With the invention of computers in 20th century algorithms have become an important part of our human civilization. At first, they were mostly used for scientific calculations and purposes. But with the growth of computational power algorithms today affect major parts of our lives. It’s not just that almost anyone has a computer in its possession. Algorithms run industrial machines and critical infrastructures (although not yet fully autonomously). With AI advances algorithms more and more affect our lives directly. They decide what you see in your social feed. And what recommendations and ads you’ll receive, which could be life changing in the case of a job proposal or a partner on a dating site. Algorithms are increasingly involved in deciding your credit rating in banks, your diagnoses in clinics and your expected performances on whatever you’re dealing with. Algorithms are helping polititians to decide what to promote to get as much votes for them as possible. In the future AI will make many human jobs obsolete. The doom scenarios are thus quite possible, but this post isn’t about it.

In our modern algorithmic world it becomes natural to perceive anything else as an algorithm, a function which targets its objective. Including a human. It’s already a popular thought that humans are just bio robots, like any other creature on Earth. Whose prime objective is to survive and replicate. While religions are considered as tools to achieve those means. At the same time, the modern culture is still keeping attention to a “personality” and put any blame (or honor) on it. But does it really make a difference what personality is behind a dictator who uses the same methods of power grabbing, manipulation, terror and sometimes almost exact “justifications” of their actions like any other dictator, currently living or long dead?
On the other hand, people who interacted with sophisticated AI programs like modern game engines and chat bots could feel a sense of a “living entity” behind those programs. They could give an impression of understanding your thoughts and you. In a certain sense they are alive indeed, especially if you can’t distinguish one from another, without looking inside.

But are they really alive? Clearly, all those algorithms operate by precise math rules. Which motivates another, more fundamental question. Is mathematics, which is behind all the algorithms, alive? As some single entity which exists somehow?

I’d like to argue that the answer is yes and no.

Why no? In the case of computer algorithms it’s because you simply can cut the power, which stops the whole action (well, until they learn how to gain it independently). You may say that the same logic works for humans and animals - we all need food and other resources to live. Even if we look at the viruses - they need conditions to replicate and spread. Ultimately, it goes down to four fundamental physical forces (gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong interactions), that explain all known interactions between matter. Without those basic forces there would be no action and no life.

But I find this scientific view to be overly simplistic. It’s not just food or physical forces that make us, humans, alive. It’s our perception of the world. Our emotions, our wishes and desires, which can go way further than a simple survival. We do not always shred the world into bit sized pieces and analyze their connections. We can see patterns as a whole. We can enjoy them. We can pursue them.

The patterns, or rather ideas, can be very complicated. And splitting them into parts, like AI engines do, could’ve kill their meaning for us. It’s a beauty of the whole, holistic idea that could give us power to pursue it. Such an emotional power doesn’t originate from simple matters. No conservation laws are applied here. It’s the power which is attached to the very existence of an idea, somehow. Of course, to feel it you have to be attached to that idea too, instead of being neutral.

You may explain the passions from an AI point of you, like it can give higher weights for some ideas and lower for others. But can it gain power just from understanding them? Obviously not. Sure, materialistic worldview denies this even for humans and tries to explain passions by simple means, i.e. to reduce everything to basic laws of physics and logic. I guess we’ll never find it out for sure. It’s a matter of believe.

So, why I think the answer is yes and no? No because it requires something else to actually be alive. And yes because it can give power to a life that finds it beautiful and is passionate about it. Either it’s math, an algorithm, an abstract idea or anything you find attractive.