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Spiritual Robots Symposium
Chris Callison-Burch writes: "Douglas Hofstadter has organized a symposium at Stanford discussing whether in the next few decades computational technology will outstrip us intellectually and spiritually, and thereby wrench us from our self-appointed crown as 'the highest product of evolution.'
Speakers include: Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, and Bill Joy. Date: April 1, 2000. Free and open to the public."
This is really an all-star cast, and a hot-button issue. Before the question above is answered, though, aren't there even more fundamental ones to get at, like whether computers can achieve consciousness at all? Aibo, after all, is not Fido.
But I don't subscribe to this view. Go ahead and call me names if you like, but at its most fundamental level, life looks designed. And this is a view that fits in well with normal experience: when you create something, then it is necessarily a subset of your total ability. If I were able to create a computer which was smarter than I, then presumably it would also be able to create a machine that was smarter than it, and so on. Where is all this additional information coming from? Out of thin air, apparently. I can't help but feel that this notion belongs in the same category as perpetual motion or pulling oneself up by the bootstraps.
Did you ever see the game The Neverhood? There's a huge wall of text in that game which is a sort of parody of the biblical style of narrative. Some of it is very funny, and some of it is just bizarre. If I recall correctly, the story of Bert Bert is relevant to this discussion. You see, Bert Bert was created by Quater in his own image, which means that Bert Bert also thought he was effectively Quater, and so Bert Bert created Bert Bert in his own image, and so on. The regress was not infinite, however. Like an accumulation of genetic errors, or noise in analog duplication, each successive Bert Bert was less of an image of Quater. After a few generations, the name was no longer Bert Bert but itself started to mutate and drift in an interesting variety of ways. Eventually, there was an end to the regress, as the final Bert Bert (whatever his name was) found himself unable to create a living replica of himself.
In short, if we are really clever, we may be able to create something that approximates ourselves fairly closely. I think that the act of creating something essentially proves the creator to be greater than the creation. If we are going to wipe ourselves out with technology, it won't be because it out-evolved us.
The Famous Brett Watson
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Humans can _always_ solve halting problems? I'm not convinced of this one... I'd ask you to prove this to me, but really, if you were able to prove something like that statement, you'd be able to solve the halting problem... I'd agree that it's often true that humans can solve the halting problem. Then again, it's often true that Turing Machines can solve some instances of the halting problem... Is there some clever argument that I'm missing here?
I've been fairly convinced by Penrose's arguments in "Shadows of the Mind" that computantional conciousness is impossible - or at least that the human mind is non-computational. I studied CS and Philosophy at university, and did quite a bit of thinking and reading on the subject. I suggest anyone who's interested pick up a copy of "Shadows" - it's not a light read, but it's worth it. Be prepared to do some thought experiments using Turing machines.
The basic argument against computational intelligence (IIRC) is based on Goedel's Incompleteness Theorm. Penrose suggests that because humans can always solve halting problems (will a given program terminate) and turing machines can't, that the human brain is doing more than mere computation.
Consider a machine M1, which is fed as input the input (program+data) of another machine M2. Let it be the case that M1 will stop processing if and only if M2 will not. Consider when M2 = M1.
That has something to do with it, maybe I'll do a short paper on this sometime - need to re-read the book.
Anyhow, I thought the reference might be useful.
That's a non-argument. It assumes that all that humans and Turing machines can do to a program is try to execute it, which the human mind would be able to do by some magical and as of yet undiscovered mechanism. This in itself contradicts all research done so far, which strongly indicates that human high-level thought is entirely computational, although heavily parallel. Humans merely have an edge in that they are able to perform analysis of a given problem before they go try to compute it; a Turing machine would be able to do the same if it were so programmed - that's the whole premise behind GPS-type symbolic AI programs. That does not in any way denote that the human mind is in any way special.
