would a multidisciplinary approach reveal another cipher for reading DNA? Thoughts after reading V. Kučinskas Genomo įvairovė: lietuviai Europoje, 2004 Įžvalgos / Insights 283 LINAS KONTRIMAS While studying the genome, V. Kūčinskas drew on one of the humanities—history. His research opens up new avenues for explaining Lithuanian origins. The scholar entered the territory of history by consistently pursuing his genetic research. The question he posed, “What is the Lithuanian genome?” yielded impressive results. He moved from a familiar field (the genome) into an obscure one (ethnogenesis). Apparently, the reverse path is also possible. We know that a person is born with an innate ability to learn language. In a particular linguistic environment, a person also acquires the grammar of that specific language and develops a feel for it. We now know that a gene responsible for language has been described. We know that people also have other innate characteristics: hostility, feelings, “maturity,” and values (they accept or reject them—that is another matter; what matters is that they are given a code for understanding, grouping, and “archiving” them). What if such information, figuratively speaking, is also passed on through the blood? Raising a question like this is highly complicated. It is as if one were trying to encompass the unbounded, to connect the unconnectable... But intuition says that now is precisely the time to do so, when we know so much about our surroundings and ourselves. And that knowledge keeps growing, even as research into human nature continues to go round in circles. And another thing: Although each of us is unique, general assessments suggest that differences between people at the DNA level amount to an average of just 0.1 percent. Thus, 99.9 percent of DNA sequences are identical. The genome can be compared to a book, since it too is an alphabet—a set of the letters A, T, G, and C (that is, nucleotides). The differences between each person’s genomic book and another genome are very small, says V. Kūčinskas. In exactly the same way, people are made up of the same collections of instincts, words, feelings, and experiences, only mixed in slightly different ways. We are all made of the same clay. Only one insignificant particle makes us unique (imagine a perfect device, but without a power source. What and where is that particle, that source, which starts this device and makes it unique?) The ability to think is also given to everyone. The chain of thought is clear: experience – the stage at which states are put into words – verbalization (expression) – experience... It seems to me that there is a gap here. In thinking, we operate not only with information received through the five senses. We also “access” information within the body, let us say, information genetically encoded and passed down from generation to generation. How? Where? There are also certain codes of historical memory and wisdom, and systems of such codes. They may be passed on to future generations in much the same way as information is transmitted through genes. It may be that codes of historical experience (in the broad sense) are also inscribed in genes. People inherit some of this information, some of these codes, by nature, 284 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXIX Genomika, atmintis, kalba, tikras ir dirbtinis intelektas. Kaip visas susiję? we say—intuitively understands, without personal experience of their own. One learns to decode part of it throughout life. “Reconstructing human evolution requires both historical and statistical research. To understand human evolution, physical and social anthropology, archaeology, demography, and linguistics are no less important,” says V. Kučinskas. THE BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY In 2017, I shared my hypothesis with two highly distinguished scholars—academician Prof. Grasilda Blažienė, a well-known Prussian and language researcher, and Prof. Vaidus Kučinskas, a renowned geneticist, known to the wider public also as a researcher of the Lithuanian genome. I am grateful to the academicians for listening to my deliberations and saying that the ideas merit thorough and in-depth research. A hypothesis that branches into more than one research subject requires bringing together a larger interdisciplinary team. It is a great pleasure that both academicians decided to contribute to this research and lead the respective teams of scholars. Today, efforts are underway to explore the possibilities of implementing the project and to find funding. Compared with the possible results and benefits for many fields of science and the practical world, the required funds are not large, but they are essential. In addition to intellectual resources, a laboratory and materials for genetic research are also needed. Applications have been made. We are waiting. Therefore, although the path has solid ground beneath one’s feet and very experienced and distinguished Friends by one’s side, it nevertheless lies in a pure mist of uncertainty. Submitted on November 22, 2018. LINAS KONTRIMAS Vilnius University Saulėtekio 9, LT-1022 Vilnius [email protected] Įžvalgos / Insights 285