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07-02-2015 #41
Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
I think for a machine to have feelings, we would have to be able to create an artificial equivalent to things that cause chemical reactions in our brains, such as hormones, that can create certain emotions, like - happiness, anger, pleasure and love. For instance, a machine might be programmed to provide a particular service, but unless there is an induced reward system to create a feeling of contentment or pleasure, there would never be any real self satisfaction for providing that service...conversely, there would also be no feelings of regret or anger either.
I also believe that is what a 'soul' is...everyone's own individual DNA and environmentally induced internal chemical factory.
(i'm probably vastly oversimplifying this... )
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1 out of 1 members liked this post.Last edited by fred41; 07-02-2015 at 08:02 PM.
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07-03-2015 #42
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Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
Or you could have a situation in which an AI becomes the perfect killer, programmed to do nothing else without a thought or an emotion involved, as indeed is the kind of AI one sees in those trashy films of recent years.
If I say that I find your definition of the soul unsatisfactory, it is equally unsatisfactory if I cannot produce a better alternative -perhaps the question is not what the soul might be, but whether or not it exists at all, something which science has failed to conclusively prove one way or another.
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07-03-2015 #43
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Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
This is the kind of post that to me illustrates the weakness of science when it attempts to deal with the soul, because in fact if we are machines, then it is difference that is inexplicable, not poetry. To claim that it is "perfectly reasonable to me that two identical artificial intelligences placed in distinct but similar environments might develop entirely different behavior patterns which ultimately cannot be explained in any satisfactory detail" is gibberish. Either the AI are identical or they not, and surely it is precisely because the clothing and diet of the Inupiat is so different from the Masai that we try to understand both without resorting to a crude environmental determinism -A1 wears a lot of clothes because it is cold; A2 wears few clothes because it is so hot. It is true that from Roman Jakobson through Levi-Strauss to the universal pragmatics of Habermas, that studies of language have attempted to illuminate the structural affinities that human languages have with each other, and one could argue that most religions attempt to do the same thing and come up with structurally the same solution -that there is a perfect being and that it has created a system of punishment and reward for humans that helps societies survive without collapsing into chaos. But within all that, the unique signature of the creative artist begs the question: why is it even unique?
Scientists it seems to me, tends to reconfigure everything in the world in terms of mathematics- take as an example the famous Infinite Monkey Theorem in which a monkey, say a Chimpanzee sitting in front of a typewriter will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The theorem works on the level of maths or as we would put it today, algorithms, because there are only so many letters on a keyboard and in the works of Shakespeare and at some point in infinity all of the conceivable permutations would have been typed and there on the page you would have that famous phrase from King Lear: O, let me not be mad, not mad sweet heaven.
Now, suppose an AI is created that is formed as a robot or an android or whatever they are called these days, and into its computerised memory is fed the entire contents of the Library of Congress, the Bodleian, the Bibliotheque Nationale and so on- if this AI then produced a play, would it be original, more importantly, unique? Or would it be creative at all? Mozart used a formula to write music that had been established by Bach and Haydn, but even though he often repeated himself, because he was writing for money much of the time, Mozart stands out in a era of classical music because of those moments -to enthusiasts, exquisite moments- which only Mozart could have written -a blend of chords, a melodic line: it is this ability to creative something unique that others can still appreciate and understand that AI cannot produce, because a robot does not have a soul.
I agree that I would struggle to define what a soul is; a psychologist once admitted to me that his profession is unable to define a person, perhaps because humans can not only create a persona that is unique to them, but to create more than one -such as Michael on Monday who becomes Michelle on Friday, even if only in a nightclub.
So in fact, an AI might indeed have a 'soul', but could it ever have a soul?
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07-03-2015 #44
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Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
This is the kind of post that to me illustrates the weakness of science when it attempts to deal with the soul,...
To claim that it is "perfectly reasonable to me that two identical artificial intelligences placed in distinct but similar environments might develop entirely different behavior patterns which ultimately cannot be explained in any satisfactory detail" is gibberish.
Scientists it seems to me, tends to reconfigure everything in the world in terms of mathematics- take as an example the famous Infinite Monkey Theorem in which a monkey, say a Chimpanzee sitting in front of a typewriter will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The theorem works on the level of maths or as we would put it today, algorithms, because there are only so many letters on a keyboard and in the works of Shakespeare and at some point in infinity all of the conceivable permutations would have been typed and there on the page you would have that famous phrase from King Lear: O, let me not be mad, not mad sweet heaven.
Now, suppose an AI is created that is formed as a robot or an android or whatever they are called these days, and into its computerised memory is fed the entire contents of the Library of Congress, the Bodleian, the Bibliotheque Nationale and so on- if this AI then produced a play, would it be original, more importantly, unique? Or would it be creative at all? Mozart used a formula to write music that had been established by Bach and Haydn, but even though he often repeated himself, because he was writing for money much of the time, Mozart stands out in a era of classical music because of those moments -to enthusiasts, exquisite moments- which only Mozart could have written -a blend of chords, a melodic line: it is this ability to creative something unique that others can still appreciate and understand that AI cannot produce, because a robot does not have a soul.