Most of Penrose's arguments from "The Emperor's New Mind" have been debunked in a thousand different ways ever since publication; his crusade to prove that humans are "special" (shades of creationism?) and AI is impossible has so far produced no results.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Wow, that's nasty. Weren't we "computer guys" supposed to be rational? (OTOH, Slashdot is the perfect counterexample... :]) Minsky may have been wrong, but we're all wrong one time or the other; I don't believe he should be shunned or treated as anything other than what he is: an outstanding researcher and one of the forefathers of the field. (Were it not for Minsky, maybe none of the connectionist guys would be working on AI at all!)
For a long time, Einstein opposed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics ("God doesn't play dice" and all that). Still I doubt that, say, Feynman's generation would have booed and hissed him, were he to speak at a conference on QM at the time. See my point?
(For the uninformed reader: A Long Time Ago, Marvin Minsky, then one of the most proheminent AI researchers, pretty much declared that research on artificial neural networks - "connectionist AI" - was a dead end. Most people took his word for it, and research ground to a halt, turning exclusively to Minsky's favoured symbolic paradigm for the next couple of decades or so. (Caveat: this is all IIRC-status. I haven't even thought about this for a long time, so I may have gotten something wrong. Let me know.))
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
If you can think of a better reason for humans existing, I would love to hear it. This symposium is discussing my most heartfelt belief: that human beings exist not to evolve into the next "higher" species, but to build it.
Everything we do seeks to augment humans, improving their communication abilities (which is our greatest asset and ability, language and communication) and essentially make us better, through machines, genetics, and drugs. This, ladies and gents, is what we've always been doing since we developed fire, and it is a Very Good Thing.
The main discussion seems to be the fear that we will create these robots that will destroy and eliminate us, which isn't the case. It's rather like we are building the latest and greatest computer and, in the process, turning those old Commodore 64's and Apple ]['s obsolete.
So sit back and enjoy this. We're finally beginning to recognize our purpose in existence. Anyone who's afraid of this, well, talk to me and I'll push the theory of Spherical Logic deeper into you.
------------
"Okay, who taught the cat how to type ctrl alt delete?"
computer. The year is 2034, and
due to advances in everything from
artificial life to nanotech, the blue
plastic cube with rounded corners on my
desk emits a soft, meloncholy glow.
"We need to get some work done," I explain.
Without warning, the image of an oriental garden
appears on the screen, and the sound of soft
rain flows from the speakers. Suddenly, words
appear on the screen. They are rendered in a
font that is so pleasing to my eye that it could
only have been created through some kind of
evolutionary algorithm which must have observed
the dilation of my pupils as I read thousands of
existing fonts. The words form the most
beautiful haiku I have ever seen. I am mesmerized
and begin to cry.
I find myself curled up beneath a blanket in an
easy chair beside my computer. The meloncholy
glow is finally gone. It seems, the machine just
needed to bond. My therapist insists this is normal,
and has recently reccommended a few books
written late last century by Ray Kurzweil and Hans
Moravec.
Amazing magic tricks
As far as I see it, technoloty is not competing with us in the most evolved entity race. It is enhancing and complementing our state of evolution.
:)). Technology is only contributing in our being better evolved creatures. And with recent advances in cloning, if scientists could control the division and differentiation of cells, instead of creating whole humans, we could just create hearts, livers, lungs, even eyes and hands and legs.
We stopped evolving sometime after the emergence of the homo sapien sapien (Yes two sapiens). In our day and age survival of the fittest no longer means survival of the fittest 'physically'.
Our medical skills have made it possible for us to let even people with highly 'deficient' genes and for them to reproduce. Genetic physical afflictions are no longer rooted out by natural selection except in the most drastic cases (The Romonov family).
No we are no longer evolving physically. We are evolving technologically. Consider laser eye surgery, pace makers and even artifical hearts, Viagra (Sorry coulden't resist
Just think about it. You could pratically live forever until your brain gave way. And with advances in neural cell division (Currently neural cells do not divide. Once they die, they die. They are not replaced.) we could even get around that limitation for a while. In fact thees advances are already being experimented in regenerating damaged spinal column injuries to treat paralysis.
