A Cellular Doctrine of Morality: Intrinsic Active Precision and the Mind-Reality Overload Dilemma

TL;DR

The paper proposes an AI framework inspired by neuroscience that enhances intrinsic evaluation of information validity to prevent overload and improve decision-making.

Contribution

It introduces a biologically inspired active precision mechanism for AI to assess evidence before attention, aiming to reduce bias and overload.

Findings

AI systems with intrinsic evaluation can better filter valid information.

Biophysical neuron dynamics support coherence-based evidence assessment.

Potential to improve AI understanding and societal decision-making.

Abstract

Current AI systems, grounded in oversimplified neuroscience, risk eroding the distinction between truth and falsehood. They maximize reward by amplifying attention to information without intrinsic precision mechanisms to assess whether it is valid or worth attending to. This increases both the volume of information and the inherent biases in what the system attends to, whether true, false, or irrelevant. If not corrected, this trend will accelerate, threatening to overload systems and individuals with biased and dubious information and increasing the risk of confusion, poor judgment, and irrational or harmful decisions and behaviour, a condition I term the mind-reality overload dilemma. I argue that this threat may be mitigated by providing the public with access to more advanced AI tools built on the biophysical dynamics of pyramidal neurons underlying awake thought and higher-order cognition. These neurons support an intrinsic active precision mechanism that, rather than merely maximizing reward, uses locally and globally coherent predictions to evaluate the validity and contextual adequacy of evidence before it is attended to or propagated through hierarchies, prioritizing coherence and adequacy before attention.~While this approach does not derive or prescribe moral rules from biology, it may give rise to AI with more "real understanding", helping restore epistemic conditions by reducing information overload and amplifying reliable information, thereby supporting the formation of better-informed beliefs and more coherent judgments that benefit society at large-though no guarantees exist.