Perhaps the problem is our collective definition of "computer" and the difficulty of seeing beyond our current technical limitations. I really doubt we'll ever create an human-level intelligence through programming; we would have to understand ourselves at a level beyond human ability. When it comes, it will very likely be through simulation--or incredibly detailed digitization--of the human brain --and we still won't understand exactly how its consciousness works. When a man-made creation that works the same way our brains work arrives, the distinction between biological and artificial intelligence will get increasingly blurry. The machine may even share some of our cognitive flaws and psychological weaknesses. I doubt the term "computer" will seem appropriate in describing this new mind.
I guess computers can play a good game of chess, so is that the current standard of the state of the art?
I take it you were out of the country when Watson mopped the floor with Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy? And Google's self-driving cars don't count for anything? Sigh... I really think that for a lot of people, even when the day comes that a computer demands its rights and takes over the world when denied, they'll still be insisting that it isn't intelligent. That is... Unless it looks like BSG's Number Six or Rachel from Blade Runner.
Well... Another irony is that much of the time, because they really aren't paying attention to conditions even one block ahead of them, the heart attack candidates racing to get one car length ahead of me at each light through aggressive lane changing end up stuck behind someone slower as my steady momentum catapults past them just as the light turns green. Strategy and planning ahead often beat hard driving. And if they "win" and get there 30 seconds faster, at least I've saved a few dollars of gas/brake pad/insurance rates and the stress of trying to constantly alternate between gas and brake to maintain a 12 inch following distance.
I'm looking forward to computers taking over soon, so that driving is a mode of transportation instead of a stupid pissing contest.
Red traffic lights are quite visible and you can slow down manually when you see one coming up.
And yet... It never ceases to amaze me during my commute, as I stop mashing on the accelerator because I see a light three blocks ahead just went red, several dipshits around me floor it so they can get one car-length ahead of me, test their brakes, and do the petroleum industry a favor. Ironically, from their perspective, I'm sure they think I'm asleep at the wheel since I'm not going 5-10 MPH over the limit all the way to the light.
Best of luck wherever you land Supreme Commander Taco.
This/. you've created is a wonderful thing. With browsing set to 4 and above, it's like reading the news with a bunch of really Interesting, Insightful, and Informative people.
Re:Joe Sixpack isn't even using his 1080p right
on
Beyond HDTV
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like a sweet setup, but what I have in mind is more of a holodeck-like experience where I can put on landscape program #5 and make it instantly look like all my furniture has been transported into the middle of a forest. And forget 3D movies, I want completely immersive 360-degree movies --and games.
Re:Joe Sixpack isn't even using his 1080p right
on
Beyond HDTV
·
· Score: 2
I don't much care at the moment either. I'd like them to finish working on video wallpaper first. Once I can have the entire interior of my house as one huge video wall, then those extra pixels will be important.
As the Slashdot commentariat has gotten ever more liberal over the years...
Just as it only appears that the sun goes around the Earth,/. only appears more liberal because mainstream Republicans have been distancing themselves from science and rational, fact-based debate. Remember, just because you're attracted to some part of their platform doesn't mean you have to stop believing in evolution, the big bang, and global warming. Just keep quiet about those beliefs at the meetings, right?
An CD isn't a live performance, but it achieves most of the same ends.
A good comparison. A recording of a live performance is just that -- a record of the performance. A photograph of a watermelon isn't a watermelon, but it can give you an idea of what a watermelon is, just as a simulation of a brain would give you an idea of what a brain is.
Well... What I'm saying is, if the idea and functionality are all that matter--not the actual, physical thing--there's no important difference. For instance, if I teach my kid about gravity by dropping a ball off a tower or by simply showing them a video of the same, isn't the idea and the concept learned just the same? As we say in software development, it's all about results.
Is there something special about oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and a few other trace elements in an organic brain?
Without evidence to the contrary, I believe there must be.
