The quest for Artificial Intelligence and self-consciousness

First topic message reminder :

Most people when contemplating AI think of computer intelligence. And certainly this thread aims at that. We have now developed chips that can mimic the plasticity of the human mind which brings us ever closer to consciousness in technology... even self consciousness. We understand now that for AI to be truly intelligent it needs emotional as well as rational data programming. We have the ability to grow biological matter such as skin. We even have spray on skin. Add to that some nano bots to keep the skin in good order and the idea of clothing the robot in flesh is not so absurd. The latest edition of Asimo from Honda has improved the fluidity and functionality of movement, making it ever more human-like. It is not hard to suppose then, that within the next couple of decades AI specialists will have created the first generation of conscious, if not self-conscious, Androids. (Will they name the prototype Data perchance?)

But computer intelligence is not the whole story behind AI. Humanity stands at the precipice of becoming AI's also. We can and have successfully computer chipped the brain. It's new technology and used only for therapeutic improvements, but it won't stay that way for very long. The world of Neo from the movie the Matrix, where programs are downloaded into the brain, is fast becoming a reality. Why go to university to study medicine, if that is your thing, when for a price, you can implant a computer chip with all the knowledge you need to perform as a Doctor to an exceptionally high level of ability? Why be satisfied with your basic intelligence when it can be enhanced with a computer chip?

All of these technologies as they pertain to Andriods and Humans are advancing together and so cannot be looked at individually without consideration for the other. As usual however, our Morality, Social Policies and Laws are not keeping themselves up to speed and acting on these near future realities to ensure Justice in their application. This thread aims to explore those three areas as well as the mind blowing 'brave new world' that awaits us.

All of human life is there.

The “profound” part accompanies human arrogance that purports the preposterous notion that we can create what the Creator has created

I wouldn't be so quick to let your religious bias sell humanity short. There is no time limit, no due date for the creation of artificial intelligence, and in the years to come, it is likely, even highly probable, that AI will at the very least equal human intelligence. Can you think of anything that humanity has failed in achieving? I'm not talking about failures due to budget constraints, morality issues, lack of resources, etc., but failure to achieve or create something because it was simply impossible, something humanity just couldn't figure out and thus had to abandon the task. Nope ... there aren't any examples.

The one thing that an AI may not ever be able to do is genuinely feel. We can program a computer with a personality that will act like a human, complete with facial expressions and proper voice inflection, but it will only be carrying out its program and not reacting out of true emotion. I'm not altogether sure if humanity would try to create a computer with true intelligence and emotion. That would be creating a "person."

RockOnBrother wrote:
The “profound” part accompanies human arrogance that purports the preposterous notion that we can create what the Creator has created

 

Shirina wrote:
I wouldn't be so quick to let your religious bias sell humanity short. There is no time limit, no due date for the creation of artificial intelligence, and in the years to come, it is likely, even highly probable, that AI will at the very least equal human intelligence.

Can you think of anything that humanity has failed in achieving?

I'm… talking about… failure to achieve or create something because it was simply impossible, something humanity just couldn't figure out and thus had to abandon the task.

 

What religious bias? You seem to forget that physics is part of my background, and that the study thereof was part of the process that led me to understand that we exist within created existence. But that’s another story.

Mankind has been attempting to create life for a long as I can remember. When had boots on the moon, remote wheels on Mars, and a voyager that one day may enter another star system, but nar bit of life ever created by a human. I believe the same will continue to hold true for AI, a problem my boss from so far back I’m scared to say was working on, and thought he’d almost solved, before many posters hereon were born. I was exited about AI back then; lo these many years later, after eons spent on telephones “talking” to computers posing as humans (the “AT&T man” needs to be taken out and put out of his misery), I’m not so sure.

But carry on, those who seek to do the impossible, because often is scientific endeavors, failure teaches as much as success. The ongoing failure of AI to achieve intelligence has taught us so much about intelligence that we’ve finally started to free ourselves of the self-imposed prison of IQ, SAT, GRE scores and the like being equivalent to intelligence.

For a look at Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, click here.

" Can you think of anything that humanity has failed in achieving?"

Just for starters, total failure to bring back to life wrongly-executed convicts subsequently discovered to have been innocent.

RockOnBrother wrote:

True Blue wrote:
[Another poster is] suggesting then that Human Intelligence is exemplified in our capacity to recognise faces almost immediately?

