Why computers* will not become self aware.

I keep on thinking that to try and develop an AI with self awareness is simply beyond our needs [it may be an interesting research for a less or more far future]: me need more "intelligent" machine to do works on their own in difficult contexts without human direct support.

A very clear example of this is the space exploration.
At very great distance a traditional computer can only rely on the software and on the programs installed. If communication with Earth require an hour, there is no time for the controllers here to react to something not predicted planning the mission [in fact some probes got lost just because of unpredicted troubles].

An AI can try and find a solution to go on with the mission.

This is what we need. A self aware AI could even wonder "why am I traveling to Saturn? Better to go to Jupiter! It looks cool!".

 

If people are machines then I suggest there is a critical problem in the quality assurance department...

 

The brain is nothing but electro-chemistry...all of which will eventually be replicated and expanded as AI. If we can replicate the brain in AI then AI can become dangerous to mankind...

 

If eventually we can remove a healthy brain from a dying person, and this brain can be sustained and interfaced to computers/robotics, and this brain can be trained to deal with it's new environment, will this be called a human or AI?

 

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

 

If the individual accepts to exist in that way, it will be a human being, the nature of an intelligence is connected with its own origin, not with its "usage".

If you want a biological AI, technically I would suggest something different [I'm an IT manager ...].

It's better to take some neuronal cells from a human brain, clone them and cultivate a new organ, it could be genetically built as a real biological computer.

 

If I weren't, I probably wouldn't have sense enough not to accept such a preposterous challenge.

He is more than welcome to speak for himself.

That's pretty funny, considering humans are so prone to devolving away from self-awareness within their own lifetimes.

If you think that's an exercise of self-awareness, you have no understanding thereof.

 

I can make you think you are self aware. Give me a hammer, and place your finger on this table here, and I will show you as close as you can ever get, to thinking you are self aware. If you want to deny your self awareness after I flatten out your finger, you can raise it up with the traditional shooting a person the bird, to show me, as you might be incapable of language after I get finished with you middle finger.

It might actually make you think clearly, for the first time in your life. LOL

I just slapped my laptop hard, and it didn't seem to care. LOL.

 

The silence I am talking about is simply a state of mind, where thought is not moving. We all experience this, but generally in nanoseconds in length. But it is possible for this silence to happen for much longer than that.

If you talk to people who have discovered something totally new, which was not contained in memory, nor something that was the result of processing memory, the discovery happens when thought is not moving, the brain is not thinking. In that moment of silence, the new seems to come from nowhere.

So, the brain as perceived by consciousness, can at times not be involved with thought moving. And from this state, the totally new can come. A computer when it isn't processing doesn't have this dimension, from which the new comes. And that is the difference between an organic brain and a machines. And so AI, that would operate like a brain, will never exist. For it can only process what is in its memory, but has no access to what is not already in memory. If the human brain didn't have this ability, the new would never exist. We would be stuck with only putting together memory in different ways, and we would call that new. But it would be simply processing the old, into something that looks to be new. Of course the brain does this as well, but it is not limited to just that, as computers are.

 

Do you mean my point, or the sentence which you quoted part of, or do you mean your interpretation of 5 words I used together in a larger sentence? Your post only makes sense for the later which is kinda irrelevant to the anything and founded on nothing, good job!!

 

I disagree. I think the brain works the same way as the machine, but they have different architectures. Memory is not a direct association of data in the brain yes, but a machine does not have to operate the way they do now either. At the moment they do directly associate to data allocation as memory, but there is no way a machine can approach the computation power of the human brain unless it mimics brain architecture and function or uses some advanced form of structure which exceeds the brains architecture. Better wonder when it will happen, not if.

 

I began life as an atheist and was an atheist with a science based worldveiw/reality to around age 17. After losing faith in atheism's tenants that I began sampling any system, primarily religions that I thought would lead to 'truth', finally selecting a somewhat rare form of Christianity. Anyway what I am getting at I promised myself I would keep an open mind, consider all ideas as possibly valid and abandon Christianity if something else seems a more valid and capable paradigm/system. All that said to explain that I am not closed minded as my good intentioned 'my way or the highway',, fire and brimstone, spiritualized brother and sister religious friends. With that in mind I do struggle with my christian responsibilities vs obvious logical inferences derived from science. Nevertheless, I agree with you. If pure AI is to be had I believe it will evolve, not designed, at least in the foreseeable future. That is difficult for me to admit because my personal belief is that the soul and sentience are intertwined. And I do not believe all the tenants of evolutionary biology are true due to the issues similar to those raised by Behe (PhD).

