Stoics believed in using reason to guide their actions and decisions, rather than being swayed by emotions or external events. This sounds quite “obvious” for the reader and it is quite easy to understand and the reader to fully agree. The problem, then, lies in the fact that emotions and external events (outside our control) are mostly part of our decision process in most of our circumstances in mundane life.
A quote from Zeno (the believed founder of Stoic school of thinking) elaborates a little more on the fact that to build wisdom is necessary to acquire knowledge of reality and that knowledge comes from the primary truths of the world.
“The first step in wisdom is to acquire knowledge of things as they are, and this knowledge is rooted in the perception of primary truths.” – Zeno of Citium (Fragments)
If we try to compare this way of thinking with modern AI concepts, we can lay a few things here:
- AI systems are designed to process and analyse large amounts of data using algorithms that are based on logic and reasoning. Collecting the data, interconnectivity and their meaning is the first step to acquiring the knowledge of the things “as they are”. Data (when valid) is an accurate measure of the real world and has been the modern “oil” that drive scientific progress over this century. There is no question about this.
- Another philosophical goal of AI is to create intelligent systems that can make decisions and solve problems based on logical and rational analysis of data. This intelligent systems are a transformation of the knowledge into what Zeno calls “Wisdom” based on the interpretation of the knowledge collected over the primary truths from the data at our disposal.
As a summary, data is the primary “truths”. Is the root of all things. Knowledge is the next step, collecting the data, their meaning and relationship allow AI to build knowledge. The final step is wisdom. Knowledge is subject to a complex algorithm based on logic and reasoning to finally output “wisdom”. “Wisdom” here is the path for better decisions and actions.
It looks clear to the reader (I hope) that the reason and logic are mostly what drive the Stoic school of thinking and AI algorithms.
Everything fails 