... the reason our brain can recognise complex shapes is because of the plasticity of the neural network that serves our brain... and learning of course and as I mentioned, we now have computer chips that can mimic the plasticity of the human neural network.

Jeopardy! ran a two day exhibition (aired over three days) in which a computer with database competed with Jeopardy!’s two brightest “stars”, Ken Jennings, winner of 74 straight matches and two and a half million dollars, and another fellow whose name escapes me that bested the best of Jeopardy!’s best in a tournament of champions.

The computer cleaned their clocks, but not because it was smarter. Its ability to run through its algorithms at nano-second speed enabled it to “beat ‘em to the draw” almost every time. Occasionally, when a question fell outside of its algorithmic parameters, its “first-out-the-gate” answers were hilariously stupid.

Comparing a past computer performance with the current research on chips which mimic the plasticity of the brain, is a bad comparison. The two idea's are in different leagues. Not even Deep Blue can be compared to the latest in computer chip technology.

Facial recognition is just one way to illustrate the profound limitations of artificial intelligence, more properly artificial “intelligence”, since the “artificial” part renders the “intelligence” unintelligent.

Therefore, those who have their brain chipped so as to move their prosthesis are rendered unintelligent because of it? No, of course not. And I don't think you believe this either. But it does beg the question... how much technology if added to the human renders that human unintelligent... or more accurately an android? Then again... how much biology if added to the android renders that android intelligent... or more accurately humanoid?

The “profound” part accompanies human arrogance that purports the preposterous notion that we can create what the Creator has created, actual intelligence. We can exemplify intelligence, often in immeasurable ways, but we cannot create what we are. The fact, we cannot create what any intelligent life form is, because we cannot create the intelligence that enables any intelligent life form has been created to be.

Whilst that is true of the past, it is not necessarily true of the future. It is plasticity of the biological brain that makes us and that plasticity has been mimicked in computer chips.

The most interesting part of your response, which I have put in bold is a common error of too many... which is that we are trying to recreate ourselves. Even those within robotics and computer science work can fall into this false belief. We are not talking about recreating ourselves as androids, we are talking about creating artificial intelligence that is self aware.

Such machines will have human elements in the same way that humans have reptilian elements, but we are not because of our reptilian past, reptiles and nor will the self aware artificial intelligence be human. It will be something different and I predict, because they will have the capacity to self program, they will be very different... merely looking like us, but not one of us.

RockOnBrother wrote:
Jeopardy! ran a two day exhibition (aired over three days) in which a computer with database competed with Jeopardy!’s two brightest “stars”, Ken Jennings, winner of 74 straight matches and two and a half million dollars, and another fellow whose name escapes me that bested the best of Jeopardy!’s best in a tournament of champions.

The computer [“Watson”] cleaned their clocks, but not because it was smarter. Its ability to run through its algorithms at nano-second speed enabled it to “beat ‘em to the draw” almost every time. Occasionally, when a question fell outside of its algorithmic parameters, its “first-out-the-gate” answers were hilariously stupid.

 

True Blue wrote:
Comparing a past computer performance with the current research on chips which mimic the plasticity of the brain, is a bad comparison. The two idea's are in different leagues. Not even Deep Blue can be compared to the latest in computer chip technology.

 

“Watson” is “cutting edge” technology, generated by the best of he best, IBM superstars who set out to do something computers have never been able to do until “Watson.”

RockOnBrother wrote:
“Watson” is “cutting edge” technology, generated by the best of he best, IBM superstars who set out to do something computers have never been able to do until “Watson.”

And that 'cutting edge' technology has since been superseded by the latest in 'cutting edge' technology that I have linked already. The technological revolution moves at an exceedingly fast rate.

True Blue wrote:
The technological revolution moves at an exceedingly fast rate.

 

Yet the technological revolution has yet to create intelligence. Pseudo intelligence, no matter ho technologically advanced, is not intelligence.

When a computer “learns” how to create hydrodynamic bow waves precisely generated so as to knock a crab-eater seal off its icy perch, please let me know.

True Blue wrote:

RockOnBrother wrote:
“Watson” is “cutting edge” technology, generated by the best of he best, IBM superstars who set out to do something computers have never been able to do until “Watson.”

