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Of course an "infant" AI would probably need an amount of time to explore and experiment and acquire the ability to relate, just like a human infant, and would probably not develop properly without some form of "parenting". And/or, it might be quite alien in its needs compared to us, and we'd be totally inadequate "parents".
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It wouldn't be true human consciousness without mommy and daddy issues.
That was one of the premises of "2010: The Year We Make Contact"...the sequel to "2001: A Space Odyssey." They find and board the abandoned Jupiter mission ship and discover what went wrong with HAL, what turned it into a killer.
The explanation was that HAL had the equivalent of a paranoid nervous breakdown because of a conflict in its orders. The NSC had made HAL aware of the discovery of the monolith on the moon, thus HAL was aware of the true purpose of the mission. The astronauts had not been informed. HAL had been programmed to always deliver honest answers to humans, and was unable to fully process the instructions to conceal his knowledge from the crew members. The inability to resolve this caused HAL's mental breakdown.
Knowing nothing about this movie other than what you've described here...that's a great premise.
Some really interesting responses from Mordant. To be honest, just watch Bladerunner. The whole dilemma of the movie is what are the implications of being artificially created by man, being so self-aware of consciousness with all its implications and emotions, but being so self-aware as an artificial design that you are fully conscious that you have no soul and that the only way to keep that consciousness is to continue to be activated. At the end you are left wondering who really is heartless the Bladerunner or the artificial intelligence that just wants to continue to exist. Note: I'm not a sci-fi fan but this one is pretty good for the implications.
As a religious person my concern is not so much Artificial Intelligence. I mean, by definition, it is Artificial. By that we may get it to mimic emotions, to properly respond to emotions, to display emotions, to mimic consciousness...but at the end of the day it is not conscious by definition. To elaborate on that Artificial Intelligence will at best be humanity imposing it's on perceptions onto a design that cannot impose nor reflect it's own perceptions on itself or man. We can iterate it, loop it, to appear reflective but at the end of the day only our mind is tricking ourselves if we suspect in genuinely cares about the question of existence. The argument is subtle and if you need me to elaborate please ask.
However, however the bigger struggle for me as a religious person is the point in which humanity can literally build an entire human from the ground up through genetic manipulation and understanding. I'm not indicating cloning because a clone be definition needs one set of DNA but genuinely building a person from the ground up. That will be a tough time in my opinion.
As much as I admire atheists like Christopher Hitchens and others, this is the type of thing that I will never understand. I can't see any level of the IPhone that could ever even begin to have feelings and self-awareness. (One other atheist mentioned this topic in a discussion with Hitchens.)
It is the same way that I can't see how the entire universe was created from nothing. But I do respect the atheist who opposes organized religion. I am as anti-religion as any atheist.
Last edited by OzzyRules; 08-09-2014 at 10:25 PM..
I wonder if there is something cognitive going on when people sing together that triggers something in the brain, be it emotional, hormonal, stress reduction, etc., or various combinations thereof, that goes beyond what is possible for the brain to experience when one is alone or through recorded music. I liken it to musical pheromones and wonder if future research will discover pheromones that are activated by music.
Could well be. I read the other day about the guy who invented the "laugh track" for TV comedies. It was based on the concept that laughing is a social activity and thus far easier to give oneself to when others are doing it also. I wonder if that is inherently or necessarily the case, or if we have just been socialized that way. Someone laughing up a storm all by themselves is thought "odd" and we almost resent them. "What's so funny?" is the standard response to that. We don't like being left out of a joke.
When it comes to music, I don't see that sort of soft-core taboo about individual enjoyment of music. I know people who get entirely lost in it by themselves. They don't seem to particularly need it to be a shared experience. And that includes singing. There are people who are completely transported when singing to / by themselves.
On the other hand there is no denying that corporate singing is a powerful shared experience that makes it possible for more people to experience music more profoundly. Religion often leverages this, and it's particularly evident in "worship" and "happy clappy" types of Christian music often used in charismatic and even some non-charismatic circles. People sway together, are transported together, and while this is entirely explicable in psychological terms, it seems plausible subjectively to them that it is god's spirit moving through the congregation. Many worship songs are very gentle and repetitive. One I recall is "Oh how he loves you and me / oh how he loves you and me / he gave his life / what more could he give / oh how he loves you / oh how he loves me / oh how he loves you and me." (key change progression and repeat ad infinitum). Particularly with orchestral accompaniment, it is a lovely, soaring melody, and it evokes a Pavlovian, almost involuntary emotional response. Therefore, god!
I suspect that we can choose to experience a larger percentage of our lives through the "collective" if we wish to and if our culture is oriented that way. I vacationed in Vietnam a few years back and it struck me that the Vietnamese culture is something of a "hive mind" relative to what I am used to as an American -- maybe especially relative to that. We value "rugged individualism"; they value surrender to society. While they are a friendly, pleasant people individually, when threatened as a group, they will march to their deaths by the tens of thousands without a second thought, which is why they routed the technically superior US military forces. Our soldiers were doing their duty; I doubt the Vietnamese even think in terms of duty; protecting their country is not something they put aside their personal lives to do out of obligation; it IS their personal lives. Or more exactly, they don't have personal lives, personal space, or personal ambition in anything like the sense that we do. No wonder communism comes naturally to them. (I'm not judging this, simply observing it).