I don't know if the silicon chip non-quantum computer, unless running many in them parallel will come close to total processing power of a brain. Lastly as I said early science does not know how sentience/self-awareness works, or for that matter science does not even know where sentience arises. Worse the debate still rages as to the concept of mind brain duality! So considering the latter you idea (of AI evolving* instead of designed) gets four silver stars !

* evolving..>>> Maybe a computer could be programmed to 'evolve' by adopting as much information, device's, software and systems etc as possible ? By that I mean programed to add organized complexity? If the machine evolved to the level of being autonomic (or was designed ie began autonomic) it could evolve something like the old selfish gene theory and add complexity and began writing its own code etc automatically?

reva

 

who is to say a soul\life force could not enter an AI if it had enough connections\processor power to allow it

are bodies are just machines too

they are already making machines out of brain tissue.... interesting work.....

.

 

I think you are confused, maybe its how I described meta-cognition ie thinking about thinking, ie self awareness. A computer can not write its own code and programs unless programed to do so. If it were sentient it could indeed write its own code and programs. A brain without sentience could not think about thinking! See how simple! If still confused go to ;
Metacognition - Thinking about thinking - Learning …
www.hent.org/world/rss/files/metacognition.htm

Metacognition refers to higher order thinking that involves active control over the thinking processes involved in learning.

No again I am not saying that! I am saying this; In >1970 'God is dead' years, Science abounded with claims that machine self-awareness is near. Computers were still too slow and limited at the time but growing in both exponentially. They allowed when the processing power, speed and memory reached a certain point self-awareness would emerge! Oops! Computers passed that point some decades ago (with parallel processing and the net, yes the net, etc). There was dead silence from the pro-sentient (computer) science community, lol. Computers did not 'acquire' sentience with raw memory etc.

So, I am saying that complexity seems not to be the primary cause of sentience/self awareness. The reason I was comparing the brain to computers was for general information and other reasons that I raised later. I also mentioned that science has no idea how or where sentience is created and THAT is now the primary reason self- aware computers will not happen for a long long time if ever. I asked how can we build something if we do not even know what causes sentience or the architecture of the system that creates it (if we could find it). The secondary reason and the reason for brain to machine comparison is current computers can not mimic the brain in all its functions. Some supercomputers are faster than brains in certain applications by brute processing power. Still there is no computer that can replicate all the brains systems etc. From what I have read that is not even possible with current computer technology. Maybe as optical quantum super computers are developed maybe an exact copy of a human brain with all its processes can be had. If so that may hold the key to machine sentience, or maybe not lol.

I did address that! I said current silicon computers even a super computer could not replicate the all functions of the human brain. I even gave some reasons, even though I am not a computer scientist! Lol. I have read a lot on the subject and my opinion is based on experts papers and articles. One reason is what is known as the light speed barrier in current computers. Even though computers run on electricity the architecture of their silicon construction limits their speed and power! That is why I don't think with the current architecture computers will ever attain the same computing power of a human brain. That means I nor you nor anyone save for God knows if that is the key to machine sentience. If optical computers come to fruition maybe that will change. Read more at;

Computers are becoming faster and faster, but their speed …
www.scientificamerican.com › Technology › Ask the Experts

"The speed of computers is limited by how fast ... by the speed of electrons in silicon. In current ... optics and light systems would make computers..

I hope that helps;

reva

 

I like that kind of thinking out of the box. Hey I thought of a a good scifi flick idea based on your idea; Earth scientists build an AI with the major design goal of being self aware. Well it is a preist blesses it and it becomes self aware! BUT its the devil incarnate! It tells the world its the antichrist but really its a product of an ET with designs on earth and its inhabitants!

reva

 

Regarding Behe, his ideas are considered not supported: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

Yes, exactly like that. Its called a Genetic Algorithm, and it works analogous to natural evolution. Basically you randomly mutate the system you want to evolve, and after each mutation evaluate its fitness according to some fitness function. Repeat until desired fitness is achieved: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genalg/genalg.html

In case of AI, the mutated system will be some artificial neural network and the fitness function will be some awareness test. Of course this is very simplified and designing a good fitness function is where the problem lies.

 

I would say you are being nice to him! Behe's theories are often ridiculed as heresy as are most ideas that would challenge Darwin's theory*. Its dangerous to attempt to publish or popularize any type of hypothesis or theory that goes against the mighty evolution of the species by natural selection. Lol the tables are turned! Instead of risking ones freedom and worse for challenging the church, now if one challenges the tenured, entrenched science they open themselves to black listing and snf financial and professional ruin. That bit of attempted levity inflicted I will end this line of thought by saying Micro-biology biology and associated science don't interest me as much as cosmology, astronomy and related subjects, so I don't often read advanced articles concerning evolution.