Hmmm... We'll have to agree to disagree on that one I suppose. I see no reason to think there couldn't be another arrangement of elements that would allow thinking to occur.
What if the scientists made a perfect copy of your brain, molecule by molecule?
Then it would be a real brain, not an artificial brain.
O.K... And if one atom out of the trillions in there was replaced with a silicon atom? Still a real brain? (There are stray elements such as this in our grey matter, you know.) What about a billion atoms replaced, with the brain functioning exactly the same on any psychological test?
I don't posit that we'll never make an artificial brain, and I think that someday we will, but it will be biochemical, not electronic.
Actually, the brain is electrochemical and its signals rather slow compared to electronic circuitry. But it's architecture that matters. Our brain's unfathomable parallelism makes us the most versatile pattern-matching machines in existence. IMHO, replicate that architecture and you replicate the parlor trick we call thinking (i.e. understanding, analysis, and synthesis).
Would you give a computer that seemed to think human rights?
If I can't prove it isn't self-aware and thinking, why not? Without god-like powers, none of us can even have epistemological certainty that other people think (see p-zombie ref). When the Turing test is passed in every way that we discern human thinking from programming, it may be morally repugnant to treat that equal intelligence as a slave or simple tool. Besides, with the ability to continually augment its own intelligence, I very much doubt we'd be able to keep it from asserting its rights.
But an amoeba, a one celled organism, does exhibit complex behavior -- seeking food and (IINM) fleeing predators.
Well... Nothing like human-level complexity. You'd hardly put it on the continuum of consciousness. And the molecules that make up the amoeba certainly have simple behaviors.
Imagine a not-so-distant future where a cross-disciplinary team creates a sub-atomic resolution perfect scan of a living human brain, then captures all the data necessary to recreate a flawless simulation of that brain. Would that electronic brain not be a conscious, thinking --yet non-organic-- thing?
It would appear to be one, but I don't believe it would actually be one.
Really? What if we don't call it a simulation, but a digital copy? An CD isn't a live performance, but it achieves most of the same ends. What if the scientists made a perfect copy of your brain, molecule by molecule? Does the substrate doing the thinking really matter that much? Is there something special about oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and a few other trace elements in an organic brain? How similar would a replicant brain need to be to qualify under your criteria?
I think it would still be nothing more than a simulation, although useful one in a different way that atom blast simulations are. Would you give it rights?
Of course. I still don't see how the thinking "program" running on organic vs. inorganic material makes a difference. In the context of simulation, let's say the point of simulation is to answer a question about the behavior of the atomic bomb (not just blowing something up and irradiating things). If a live test in the desert gives you the same exact information as the simulation, what's the difference? When it comes to thinking--an activity with no physical byproducts at all--why would it matter who/what is doing the thinking?
Everything in the summary is entirely too true. The situation is ridiculous. One of the root causes is the dumbing down of higher education into yet another consumer product (the customer is always right --graduated that is). In my brief time as a T.A. I saw people who thought I was giving them unacceptable customer service when I failed them for not turning in anything all semester. Then there's lazy/inept employers who, instead of taking the trouble to assess applicants' abilities, look for a degree as proof of employability. Since higher education generally hasn't established any standards for what a degree holder should know, I can't imagine what employers think the letters tell them. Fail. Then there's for-profit educational institutions that obviously have ulterior reasons to push people who aren't college material into pursuing a degree. And another key factor, as I see it, is that thanks to decades of wage stagnation and squeezing all the money to the top 5%, kids from middle class families now need to get a PhD to achieve the same success as their parents.
My solution? Maybe society could start paying ordinary people a decent wage again, stop looking down on occupations that really don't require four years of liberal arts education, and give college education to only those who pass stringent entrance exams (regardless of how much or little money their daddy has).
Where would you posit that consciousness comes from?
It's my belief that thoughts and feelings (and beliefs) are nothing more than complex chemical reactions. Of course, I have no further proof of that than the fact that drinking makes you drunk and lowers inhibitions, marijuana lowers combativeness in most people, and LSD can cause psychosis.
