My point is that inorganic matter has no linear connection to organic life (I'm referring to 'sentience' 'consciousness' etc), which has a spiritual basis. I don't like the word 'spiritual' because it connotes religion and faith. I mean the basis to life does not exist in time and space. Whatever that actually is, it is what it is. I base this on personal out-of-body experiences (which occurred without drugs). Science won't like that statement because it's not falsifiable. But, as long as science believes there is a linear relationship between sentience and machine intelligence, it will continue to be befuddled and frustrated. I don't doubt that someday we will have androids that are cyborgs, but, again, 'sentience' will reside in the organic side, not the inorganic side of the thing.
Ok, but your escape to spirituality isn't based on current scientific understanding. I don't accept your notion of something central to each living life form existing in some other space-time. This really is religious rather than having anything to do with science. Future AIs may or may not be describable as "organic life" or use "organic life" in any way. Surely our brains ARE machines. There isn't evidence that this statement is false. There is certainly progress on understanding how our meat computers work. Suggesting that when science doesn't have an answer to a question it means that science is "befuddled" is just an attack on science. Science is a methodology of exploration. Science is not a claim that humans know all the answers.
I've really never seen any evidence for the spiritual, but it'd be nice. I don't know that I'd trust my sensations after the fact after taking drugs to alter my mind. I think there was one claimed instance of extracorporeal sensation in a study on near death experiences... but without being repeated, I would say it's unverified. Could have been somebody managed to cheat their study design. As far as we can tell consciousness is a resonance between the cortex, thalamus, and brainstem. Something that may require quantum mechanics to fully understand, but physical nonetheless.
Sure it is: learning to simulate thought. That's like saying that when students learn something, it is their teacher who has the intelligence, not the students.
Is it? Why? Intelligence is the ability to understand. Understanding is just having an accurate internal model that is simpler than the phenomenon in question. Self-awareness might make understanding easier, but why would it be necessary? And why could a machine not be self-aware?
It's important to understand that Alphago did this in a way that was entirely different from how Deep Blue defeated Kasparov. Deep Blue was an expert system that implemented expert human chess knowledge that its programmers programmed into it, then applied that knowledge with superhuman speed and reliability. Alphago played millions of games against itself to figure out what moves are most likely to win. Human players, including Alphago's programmers, do not know how it does that, or what criteria it is using to select its moves. That said, it is clear from the kind of mistakes Alphago still makes that it does not really understand the game. It is like a dog that has evolved to be very, very good at running, but it has no idea how it runs, or even what running is.
That's just mysticism. Define "conscious." Sorry, no. LSD just creates a waking dream state. Huh? In what sense is a computer virus not alive? Claim lacking evidence. OBEs are just illusions, hallucinations. Oh, please. At some point, simulation becomes implementation.
I understand what science is. but, when it comes to 'consciousness', science will forever be frustrated because it doesn't understand that it is barking up the wrong tree. Your brain is an organic machine, but you are not. You are not your body, nor your brain. And, until you have an out-of-body experience, thus realizing you are not your body, not any part of it, that your essence is beyond time and space, you will never understand. I sure as hell didn't understand it, until it happened to me. It was a revelation, good news, actually, because I knew then that when the body dies, we do not.
The ability for machines to learn is a major field of endeavor, deeply studied by computer science. There will be serious improvements. A program that can use learning to win at chess is facing something far less than a general real world problem. Alphago would be crap at what Chatbot does, for example. As for chess, if no human can beat Alphago and knowing that the very best humans make rather startling mistakes, too, I don't see much value in creating some abstract measure like "understanding" to claim they are failures. Let's remember that a dog learns to move at a variety of speeds, beginning with standing up on 4 legs. It learns to use multiple strategies for movement that it applies based on various environmental factors and even feelings. Suggesting they don't understand running hits me as strange.
It knows everything we've recorded. Even the BS. The problem is in trying to program it how to filter out the BS. And that's still largely subject to interpretation by the creators of the BS- us.
I don't see a justification for believing that an out of body experience is something that a brain is incapable of presenting to you. Nor do I see it as likely to present a more accurate version of the universe than what fully awake humans can determine. Humans have dreams all the time. I have a daughter who has fantastical dreams - like being a purely 2 dimensional window pane, flying around and through everything, fixing people's bodies on the way through. Or, dreams going in other very different directions too amazing to describe here.
I didn't say they were failures. They just aren't intelligent. The point of measuring understanding is to measure intelligence. It just turns out that the Turing Test is not a very good measure or standard of intelligence. A dog has no mental model of running and thus does not understand it. It just runs. Similarly, Alphago just plays go.
Nobody can grasp the experience until it happens to them. No one can see beyond their own experience, except, perhaps, the rare genius. I'm not going to fault you, or any scientist for not understanding it because of that fact. Maybe someday, if and when it happens to a scientist, he or she might realize there are some things beyond science.
I know that things like self awareness do not exist in non living things. Therefore there is no reason to think that a piece of software would be an exception. I don't think you understand understanding. It requires actual intelligence. Actual intelligence has never existed except in living things. I don't have to prove my negative. You need to explain how and why a machine or piece of software can be self aware. Science fiction is not an explanation.
AI can certainly simulate thought. But it isn't real thought. It is clever programming. No you are referring to human students that also have intelligence. Intelligence allows them to learn. Computers don't learn. They store, search and process data. They do that under the control of software not through independent thought. I'm at the ho hum stage of your inability to convince that machines can be intelligent so I'll leave you to your beliefs and wish you well.
Whether it ever existed in non-living things isn't an argument about whether it COULD exist in nonliving things. Evolution is what brought us self awareness. That doesn't prove that there is no other path. You can't claim it is impossible without having an honest justification for that claim.
How would you "know" that? No, that is a non sequitur. Oh, but I do. Better than you. By definition. That doesn't mean it couldn't. People had never been able to fly, until they could. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to offer some evidence for your claims. So far, you are coming up empty. By being programmed to infer the nature of its own existence from the available data. Autonomous vehicles are not science fiction. They are not (yet) self-aware, but they show that artificial systems can use sensory inputs to make valid inferences about the real world.
When Alphago revolutionized opening theory in go, that was real thought. No one expected it, least of all the programmers. And no one knows exactly the thought process that led to it. That is one of the hallmarks of recent progress in AI such as the DARPA Challenge winners, Watson, and Alphago: the software suddenly and unexpectedly becomes capable of doing things the programmers did not expect it would be able to do. Right: both teachers and students are intelligent. So the fact that one is learning from the other does not mean the learner is unintelligent. Then how did Alphago get to be a better go player than any human? They can also create data, which is how Alphago surpassed human go players. The execution of certain ML software is independent thought. What would it take to convince you? We know it isn't the Turing Test, as ChatGPT has already passed it. Or is your belief simply an unfalsifiable religious conviction?
