Reading through Dr. Wallace's tractatus and its comments, I was patiently waiting for somebody to comment on more fundamental questions of AI like "is it possible to mimic human intelligence in the first place?" Are we dealing with another case of "perpetuus mobilis" or is it something within human reach. If anybody knows where these topics are discussed or debated on the net, please send me a link.
Just like the purputual mobile is physically impossible and nobody wastes time on it, I believe imitating human intelligence on a fully blown scale is logically impossible. At least not until somebody clearly addresses these 3 problems:
1. Problem of intentionality (this is where "free will" would fall)
2. Complexity issue: can our mind (with complexity x) design something more complex than x, or at least x? Or, just like in proving Godel's undecidable truths, do we need a higher order system?
3. Reduction of experience/quality. I believe experience of quality (stuff like pain, color etc.) is a part of a human like intelligent system, and I yet to see any meaningful explanation of it without going into metaphysics. (pain receptors are NOT pain, wave lenghts are NOT color....)
I won't go into details on 2 and 3, as I don't know if this has already been beaten to death here, or I need to go ask these quesitons somewhere else. But I do want to touch on 1, as I think this is the biggest gap between an AI system and human mind.
Whether you do a top-down or bottom-up approach, one question remains unanswered: What causes a system to change from one state to another. I don't care if a neuron is a simple transistor or a complex dynamic Turing machine, something must cause the machine to move from one state to another. Two popular answers are: rules (grammar) and a randonm event. In either case, there's a problem. If it's rules acted upon external input and current state, then we are determined, and this very statement couldn't be formulated otherwise by my mind. Then we can also throw morality and laws out of the window. If it's randomn, then things are even worse. Surely, you wouldnt want to even read this if you knew that my statement of truth here was a result of a randomly misfurung neuoron... Likewise, morality and laws are not needed, as it's not my fault that my neurons have randomness in them which causes me to periodically kill somebody.
There must be a logical subject that stands behind our intention and can explain away what causes my neurons to "change their minds" in the last moment. I thought it was fascinating that Dr. Wallace suggested such a subject but he never commented on it. He said "well, there's this 99.9% of computer in human brain, and the rest is consciousness". Dr. Wallace, I don't care if it's 50/50 or it's one billionth of a percent of that consciousness. If you claim it to be there, you have to account for it and not refer to it as some mystical blob. I personally do agree that there's that blob in there, but again, I can't explain it without going into metaphysics. Can anyone????
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Reading through Dr. Wallace's tractatus and its comments, I was patiently waiting for somebody to comment on more fundamental questions of AI like "is it possible to mimic human intelligence in the first place?" Are we dealing with another case of "perpetuus mobilis" or is it something within human reach. If anybody knows where these topics are discussed or debated on the net, please send me a link.
Just like the purputual mobile is physically impossible and nobody wastes time on it, I believe imitating human intelligence on a fully blown scale is logically impossible. At least not until somebody clearly addresses these 3 problems:
1. Problem of intentionality (this is where "free will" would fall)
2. Complexity issue: can our mind (with complexity x) design something more complex than x, or at least x? Or, just like in proving Godel's undecidable truths, do we need a higher order system?
3. Reduction of experience/quality. I believe experience of quality (stuff like pain, color etc.) is a part of a human like intelligent system, and I yet to see any meaningful explanation of it without going into metaphysics. (pain receptors are NOT pain, wave lenghts are NOT color....)
I won't go into details on 2 and 3, as I don't know if this has already been beaten to death here, or I need to go ask these quesitons somewhere else. But I do want to touch on 1, as I think this is the biggest gap between an AI system and human mind.
Whether you do a top-down or bottom-up approach, one question remains unanswered: What causes a system to change from one state to another. I don't care if a neuron is a simple transistor or a complex dynamic Turing machine, something must cause the machine to move from one state to another. Two popular answers are: rules (grammar) and a randonm event. In either case, there's a problem. If it's rules acted upon external input and current state, then we are determined, and this very statement couldn't be formulated otherwise by my mind. Then we can also throw morality and laws out of the window. If it's randomn, then things are even worse. Surely, you wouldnt want to even read this if you knew that my statement of truth here was a result of a randomly misfurung neuoron... Likewise, morality and laws are not needed, as it's not my fault that my neurons have randomness in them which causes me to periodically kill somebody.
There must be a logical subject that stands behind our intention and can explain away what causes my neurons to "change their minds" in the last moment. I thought it was fascinating that Dr. Wallace suggested such a subject but he never commented on it. He said "well, there's this 99.9% of computer in human brain, and the rest is consciousness". Dr. Wallace, I don't care if it's 50/50 or it's one billionth of a percent of that consciousness. If you claim it to be there, you have to account for it and not refer to it as some mystical blob. I personally do agree that there's that blob in there, but again, I can't explain it without going into metaphysics. Can anyone????
Dj Rocket