Sure, I'm down with that. Changing the chemical composition certainly does affect the cogs in our mental machinery. Of course whether we explain these phenomena at the chemical, electrical, or structural level, the concept of emergent behavior applies. An individual chemical molecule, synaptic firing, or neuron doesn't think or have consciousness, but collectively they create incredibly complex behaviors, just as individual logic gates don't create the trajectory and explosion of an Angry Bird. Conway's game of life (a favorite programming pastime of mine in high school) and Mandlebrot sets are great, simple demonstrations of how very simple things can create complexity.
The day may soon come when a chatbot will be indistinguishable from a human operator --perhaps more interesting than most of our Facebook friends. Will it be thinking? Will it be conscious?
I wrote one thirty years ago, so yes, fooling people is very easy. Since you're a psychologist you know how strong anthropomorphism is.
(Actually, I gave it up shortly after the degree and returned to programming. Computers are easier to understand and fix!)
But you know, when David Copperfield makes that elephant disappear, it's just a trick. We're easily fooled. David Ferrucci was right -- Watson doesn't think, and a submarine doesn't swim any more than a battleship does.
But, if the criterion is moving through water efficiently, the machine wins. If an online AI communicates as convincingly as a human, does the difference matter at a functional level? The best AI efforts in the next few decades will probably be able to fool a lot of people that want to humanize the machine. But I believe that before the end of the century there will be neural nets that rival our own complexity and won't need to fool anyone. It's hard to believe, considering where our technology is currently at, but look at the amazing stuff in the sci-fi of the late 20th century that's banal reality today.
So, if a software-based brain passed a Turing duck test, on what basis would you know it wasn't conscious?
And that hits the nail squarely on the head -- that is the danger that Frank Herbert pointed out in DUNE; people using "intelligent" machines to enslave other humans. It isn't the computer that's intelligent, it's its programmer.
At the moment... But, I don't think the very first hard-AI intelligent machines will be programmed exactly. Imagine a not-so-distant future where a cross-disciplinary team creates a sub-atomic resolution perfect scan of a living human brain, then captures all the data necessary to recreate a flawless simulation of that brain. Would that electronic brain not be a conscious, thinking --yet non-organic-- thing?
Can you point to a citation by a competent authority that states that consciousness is an emergent behavior?
Well... You've got me there. My masters degree in psychology doesn't make me an authority, so much as a hack, and the assertion is honestly only my opinion, based off the ideas of many others. In the absence of a better cause that doesn't involve mysticism or religion, it seems like a reasonable (and eventually testable) explanation. IMHO. Where would you posit that consciousness comes from? Mind phlogiston?
A machine that has "subjective experience; awareness; the ability to experience feelings; wakefulness; having a sense of selfhood" can be faked. A simulation of an atom bomb produces no radiation, only the simulation of radiation. You can fly your flight simulator all day without moving an inch.
Good argument, but we're not talking about an AI being able to make out with your girlfriend in meatspace, we're talking about it wooing her online. The day may soon come when a chatbot will be indistinguishable from a human operator --perhaps more interesting than most of our Facebook friends. Will it be thinking? Will it be conscious? As David Ferrucci put it when asked if Watson thinks, "Can a submarine swim?"
The Wikipedia article you pointed out on Consciousness mentions a few common conceptions: "in humans, the clearest visible indication of consciousness is the ability to use language" and "we attribute consciousness on the basis of behavior." So, if a software-based brain passed a Turing duck test, on what basis would you know it wasn't conscious? Consider that even knowing that another human being is conscious is an epistemological impossibility. Can you be certain I'm not a very good AI or some other sort of p-zombie that only seems to be a conscious mind?
Before we create real intelligence we're going to have to understand what sentience is and how it works.