And that 'cutting edge' technology has since been superseded by the latest in 'cutting edge' technology that I have linked already. The technological revolution moves at an exceedingly fast rate.

Why, we're already up to Grand Theft Auto version FIVE ....


http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=grand+theft+auto+5&qpvt=grand+theft+auto+5&FORM=IGRE

Just for starters, total failure to bring back to life wrongly-executed convicts subsequently discovered to have been innocent.

That was a pretty good attempt at inserting an irrelevant point into the conversation, OW, but you're still wrong. Humanity has never tried to bring them back.

Yet the technological revolution has yet to create intelligence. Pseudo intelligence, no matter ho technologically advanced, is not intelligence.

We haven't created artificial intelligence ... yet.

I'm sure if that if a group of top-ranked scientists in the 16th Century began talking about inventing a small box that could perform millions of computations per second, a box that could connect you to the entire world's database of knowledge, a box that would allow you to communicate with anyone who also had a box - anywhere in the world in real time speed - everyone else would be saying "no way!" Yet you are using such a box right now to do exactly what that scientist envisioned. Science fiction has a funny way of becoming science fact, and it doesn't take all that long to get there. Think Star Trek communicators from the 60's and today's cell phones. It only took about 30 years.

[quote="Shirina"]

.... Can you think of anything that humanity has failed in achieving? I'm not talking about failures due to budget constraints, morality issues, lack of resources, etc., but failure to achieve or create something because it was simply impossible, something humanity just couldn't figure out and thus had to abandon the task. Nope ... there aren't any examples. ....

Can you think of anything that humanity has failed in achieving?

How long have you got? Humanity has failed in achieving harmony between peoples.
Failed to conquer common diseases.
Alchemists failed to make gold from base metal.
Technology has in many cases advanced only at the cost of the environment.
Mankind has often prospered by rendering other species extinct.
Men have failed to agree on the identity of a single Deity.
Man is not master of the weather.
"Paranormal abilities", Levitation, Thought transference, Teleporting, Prescience etcetera, although heavily researched, are still neither understood nor proven. A section of the human brain has no obvious purpose of which we are aware.

Or are such examples insufficiently philosophical for the purpose of discussion on this thread?

Humanity has failed in achieving harmony between peoples.

Sometimes we've succeeded, other times, we've failed. However, I should have limited my assertion to scientific endeavors which is what the context of my point represented.

Failed to conquer common diseases.

I personally don't believe we have failed in this endeavor. I feel that we aren't "allowed" to conquer them. There's a lot of money to be made in selling cold medicines and cancer treatments. Actually curing a disease instead of merely treating it would be cutting off your own head if you were a medical administrator. Given that no one has cured a major disease in over half a century (1957) despite our huge leaps in both medical knowledge and technology indicates more than simple failure. If Polio can be cured with a simple injection or swig of medicine, then curing diseases CAN be done. So why hasn't it? Follow the money.

Alchemists failed to make gold from base metal.

The problem is that the alchemists of old did not have the technology to produce the energy required to actually strip away three protons to transmute lead into gold. It has been accomplished already by Glenn Seaborg in 1951, but the cost of the energy required actually outstrips the value of the gold, so no one bothers with it.

Technology has in many cases advanced only at the cost of the environment.

That's not technically a failure. I never said that success wasn't without cost. I also stipulated that a "failure" cannot be for humanly-contrived reasons such as morality (or ethics in this case). I was referring strictly to things that were simply impossible (as far as we know) so we simply gave up trying.

Mankind has often prospered by rendering other species extinct.

Also not technically a failure.

Men have failed to agree on the identity of a single Deity.

When have we ever really tried?

Man is not master of the weather.

Yet. Google up some articles on weather control experiments.

"Paranormal abilities", Levitation, Thought transference, Teleporting, Prescience etcetera, although heavily researched, are still neither understood nor proven.

Heavily researched yes, but not on a large scale. Because these abilities are considered to be "paranormal," the scientific community has largely rejected these powers as the stuff of whackos, crazies, and frauds. They haven't done much with this, most likely because research scientists would be hard-pressed to get any grant money to do any long-term experimentation.

Or are such examples insufficiently philosophical for the purpose of discussion on this thread?

Eh?

MSN have issued a list of current activities which may disappear within a few years:

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/news/30-things-that-might-be-obsolete-by-2020/ss-BBG5rAe?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=iehp#image=29