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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
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I have alot of doubts about AI (artifical inteligence)--the idea of truly thinking machines. I think that our drive to create these machines is almost a fools errand-- and almost modifier is important.
Alchemy is bunk-- but the work of the alchemist lead the word to a better understanding of chemisty-- and can we change lead into gold? No, but can it be done? Yes-- super nova, and other cosmic forces do it all the time! And we know and understand how, even if we don't yet do it.
AI --if its goal is to make a machine that thinks like a human is bound to fail-- but we humans, become enriched as we learn more and more about how we think-- and what we need to do to-- individually and collectively-- to think better.
In this country-- not to long ago it was "thought" okay to call men of color "boy"-- it is no longer thought acceptable. Have we changed everybody's heart and mind? no, but our change in language (and i don't like PC language-- i mean just generally acceptable language) is the start to changing all of our minds.
Where will our quest for AI lead us? to a more thoughtful society i hope-- but we moved from alchemy, to real chemisty, to physics-- and learned to split the atom-- to change matter in a way alchemist never thought-- and one that has the potential still to destroy our world. AI will bring many changes... i hope better ones than alchemy!
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear of troy: You have a good point about the "spin-offs" that are likely to be produced by a long hard struggle to master artificial intelligence.
We all know some of the benefits that NASA's research has produced, and will continue to produce.
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
Machines have been cultivating empathy in us for a long time.I wonder if you coud expand on this for me? I missed it the first time I read your post, being distracted by reflections on the carnivorous, pack-hunting nature of chimpanzees, which reflections colour my own feelings of empathy toward those primates. 
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
I am saying that any concept, like "reality" (and its components, e.g., the possible thinking of machines) is delimited in "fact" by the capacity of language to express it.
Oh yeah. Definitely. I was wishing today that there was a word that, when used, we would know would not mean a physical feeling, but another, internal-only, kind. Maybe two: one for emotion-feeling, and another for, um (speaking of inadequate lang.), lack of a better term I'll call mental feeling, as in, "I've got a feeling that will not work out". For instance, if I say I felt warm, without context no one can tell if I mean temperature-wise, or the warm feeling I get from a message that virtually radiates warmth.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027 |
If someone cries out in pain, I have no doubt of their experience. It is this phenomenon, which is not formally meaning, that I am calling "empathy."
Excuse me for taking this apart some more:
The first sentence implies that this is an unfailing, quasi-automatic reaction of you as a human being.
But the remainder of your argument suggests that you regret the very fact that empathy is not general, but has to be taught, and can be "manipulated". A quality which would be inborn/instinctive could not be considered part of ethics, because, as I see it, ethics is about conscious social behavior.
Now something rather provocative: Is there really a categorical difference between the first, purely emotional reaction on hearing someone cry out in pain on one hand, and witnessing a valuable object (like a brand-new car) going to pieces in a crash, on the other hand?
What I want to demonstrate is a warning not to stylize every pinching gut-feeling as empathy.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Artificial intelligence (AI) has never been about developing a computer-based system which can literally "think", although that's been the popular perception, not helped by the generations of scifi writers who've written about androids (cf Data in Star Trek NG). Very briefly, AI has really been about developing machines capable of logically reasoning within circumscribed boundaries about a limited range of relatively narrow subjects. And even then success has been slight. The chances of machines developing "empathy" within the foreseeable future appear to continue to be, um, (including zero?) none. To be truly intelligent, computers would need to have the capability of forming genuine opinions (not just the results of programmed sequential logic) and being able to consistently assign qualitative values (feelings) to those opinions. Intelligence isn't pure reasoning. And empathy is not the outcome of pure reason. Human reasoning is often only partially based on pure logic. Computers reason on the "if this then that else some other prescribed variable" principle. Humans reason on the "if this then maybe that, this or both, else perhaps something completely different arrived at by a very circuituous train of thought" principle. We tend to be more or less "intuitive" in our reasoning. The amount of processing power required to reproduce that using the current computer architectures is mind-boggling - and not available. Until a different type of computer is developed which works on the same principles as the human brain, I doubt if any computer will ever come with in a bull's roar of true self-awareness ... empathy? Huh!   
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
Artificial intelligence (AI) has never been about developing a computer-based system which can literally "think", although that's been the popular perception, not helped by the generations of scifi writers who've written about androids (cf Data in Star Trek NG).
Until a different type of computer is developed which works on the same principles as the human brain, I doubt if any computer will ever come with in a bull's roar of true self-awareness ... empathy? Huh!
Thanks for that CapK, nice to hear from one who should know. It has also provided me with an excuse to use a signature line I filched from someone in Usenet.
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
Until a different type of computer is developed which works on the same principles as the human brain, I doubt if any computer will ever come with in a bull's roar of true self-awareness ... empathy? Huh!
Cap is refuting a point I never made. Empathy is, first of all, human. More later, gotta run.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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...Intelligence isn't pure reasoning. Yet the arrogance of standardized testing is! Very soon, we will say machines think as we do, consciously. The effort to make them do so is wasted time and an endeavor only taken seriously by those who are looking to become completely lazy, or isolated from the divergence that individual beings bring. It won't be because we have any idea what consciousness is. But we will mean something when we say it. And that we will say it--and, finally, forget to say it--has a meaning of its own. Meaning implied by only verbal existence (or lack thereof) is "full of holes" - "The lerprechan rode my blue unicorn" is understandable, but means little (aside from aesthetics), just as experienced posters (ones who post) who don't out of protest really aren't heard! Machines will think as we do when we recognize them doing so.You're starting to sound like a machine. We will not come to realize that machines think through analysis, machines will come to think when we have empathy for them. I'd be more inclined to say that that empathy will come when they have empathy for us (which will never happen). Machines have been cultivating empathy in us for a long time. Maybe in materialists in general, and certainly "consumers" whether they use the machines or not, but leave me out of "us".
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Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444
addict
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addict
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444 |
It is possible that machines have already begun to think, and it is possible they have begun not to recognize us.
Sorry, I don't see at all how this (final and therefore important?) sentence relates to the rest of the post.
Nor can I interpret it clearly without knowing whether for you, Inselpeter, 'think' necessarily implies consciousness and what you mean by 'recognise'. Be able to identify as an object? Be able to identify as a living thing? Be able to identify as having valid needs and requiring some sort of respect?
BTW I read in flat mode and the other posts so far haven't helped.
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