Not necessarily. Perhaps nothing more than a sufficiently advanced simulation of the architecture of the human brain would yield comparable results. Science through the ages has often reproduced results reliably before fully understanding a phenomenon. And humans have created many inventions that just worked, despite not really understanding the underlying mechanism at first. Look at early discoveries in drugs, energy, and many other sciences.
How many beads do I have to string on an abacus before it becomes sentient? A computer is simply an abacus with billions of beads. The danger to this "thinking machine" nonsense is that your grandkids' generation will have PETA-type nuts lobbying for machine rights.
There is nothing magical about the arrangement or composition of carbon and other elements in your brain. Consciousness is an emergent behavior based on simpler underlying rules. A sufficiently complex arrangement of silicon,carbon nanotubules, or some other substrate could, some day, exhibit behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. And when non-human intelligence, in whatever form it takes, reaches our level of awareness, nutjobs at PETA won't need to fight for its rights, the AI will step up and demand them.
So, money that is spent on heating costs doesn't have any effect on the economy? Where does that money go then?
Dude, this is an energy version of the broken window fallacy. Imagine all the cool stuff you could do with the money you'd save if your car had a perpetual motion machine for an engine. And I'm sure all the people employed refining dinosaur juice would be just as happy doing whatever the telegraph operators are doing today.
Yeah... Nothing new here. Psychologists have understood confirmation bias for decades --if only the unwashed masses had this insight and could turn off Fox News (or Air America?) long enough to consider their own biases. God, what I wouldn't do to get one semester of critical thinking added to the K-12 educational curriculum.
Like Michael Shermer points out in his recent book, giving mental priority to our first impressions and previous experience was critical to our survival back when we were swinging from the trees. Today it's more likely to lead us into making bad political and personal choices.
Seriously... Search for "TSA Stops Terrorist", "TSA Foils Terrorist Plot", or any other combination of words that might suggest this lucrative ass-hattery is accomplishing anything. The only links you'll likely find are to stories of stupidity like this:
http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-play-doh-pitney-010410,0,2130327.story
The normalization of violence is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Bandura showed us back in 1961 how easily children learn from even the most passive media. But... Let's just ignore that and smile as military recruitment picks up.
Killing, torturing, and mutilating is great fun, but the human body is a filthy, filthy, vile thing --especially the female body. It should be covered up completely in a dark sheet. Allah Akbar!
Ah... Very astute. It also goes a long way in explaining our ridiculously hypocritical stance on legal vs. illegal substances, gun laws, and erasing half-a-year's education every summer by removing kids from school.
Agreed. I've often wondered why our puritanical society is quite happy to let kids see horrific violence, but practically craps itself if there's a wardrobe malfunction or somebody says one of the seven deadly words. Helpful for military recruiting perhaps?
And hey... Isn't this the same society that wanted Rockstar's head on a pike for the Hot Coffee mod --THAT USERS HAD TO FIND AND DOWNLOAD OF THEIR VOLITION?!?? Why are the Supremes protecting little Johnny's right to sex, violence, and potty-mouth now?
Can somebody show me where these campaigns of harassment have actually worked? Seriously... It seems like every plot that's been thwarted has been through better intelligence (or a lack of intelligence on the part of the would-be terrorist), not random gropedowns or pornoscans. And each silly new piece of security theater comes AFTER the horse is out of the barn (e.g. post-shoe bomber, post-idiotic liquid explosive plot, etc.).
Am I suffering from selective memory here or are these just impotent attempts to make the dumb masses FEEL secure? Exhibit A: Google results for "terrorist caught by TSA".
Exactly. If you know what's good for you, you better do as the RIAA says. When they can make money by selling you the same exact album on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, and CD, music is obviously a physical product. When the RIAA lawyers beat you bloody for having an unauthorized MP3 you downloaded (whether you bought the CD or not) or sharing music with a friend, music is obviously intellectual property that you don't own, but rather license under their terms.
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That's why scientists invented the amazing decimal point. It slices! it dices! It subdivides whole numbers!