* Of course Darwin's baby has changed, as science theory is allowed to do. The change is 'internal' but no worries Darwin, you are still the man that science loves, I would argue the Church loves Darwin too, but less so and for different reasons...

Genetic Algorithm eh? Computer programming while interesting is another area I avoid due to the possibility of a brain explosion! But I get the idea if not the technical aspects, sounds interesting. I watched a program where these objects were programmed to live in an environment while being fruitful and multiplying while living, dying and evolving.

If a awareness test can be devised ! Of course if HAL says he is alive we could check his program to see if he was slipped a mickey. That is if his original programmer installed malware that taught HAL to mimic self awareness/sentience
. BUT...if HAL is clever enough and can think whats to say he wrote a program to mimic to outsiders sentience /self awareness. Come to think of it would HAL even need to write himself a program ? He could simply run it by memory? It gets even scarier. What if HAL began directing his own evolution? Could that like computing power and speed increase at an exponential rate? If so humankind would be totally doomed ....or totally enriched ~

reva

 

In other words you can not meet the challenge! Insulting a member who challenges you is such an obvious self-admission of ignorance its use is usually reserved for children. Don't take that as an insult, it was not meant as such, in reality its an observation.

I plagiarized 'thinking about thinking' from the Stanford U page. Its a common way to describe meta-cognitive though.

reva

 

The electro chemistry is the material process that receives consciousness. It doesn't create consciousness, it receives it. So when one looks at the brain working, you are seeing what happens when consciousness is being received. This is the other view of the brain and consciousness. Your view is the materialistic view. Neither view has ever been proven. So, both sides have to assume something. Assumptions of course are not facts.

AI would necessarily have to be self aware, which means AI would have to have an equivalent of the human ego, the self image. But if the ego is just an illusion, created by thought, then AI must also be capable of creating its own illusion, of the self, the ego. This complicates the issue of AI.


Now, if consciousness is a non local thing, that the brain receives, instead of the materialist view that the brain creates consciousness, then AI is impossible. Unless of course the human brain can be perfectly replicated using silicon. I doubt the complexity of the brain can ever be perfectly replicated, for we are such a long ways off, from even getting close to having anything but a limited knowledge of the brain, and we are even farther away from actually understanding what consciousness is.

 

Those 5 words constituted a complete thought, and they didn't need any interpretation.

If you don't think the connection, or lack thereof, between "thinking about thinking" and self-awareness is relevant to the thread you're posting in, then pilgrim, you don't think too good.

 

Self-awareness and consciousness in general are HUGE mysteries to me. This is a debate I frequently get into with my math/computer science degreed kid. To my own way of thinking, somebody could come out with a computer that perfectly mimics the human brain but it will never be self-aware. The engineers don't even begin to know how to begin explaining consciousness.

 

Working the other direction....

RevAnarchist? How could you prove to US that YOU are a real human being and not a computer program that simulates textual "conversation" by analyzing responses you receive from us and then use an algorithm to create your counter-responses.

IOW, the Turing Test. How can YOU prove....you're real?

 

" sentient " computers are the byproduct of nerdy materialistic minds, of which there is quite abundance in our modern western world. To me it sounds much like a kind of god syndrome, by which someone wants to become a " god " by creating " life " through mechanics. That's so much hilarious because there are already " machines " capable of generating life, thoughts and feelings, it is us, we are already by ourselves the most advanced creation there will ever be.

 

LOL,

Those 5 words did not constitute my point, so by you using them alone its your 'complete thought' using some of my words which you associate to me and then say "If you think that's an exercise of self-awareness, you have no understanding thereof".... so your talking to yourself. I point that out to you and your reply is to revert to your 'complete thought' as being relevant to the thread. OK so you are talking to yourself, fair enough, carry on.

So did you want to discuss your view that thinking about thinking is relevant, but not an exercise of self-awareness as you say? I agree thinking about thinking is relevant, but I'd disagree about saying it is not an exercise of self awareness. I personally think understanding how to think does allow one to know oneself more and extend to the process of thinking itself. I might be asserting we are nothing but thought, so I assume your point of view is thought is not related to that spark of self?

 

I don't care about your point. I care about how those 5 words relate to the thread topic.

No, I'm talking to anyone reading this thread who believes "thinking about thinking" is an exercise in self-awareness. If that doesn't include you, you have nothing to complain about.

That's because, as I said to begin with, you have no understanding thereof.

Everybody knows how to think. The trick is knowing how to not think, in the many instances when thinking is inimical to self-awareness.