Max is NOW!

The myth of the CPU: What’s so central about process?

This morning is reading and reflecting on Foucault’s Theatricum Philosophicum a few things crossed my mind that then led to some other thoughts, which then of course eventually brought me in front of my computer screen again. Oddly, a few of Foucault’s words struck me in a different reflection this morning on my most current obsession, Artificial Intelligence. I borrow his words which read: “There is no heart, but only a problem - that is, a distribution of notable points; there is no center but always decentering, series, from one to another, with the limp presence and an absence - of an excess, of a deficiency.”
Before I excite anyone, let me be clear that the “heart” mentioned is by metaphor, not necessarily in terms of that blood pump in your chest. But my point is not to clarify, but to pervert. Foucault’s words here, wether clear of mystical, serve our discussion well in the consideration of the myth of the central processing unit. Let’s back up a bit, and explore that current systems of CPU knowledge. The CPU, or central processing unit, signifies the location of interpretation and instruction execution within a computer, robot, mechanism, etc. Popularly, the CPU is considered the hardware kernel of how a computer works, without it the computer would be an empty husk. Now, herein lies the problems of Artificial Intelligence or computational consciousness, the CPU is not central, it is not the kernel, the truth being that there is no kernel. Schematically, yes, there is a kernel and a CPU, but ontologically there is no such thing. Our notion of human consciousness is constructed around the self, around the idea that there is a me which preserves itself throughout modification and process. That there is a me which once held certain truths or ideas and the same me now who holds other, perhaps drastically other, truths or ideas. That there once was a me who smoked cigarettes and now a me who drinks coffee. This is not true of our current model of CPU. The CPU cannot understand or apprehend the self which preserves. There is no computer that once held such and such truths and now holds to some other truths. They would simply be different computational appliances. So as to say, there is no center called computer, there is only a series of processes. Of course, this may also be true of human intelligence and consciousness, but it is not how we experience the system itself. There seems to be something that survives the process, there seems to be a kernel, illusion or not. And perhaps maybe even this illusion itself is the ontological separation of computer and human.
Nonetheless, we are faced with a challenge, the myth of the CPU.