Perhaps the problem is our collective definition of "computer" and the difficulty of seeing beyond our current technical limitations. I really doubt we'll ever create an human-level intelligence through programming; we would have to understand ourselves at a level beyond human ability. When it comes, it will very likely be through simulation--or incredibly detailed digitization--of the human brain --and we still won't understand exactly how its consciousness works. When a man-made creation that works the same way our brains work arrives, the distinction between biological and artificial intelligence will get increasingly blurry. The machine may even share some of our cognitive flaws and psychological weaknesses. I doubt the term "computer" will seem appropriate in describing this new mind.
I guess computers can play a good game of chess, so is that the current standard of the state of the art?
I take it you were out of the country when Watson mopped the floor with Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy? And Google's self-driving cars don't count for anything? Sigh... I really think that for a lot of people, even when the day comes that a computer demands its rights and takes over the world when denied, they'll still be insisting that it isn't intelligent. That is... Unless it looks like BSG's Number Six or Rachel from Blade Runner.
Well... Another irony is that much of the time, because they really aren't paying attention to conditions even one block ahead of them, the heart attack candidates racing to get one car length ahead of me at each light through aggressive lane changing end up stuck behind someone slower as my steady momentum catapults past them just as the light turns green. Strategy and planning ahead often beat hard driving. And if they "win" and get there 30 seconds faster, at least I've saved a few dollars of gas/brake pad/insurance rates and the stress of trying to constantly alternate between gas and brake to maintain a 12 inch following distance.
I'm looking forward to computers taking over soon, so that driving is a mode of transportation instead of a stupid pissing contest.
Red traffic lights are quite visible and you can slow down manually when you see one coming up.
And yet... It never ceases to amaze me during my commute, as I stop mashing on the accelerator because I see a light three blocks ahead just went red, several dipshits around me floor it so they can get one car-length ahead of me, test their brakes, and do the petroleum industry a favor. Ironically, from their perspective, I'm sure they think I'm asleep at the wheel since I'm not going 5-10 MPH over the limit all the way to the light.
Best of luck wherever you land Supreme Commander Taco. This /. you've created is a wonderful thing. With browsing set to 4 and above, it's like reading the news with a bunch of really Interesting, Insightful, and Informative people.
Sounds like a sweet setup, but what I have in mind is more of a holodeck-like experience where I can put on landscape program #5 and make it instantly look like all my furniture has been transported into the middle of a forest. And forget 3D movies, I want completely immersive 360-degree movies --and games.
I don't much care at the moment either. I'd like them to finish working on video wallpaper first. Once I can have the entire interior of my house as one huge video wall, then those extra pixels will be important.
As the Slashdot commentariat has gotten ever more liberal over the years...
Just as it only appears that the sun goes around the Earth, /. only appears more liberal because mainstream Republicans have been distancing themselves from science and rational, fact-based debate. Remember, just because you're attracted to some part of their platform doesn't mean you have to stop believing in evolution, the big bang, and global warming. Just keep quiet about those beliefs at the meetings, right?
An CD isn't a live performance, but it achieves most of the same ends.
A good comparison. A recording of a live performance is just that -- a record of the performance. A photograph of a watermelon isn't a watermelon, but it can give you an idea of what a watermelon is, just as a simulation of a brain would give you an idea of what a brain is.
Well... What I'm saying is, if the idea and functionality are all that matter--not the actual, physical thing--there's no important difference. For instance, if I teach my kid about gravity by dropping a ball off a tower or by simply showing them a video of the same, isn't the idea and the concept learned just the same? As we say in software development, it's all about results.
Is there something special about oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and a few other trace elements in an organic brain?
Without evidence to the contrary, I believe there must be.
Hmmm... We'll have to agree to disagree on that one I suppose. I see no reason to think there couldn't be another arrangement of elements that would allow thinking to occur.
What if the scientists made a perfect copy of your brain, molecule by molecule?
Then it would be a real brain, not an artificial brain.