Intention, desire, empathy, jealously etc. are some of the higher level concepts we employ when we attempt to understand why the people we encounter behave the way they do. When the boss fires you, you want to know what he’s thinking, not what neuronal complexes are firing. One high level concept some people seem to find useful in understanding other human beings is that of the “soul.” I never became very adept at the use of this concept. I don’t believe it brings very much to the discussion of poetry, painting, writing, creativity, moral and ethical philosophy, the meaning of life or the nature of consciousness and sentience. Those who subscribe to the notion seem to think that a physical system cannot be sentient, creative, loving and unique unless a divine being has installed a soul somewhere within it. At least there’s one thing upon which we can agree: one person’s gibberish is another person’s chatter.
2 out of 2 members liked this post."...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.
"...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.
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07-03-2015 #45
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Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
Nobody with a trillion dollars to spend is going to want a soul or a play, or some poetry, if I want a soul to own I'll get a cat and give it food and neck rubs, he'll stick around.
If you build a computer you want one that is smart, smarter than the IBM computer WATSON who won on Jeopardy. You want one that can keep the North Koreans from hacking our computers, you don't want a master computer that decides we should go through channels and give Iran a few nuclear missiles in the pursuit of fairness.
A creative computer might earn some young genius a blue ribbon at the science fair to please his parents, but if you're going to put thousands of man hours and countless headaches into building a computer that can do anything, you're going to keep strict control over what it does, and you're going to want to get a return on your investment, whether it's ruling the stock market, or destroying ISIS.
Of course this is vastly oversimplified, but I'm sure there have been talks among the techs in the white coats about building a supercomputer to deal with national defense, as well as models for a smart car, pollution concerns, and just like the A-bomb, getting a genius computer before the Chinese do. WWIII is going to be fought in the banks. The trick will always be staying one step ahead of the competition.
Picasso, Shakespeare, Mozart....there's a lot of pain and death in their art. They accept the fact that there is nothing new under the sun.
The Atomic bomb was a little piece of sunshine right here on earth, under our control. A supercomputer will be a super high voltage powerhouse that always is on and never gets tired, in our control. If it ever becomes self aware, some technician is going to be in deep doodoo. The parents of a super computer will be greed and fear.
3 out of 3 members liked this post.World Class Asshole
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07-03-2015 #46
Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
Robby the Robot ! Love those classic pic posts .
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07-04-2015 #47
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Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
if you're going to put thousands of man hours and countless headaches into building a computer that can do anything, you're going to keep strict control over what it does, and you're going to want to get a return on your investment, whether it's ruling the stock market, or destroying ISIS.
We encourage our children to be unique, creative and open to the possibilities of the world. We want our servants to be obedient and predictable. When we design machines, we design servants. But nature is not in business of producing servants and slaves for profit; and ultimately we are all of us, man and machine, products of nature. Shit happens.
"...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.
"...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.
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07-04-2015 #48
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Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
It may be that I have a narrower concept of AI than yours, for example AI as something manufactured by a company which produces say 1,000 identical machines, and just as one expects every Apple Air to be the same whether it is bought in London or Chicago, so the AI produced by Stark Industries would all be identical down to the last detail. From this perspective, it is surely nonsense to believe that two identical machines will evolve in any sense or diverge as they are machines with a precise range of functions. The only way they could 'diverge' would be to acquire a mind just as we do, capable of being illogical in away that computers cannot be. Even a command to self-destruct is not illogical to a computer.
The deeper point is the old one about what it is that makes humans different from the other species we share this planet with. The mind or the soul remains the key to this, surely? And it again comes back to the fact that we all have the same working parts yet are also individuals. I don't see how a machine can be either designed or made which is as human as a human, and I am not sure I want AI as anything other than a mindless gadget doing what gadgets do, but that is also because I do not use the cloud, or dropbox, or have my light switches at home programmed to turn on when I open the door; I don't have a sophisticated oven that plays Mozart while heating a pie (the two don't go together anyway). So maybe the problem is that I am just too old..!
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07-05-2015 #49
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Re: Artificial Super Intelligence - are we ready for it?
It may be that I have a narrower concept of AI than yours, for example AI as something manufactured by a company which produces say 1,000 identical machines, and just as one expects every Apple Air to be the same whether it is bought in London or Chicago, so the AI produced by Stark Industries would all be identical down to the last detail. From this perspective, it is surely nonsense to believe that two identical machines will evolve in any sense or diverge as they are machines with a precise range of functions. The only way they could 'diverge' would be to acquire a mind just as we do, capable of being illogical in away that computers cannot be. Even a command to self-destruct is not illogical to a computer.
I do find it somewhat amusing that people as celebrated as Stephen Hawking actually worry about the dangers of artificial intelligence. I do not find it very like that sentience can be totally explained as a digital construct, though I do think (indeed I would say know) that dynamical systems can be conscious (I’m one of them). My more immediate worries concerning AIs cluster around the economics of unemployment.
There is a slim possibility that we are both right (or both wrong, depending on how you look at it): There is a divine being and he uploads and installs into each human born a custom designed neural algorithm called a soul. Because it runs on flawed hardware (original sin) it’s prone to malfunction, and because it’s an abstract algorithm it’s immortal.
Last edited by trish; 07-05-2015 at 02:12 AM.
"...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.
"...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.
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07-05-2015 #50
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