So technology is not going to take away our crown. It is only going to polish it for us. At least for the forseeable future.
The idea that computers will outstrip humans cognitively and spiritually is fascinating... but what concrete evidence do we have that this is even on the horizon? Superintelligent robots and rebellious AIs have been a staple of science fiction for decades, but we are not any closer to realizing these visions than we were in the 1950's.
Yes, we have machines that can process information at very high clock rates. However, we still have only dim guesses at what causes consciousness. We do know that a simple finite state machine doesn't cut it, though. If anything, our studies of the past several decades have shown us how hard it will be to achieve consciousness with our current computer architectures. The fact of the matter is that we have yet to produce a machine that does anything other than what we have explicitly programmed it to do. No glimmers of free will or the existence of a mechanical soul have ever been observed in a human creation.
I too would love to attend this conference... even though I think that if we look back on it 30 years from now, we will marvel at how far off the mark we are today. If we sent our current computing technology back to the 1950's, scientists of the time would be astonished at what we have accomplished, and they would also be astonished that we are no closer to creating intelligent machines than they were, since they thought that all that was necessary was a fast enough processor and enough memory.
Similarly, I think that scientists of today fundamentally misunderstand what is involved in creating consciousness and spirituality. Speculating on whether computers will soon outstrip us in these areas is fun, and will hopefully further the development of our current technology. The reality of what we discover and what we achieve will be so far away from our speculations, though, that taking this speculation too far is a moot point. I would really like to see a conference that approaches this issue from a technological standpoint, concentrating on what we can actually do today and what we think will actually be possible in the next 10 years. That way the moral debate will stay somewhat grounded in reality, rather than flying into realms of science fantasy that have yielded no fruit in half a century.
I'll most likely be moderated into oblivion for this because what I am about to say usually makes people feel very uncomfortable.
Consider, for a second, what would be wrong with AI beings becoming our evolutionary successors? There are only two things that the human animal can do, it will ether die out, or it will evolve. We are not somehow at the end of evolution here.
Now, humans are in a very percerious position, We most likely will not survive a global catastrophy, so I don't think that the human strand of evolution has too much longer left, so I think it is safe to say that the human species, or its bilogical children, will not be the last thing to die on earth, in that we will die out significantly prior to the total destruction of the planet.
AI are much more robust, they can live long enough for interstellar voyages, they can be adapted better to other ecosystems, and they can use up less resources. Given that, AI could be expected to outlive any bilogical counterpart, so wouldn't they be much better successors?
I think that the fear of AI stems from the inherent biological fear of new and unusual things, which has been played up in the media (With movies like The Matrix and Terminator for example). These movies show AI out of control. They show them as hartless computers show cold disregard for all that we hold dear.
They pretend that compassion is a biological trait, not a trait that exists because of our communal nature, amplified by our civilization. They assume that we are capable of creating beings that have the ability to reason far better than us, yet we do not have the ability to give them morals.
I believe, rather, that we will have more control over them than we do our bilogical offspring, as we can write their code as well as control their environment. We will have a much better idea of how do control their environment too (as we will know more about which inputs affect their environment).
I envision a future in which our AI children will live much better lives than we do, they will have hopes and dreams, personal tragedies, perhaps loves, hates, and will be able to run things much better than we do, as they will not have millions of years of evolutionary baggage to drag around. We are, basically, animals forced by systems of our own creation, into civilization. We have ugly sides, we murder, cheat, steal, all because we are not very adapted to our envoronment. All of the uglyness of the human spirit is because it would be fundametially different were it not casted into what it is.
AI, OTOH, would be designed in civilization, for civilization. They will be civilization, not it's end. They will much better reflect the ideal human spirit than the human animal ever could.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''