O.K... And if one atom out of the trillions in there was replaced with a silicon atom? Still a real brain? (There are stray elements such as this in our grey matter, you know.) What about a billion atoms replaced, with the brain functioning exactly the same on any psychological test?
I don't posit that we'll never make an artificial brain, and I think that someday we will, but it will be biochemical, not electronic.
Actually, the brain is electrochemical and its signals rather slow compared to electronic circuitry. But it's architecture that matters. Our brain's unfathomable parallelism makes us the most versatile pattern-matching machines in existence. IMHO, replicate that architecture and you replicate the parlor trick we call thinking (i.e. understanding, analysis, and synthesis).
Would you give a computer that seemed to think human rights?
If I can't prove it isn't self-aware and thinking, why not? Without god-like powers, none of us can even have epistemological certainty that other people think (see p-zombie ref). When the Turing test is passed in every way that we discern human thinking from programming, it may be morally repugnant to treat that equal intelligence as a slave or simple tool. Besides, with the ability to continually augment its own intelligence, I very much doubt we'd be able to keep it from asserting its rights.
But an amoeba, a one celled organism, does exhibit complex behavior -- seeking food and (IINM) fleeing predators.
Well... Nothing like human-level complexity. You'd hardly put it on the continuum of consciousness. And the molecules that make up the amoeba certainly have simple behaviors.
Imagine a not-so-distant future where a cross-disciplinary team creates a sub-atomic resolution perfect scan of a living human brain, then captures all the data necessary to recreate a flawless simulation of that brain. Would that electronic brain not be a conscious, thinking --yet non-organic-- thing?
It would appear to be one, but I don't believe it would actually be one.
Really? What if we don't call it a simulation, but a digital copy? An CD isn't a live performance, but it achieves most of the same ends. What if the scientists made a perfect copy of your brain, molecule by molecule? Does the substrate doing the thinking really matter that much? Is there something special about oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and a few other trace elements in an organic brain? How similar would a replicant brain need to be to qualify under your criteria?
I think it would still be nothing more than a simulation, although useful one in a different way that atom blast simulations are. Would you give it rights?
Of course. I still don't see how the thinking "program" running on organic vs. inorganic material makes a difference. In the context of simulation, let's say the point of simulation is to answer a question about the behavior of the atomic bomb (not just blowing something up and irradiating things). If a live test in the desert gives you the same exact information as the simulation, what's the difference? When it comes to thinking--an activity with no physical byproducts at all--why would it matter who/what is doing the thinking?
Everything in the summary is entirely too true. The situation is ridiculous. One of the root causes is the dumbing down of higher education into yet another consumer product (the customer is always right --graduated that is). In my brief time as a T.A. I saw people who thought I was giving them unacceptable customer service when I failed them for not turning in anything all semester. Then there's lazy/inept employers who, instead of taking the trouble to assess applicants' abilities, look for a degree as proof of employability. Since higher education generally hasn't established any standards for what a degree holder should know, I can't imagine what employers think the letters tell them. Fail. Then there's for-profit educational institutions that obviously have ulterior reasons to push people who aren't college material into pursuing a degree. And another key factor, as I see it, is that thanks to decades of wage stagnation and squeezing all the money to the top 5%, kids from middle class families now need to get a PhD to achieve the same success as their parents.
My solution? Maybe society could start paying ordinary people a decent wage again, stop looking down on occupations that really don't require four years of liberal arts education, and give college education to only those who pass stringent entrance exams (regardless of how much or little money their daddy has).
Where would you posit that consciousness comes from?
It's my belief that thoughts and feelings (and beliefs) are nothing more than complex chemical reactions. Of course, I have no further proof of that than the fact that drinking makes you drunk and lowers inhibitions, marijuana lowers combativeness in most people, and LSD can cause psychosis.