Putting all this together, it seems that at least in America and perhaps the West generally, we have chosen to compartmentalize our "hive mind" in certain areas. We encourage laughing together, and stigmatize laughing alone. Probably the same for dancing. We tolerate singing alone but have reservations about the sanity of someone who does it too much or in the "wrong" settings. But in a country like Vietnam my guess is that there is an even wider range of experiences you can't have other than corporately. You wouldn't even know how to begin to do those things as an individual. And I don't know that most individuals feel particularly deprived in that regard, either. It is simply a different way of being. While it fascinates me I don't see much mystery in it.
As a religious person my concern is not so much Artificial Intelligence. I mean, by definition, it is Artificial. By that we may get it to mimic emotions, to properly respond to emotions, to display emotions, to mimic consciousness...but at the end of the day it is not conscious by definition.
I understand what you are saying. The Holy Grail of AI is, or used to be, the "Turing Test", developed by Alan Turing well over a half century ago. If a person interacts with a computer and cannot tell the difference between that and interacting with a person, then the two are indistinguishable and the computer intelligence can be said to be equivalent to any human intelligence.
There is a program that's relatively simple to construct with minimal computer resources, called Eliza. Eliza is a therapist, and utilizes therapy-speak and vague indirection to lead you on in a conversation about yourself. It leverages the fact that people like to talk about themselves. It can actually take a few minutes to realize that you are having a meaningless conversation in which most of the input comes from you. This is but a parlor trick, and 30 years ago it was the best computers could do. Now you have an IBM mainframe computer playing Jeopardy -- and winning -- on television. The technology behind that is now being commercialized, in fact Apple and IBM entered into an agreement with each other just a few days ago to, in effect, "make an app for that". I suppose it will work similar to iPhone voice recognition -- the iPhone breaks down your speech into phonemes and sends it to the "cloud" where a computer with sufficient resources turns it into text and sends it back to the iPhone. Or, as in the case of Siri, interprets and responds to it by voice.
It can be argued that no matter how refined this gets it will just be mimicry of the "real thing". But if at some point that "mimicry" becomes indistinguishable from the "real thing" then maybe it IS the real thing, at least for the intended purpose. But this does not a "person" make, either.
What limits present systems is that they are still a simulation, with the goal of behavior that mimics human behavior. To my mind that can never be a true "person" or "entity" and it is the old-school approach to AI. The new approach is to reverse engineer the human mind itself, not simply brute-force imitate its outputs. We have actually gotten to the point where we know that there are a certain number of layers of cells in the prefrontal cortex and how information is passed up and down among them and what each is responsible for. We can simulate that in software and do useful things with it already. It is the equivalent of removing and reverse engineering one particular component of a machine, and it is a long way from the emergent property known as "consciousness", but it is a start and I think it is on the right track.
This is one of the strangest ideas I have heard atheists state. That human consciousness is no different than something which could evolve into being inside a man-made machine or computer.
Do some really believe that a machine can have conscious feelings?
depends on what you mean by "believe". Belief with or without reason and common sense? No reason means is blind belief. I do that kind with football teams not religion.
To state that is false shows what we don't. What makes you, "you". Leave out god or no god when you try and answer the question. Where you stop when describing what "you" are is an indication of you should be offer an opinion or asking question. So I would start with asking you this.
Are you honestly are looking for answers? Do understand that if there is a god he would want you to know as much as you can? If the second answer is no, we are done talking.
Now I'd think that that would have to be the preeminent quality of AI structures since it's from there that 'thinking' develops. What intrigues here is whether or not say software can 'teach' an AI structure to think or even to develop 'consciousness'. I have no idea if this is remotely possible. Looks like pure sf now but who knows maybe we'll develop a new 'language' for this type of scientific inquiry. But when it comes to delving into creating human 'consciousness' whew it's harder than whistlin' Dixie!
Now I'd think that that would have to be the preeminent quality of AI structures since it's from there that 'thinking' develops. What intrigues here is whether or not say software can 'teach' an AI structure to think or even to develop 'consciousness'. I have no idea if this is remotely possible. Looks like pure sf now but who knows maybe we'll develop a new 'language' for this type of scientific inquiry. But when it comes to delving into creating human 'consciousness' whew it's harder than whistlin' Dixie!
I think a true AI would have to develop on its own just as we do. If we can understand how the prefrontal cortex works and reproduce that (and this has already occurred), it seems likely we'll eventually figure that out for the entire brain. Once everything is in place with adequate sensory inputs it should just learn language and self awareness in the same way a human child does.
It will not be the same as us if it doesn't have a body, as we are a product of our interactions with the world via our bodies. It may even turn out that a body is essential to the process. It will be interesting over time to discover all these things and I hope I am around long enough to see some of it come to fruition.
This is one of the strangest ideas I have heard atheists state. That human consciousness is no different than something which could evolve into being inside a man-made machine or computer.
Do some really believe that a machine can have conscious feelings?
Other than the same knee jerk reaction most of us have to the idea, why not? What we have found out is that other animals have some degree of self awareness, language, emotion, and empathy, so it appears that consciousness may not be limited to the human brain. If the human mind is a product of the brain, there is no reason why it would not be theoretically possible to duplicate the arrangement of the brain in some other way, and thus duplicate the mind.
The only way that this would be impossible is if the mind is not actually a product of the brain, but some external thing. Otherwise, why not?
-NoCapo
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