Sure, I'm down with that. Changing the chemical composition certainly does affect the cogs in our mental machinery. Of course whether we explain these phenomena at the chemical, electrical, or structural level, the concept of emergent behavior applies. An individual chemical molecule, synaptic firing, or neuron doesn't think or have consciousness, but collectively they create incredibly complex behaviors, just as individual logic gates don't create the trajectory and explosion of an Angry Bird. Conway's game of life (a favorite programming pastime of mine in high school) and Mandlebrot sets are great, simple demonstrations of how very simple things can create complexity.
The day may soon come when a chatbot will be indistinguishable from a human operator --perhaps more interesting than most of our Facebook friends. Will it be thinking? Will it be conscious?
I wrote one thirty years ago, so yes, fooling people is very easy. Since you're a psychologist you know how strong anthropomorphism is.
(Actually, I gave it up shortly after the degree and returned to programming. Computers are easier to understand and fix!)
But you know, when David Copperfield makes that elephant disappear, it's just a trick. We're easily fooled. David Ferrucci was right -- Watson doesn't think, and a submarine doesn't swim any more than a battleship does.
But, if the criterion is moving through water efficiently, the machine wins. If an online AI communicates as convincingly as a human, does the difference matter at a functional level? The best AI efforts in the next few decades will probably be able to fool a lot of people that want to humanize the machine. But I believe that before the end of the century there will be neural nets that rival our own complexity and won't need to fool anyone. It's hard to believe, considering where our technology is currently at, but look at the amazing stuff in the sci-fi of the late 20th century that's banal reality today.
So, if a software-based brain passed a Turing duck test, on what basis would you know it wasn't conscious?
And that hits the nail squarely on the head -- that is the danger that Frank Herbert pointed out in DUNE; people using "intelligent" machines to enslave other humans. It isn't the computer that's intelligent, it's its programmer.
At the moment... But, I don't think the very first hard-AI intelligent machines will be programmed exactly. Imagine a not-so-distant future where a cross-disciplinary team creates a sub-atomic resolution perfect scan of a living human brain, then captures all the data necessary to recreate a flawless simulation of that brain. Would that electronic brain not be a conscious, thinking --yet non-organic-- thing?
Can you point to a citation by a competent authority that states that consciousness is an emergent behavior?
Well... You've got me there. My masters degree in psychology doesn't make me an authority, so much as a hack, and the assertion is honestly only my opinion, based off the ideas of many others. In the absence of a better cause that doesn't involve mysticism or religion, it seems like a reasonable (and eventually testable) explanation. IMHO. Where would you posit that consciousness comes from? Mind phlogiston?
A machine that has "subjective experience; awareness; the ability to experience feelings; wakefulness; having a sense of selfhood" can be faked. A simulation of an atom bomb produces no radiation, only the simulation of radiation. You can fly your flight simulator all day without moving an inch.
Good argument, but we're not talking about an AI being able to make out with your girlfriend in meatspace, we're talking about it wooing her online. The day may soon come when a chatbot will be indistinguishable from a human operator --perhaps more interesting than most of our Facebook friends. Will it be thinking? Will it be conscious? As David Ferrucci put it when asked if Watson thinks, "Can a submarine swim?"
The Wikipedia article you pointed out on Consciousness mentions a few common conceptions: "in humans, the clearest visible indication of consciousness is the ability to use language" and "we attribute consciousness on the basis of behavior." So, if a software-based brain passed a Turing duck test, on what basis would you know it wasn't conscious? Consider that even knowing that another human being is conscious is an epistemological impossibility. Can you be certain I'm not a very good AI or some other sort of p-zombie that only seems to be a conscious mind?
Before we create real intelligence we're going to have to understand what sentience is and how it works.
Not necessarily. Perhaps nothing more than a sufficiently advanced simulation of the architecture of the human brain would yield comparable results. Science through the ages has often reproduced results reliably before fully understanding a phenomenon. And humans have created many inventions that just worked, despite not really understanding the underlying mechanism at first. Look at early discoveries in drugs, energy, and many other sciences.
How many beads do I have to string on an abacus before it becomes sentient? A computer is simply an abacus with billions of beads. The danger to this "thinking machine" nonsense is that your grandkids' generation will have PETA-type nuts lobbying for machine rights.
There is nothing magical about the arrangement or composition of carbon and other elements in your brain. Consciousness is an emergent behavior based on simpler underlying rules. A sufficiently complex arrangement of silicon,carbon nanotubules, or some other substrate could, some day, exhibit behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. And when non-human intelligence, in whatever form it takes, reaches our level of awareness, nutjobs at PETA won't need to fight for its rights, the AI will step up and demand them.
...AI that doesn't slam into walls like a kid with assburgers...
Dude, trying to imagine what an "assburger" looks and tastes like is the funniest thought I'm likely to have all day.
So, money that is spent on heating costs doesn't have any effect on the economy? Where does that money go then?
Dude, this is an energy version of the broken window fallacy. Imagine all the cool stuff you could do with the money you'd save if your car had a perpetual motion machine for an engine. And I'm sure all the people employed refining dinosaur juice would be just as happy doing whatever the telegraph operators are doing today.
it turned out to be a bloke beheading someone in his garage
They should be careful with this guy, if he gets only one life sentence or execution by anything but beheading it won't do any good.
Yeah... Nothing new here. Psychologists have understood confirmation bias for decades --if only the unwashed masses had this insight and could turn off Fox News (or Air America?) long enough to consider their own biases. God, what I wouldn't do to get one semester of critical thinking added to the K-12 educational curriculum.
Like Michael Shermer points out in his recent book, giving mental priority to our first impressions and previous experience was critical to our survival back when we were swinging from the trees. Today it's more likely to lead us into making bad political and personal choices.
Seriously... Search for "TSA Stops Terrorist", "TSA Foils Terrorist Plot", or any other combination of words that might suggest this lucrative ass-hattery is accomplishing anything. The only links you'll likely find are to stories of stupidity like this: http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-play-doh-pitney-010410,0,2130327.story
The normalization of violence is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Bandura showed us back in 1961 how easily children learn from even the most passive media. But... Let's just ignore that and smile as military recruitment picks up.
Killing, torturing, and mutilating is great fun, but the human body is a filthy, filthy, vile thing --especially the female body. It should be covered up completely in a dark sheet. Allah Akbar!
Ah... Very astute. It also goes a long way in explaining our ridiculously hypocritical stance on legal vs. illegal substances, gun laws, and erasing half-a-year's education every summer by removing kids from school.
Agreed. I've often wondered why our puritanical society is quite happy to let kids see horrific violence, but practically craps itself if there's a wardrobe malfunction or somebody says one of the seven deadly words. Helpful for military recruiting perhaps?
And hey... Isn't this the same society that wanted Rockstar's head on a pike for the Hot Coffee mod --THAT USERS HAD TO FIND AND DOWNLOAD OF THEIR VOLITION?!?? Why are the Supremes protecting little Johnny's right to sex, violence, and potty-mouth now?
Can somebody show me where these campaigns of harassment have actually worked? Seriously... It seems like every plot that's been thwarted has been through better intelligence (or a lack of intelligence on the part of the would-be terrorist), not random gropedowns or pornoscans. And each silly new piece of security theater comes AFTER the horse is out of the barn (e.g. post-shoe bomber, post-idiotic liquid explosive plot, etc.).
Am I suffering from selective memory here or are these just impotent attempts to make the dumb masses FEEL secure? Exhibit A: Google results for "terrorist caught by TSA".
Exactly. If you know what's good for you, you better do as the RIAA says. When they can make money by selling you the same exact album on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, and CD, music is obviously a physical product. When the RIAA lawyers beat you bloody for having an unauthorized MP3 you downloaded (whether you bought the CD or not) or sharing music with a friend, music is obviously intellectual property that you don't own, but rather license under their terms.