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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Oct 27, 2017 - 09:27am PT
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No argument on that...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 27, 2017 - 09:58am PT
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Largo and a couple others here fail - time and again, post after post - to grok that our intuitions - like our sense of colors (eg, redness) and our sense of tastes (eg, sweetness) - are evolved.
They are evolved. Evolutionary products tens of millions of years in the making.
Basic evolution, believe it or not, remains their stumbling block.
It's hard to believe one could spend so much time in these "experiential adventures" in the 21st century and yet fail to grok the role of evolutionary psychology - or else evolutionary structures (circuitry) - in their basic nature...
Perhaps the Curse of Knowledge has something to do with it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2017 - 10:25am PT
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Basic evolution,
You wouldn't have clue to the actual evolutionary process, to begin with.
You know nothing, except Sam Harris, Youtube and Wiki.
You yourself knows nothing beyond copy and paste .....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 27, 2017 - 10:36am PT
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^^^ You are arguing with a believer. Good luck.
John, anyone believing in the possibility of Strong AI is a believer.
The fiction is that Strong AI is based on evidence that the manipulation of symbols - if done quickly enough and with enough complexity and feed back loops - will somehow "source" consciousness. That is, consciousness is the natural and inevitable "output" of data processing, which "sources" or creates consciousness.
Of course there is nothing to suggest this is true. Appealing to an evolutionary metaphor - whereby we need only set up the right computing conditions via deep learning algorithms and so forth, and that consciousness will naturally "evolve" in the machine, as an output of data processing and symbol manipulation and probabilities, before anyone understands how or why, is the magical thinking found in the heads of most AI geeks.
Such a belief is also based not on any clear insight per what sentience is, but rather it is postulated as an axiomtic output of objective processing.
What you really have here is a reversion to Behavioralism. A modality junked years ago - we can easily see why.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 27, 2017 - 10:37am PT
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You wouldn't have clue... -WB
You're like the site poster boy for Trump America.
If it weren't so pathetic it'd be comedic.
And those on this thread...
"Werner is by several yardsticks the most solid person posting here."
and elsewhere on this site that encourage or promote your "stoooopid" ridiculous rhetoric contribute to this Trump Americanism.
Maher expressed it perfectly in his last show...
Bluff. Lie. Attack.
That's all you and Trump and other subject-matter know-nothings got. Pathetic.
America does what it can - till its destiny is revealed.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2017 - 11:41am PT
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why do you insist on equating artificial intelligence with consciousness and sentience, to begin with?
It's actually the gross materialists that are equating artificial intelligence with consciousness.
The artificial intelligence proponents are totally clueless to consciousness and sentience and its source.
This IS the main reason why the artificial intelligence proponents are steering towards that consciousness of artificial intelligence.
Why .... because ultimately the artificial intelligence proponents do NOT actually know what life itself and its actual purpose is to being with .....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 27, 2017 - 12:13pm PT
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The fiction is that Strong AI is based on evidence that the manipulation of symbols - if done quickly enough and with enough complexity and feed back loops - will somehow "source" consciousness. That is, consciousness is the natural and inevitable "output" of data processing, which "sources" or creates consciousness.
This is a strawman argument. You make the case and dismiss is one fell swoop. 15/ALL
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Bollocks, Dingus. "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent."
Strong AI takes as axiomatic that the brain is a mechanical processing agent that if we only understood the mechanism well enough, we could digitally or in some way replicate consciousness mechanically.
The "mechanism" Strong AI zeros in on is data processing, processing speed, complexity of systems, and global interface - and a host of other stuff derived from the mechanical juggling of symbols.
If my observations are straw man, that implies that the REAL argument in favor or Strong AI rests with something OTHER than an objective mechanism that processes symbols in various "intelligent" ways, and which, by virtue of these objective processes, "sources" consciousness as an output.
So what, specifically, is the other argument based on? The one that is NOT the straw man.
The evolutionary angle is another thing altogether and is fraught with more problems still. I can get into that if you want to.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 27, 2017 - 01:57pm PT
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Dingus, I like you. You keep me honest. But it's tedious to keep having to define for you simple and universally accepted terms and then have you imply that such supposed misinterpretations are in some wise stuff I am merely pulling out my ass. Fact is, I've been on this stuff since the early 90s, when Searle coined the terms "strong" and weak AI."
Since then, the universal definition of Strong AI has always been:
Strong artificial intelligence or, True AI, typically refers to:
Artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical machine that exhibits behavior at least as skillful and flexible as humans do, and the research program of building such an artificial general intelligence
Computational theory of mind, the philosophical position that human minds are, in essence, computer programs. This position was named "strong AI" by John Searle in his Chinese room argument.
Artificial consciousness, a hypothetical machine that possesses awareness of external objects, ideas and/or self awareness aka sentience.
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The above - a generic description you can Google whenever you have time - is the long and the short per the accepted definition of Strong AI, to which I was addressing. Addressing it as so defined, by virtually all in the know, might constitute a "straw man" to you, but not to the theory of mind as it is typically presented by virtually everyone.
But I know this field pretty well and what I think you are arguing against is this:
Virtually no one doing AI research is actively working on sentience itself. At best they are working on objective processing, believing they are tagentially working on consciousness, driven - as many are - by the philosophical belief that mind is electrochemical artifact sourced by said processing, or that mind is evoked or "emerges" from the physical processes of the evolved brain. Few of those positing this belief know this falls under the title of "Identity Theory," which is fraught with all kinds of problems. But that's another topic.
Thing is, the vast majority of AI researchers are working on specific functions that a robotic unit can perform, and none of these require sentience. Such machines are input-processing-output rigs. None of them have anything remotely related to awareness, though they do have machine registration of inputs - but these are obviously not the same as consciousness.
Put differently, even the most advanced Turing Machine is not conscious it is a machine, has no internal subjective life, no experience, no conscious faculty whatsoever. They are, in simple terms, simply zombies. Totally dead inside save for the mechanical manipulation of symbols.
But the vast majority of these folks maintain the belief that conscious machines are a sure or at least a theoretical possibility in the future, a belief based, without fail, on the notion that objective functioning will eventually render these machines awareness.
WHAT they are aware of will be different than what us humans are aware of - the thinking goes - because they don't have our hardware. But since awareness itself is without properties, no one can possibly conceive how the purported machine awareness will differ from the awareness found all across the animal kingdom. But again, one can go on and on about WHAT they might be aware of, but that concerns the tasking or content of awareness, not the fundamental nature of awareness itself.
That much said, there are scores of very high profile people who are currently making bold predictions of the date when machines not only become aware, but owing to their processing power, will quite possibly turn on the human hosts and do them in. The moment this occurs is known as the "singularity," and is championed by such people as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 27, 2017 - 02:10pm PT
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The moment this occurs is known as the "singularity," and is championed by such people as Stephen Hawking . . .
I thought Hawkin's singularity was a point in space-time where laws of physics break down. Maybe I'm in error.
None of them have anything remotely related to awareness, though they do have machine registration of inputs
In humans, the line between awareness and machine registration is debatable. Once again poorly defined words or expressions are at the heart of this lengthy thread. Consciousness?
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Oct 27, 2017 - 02:55pm PT
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Largo-Strong AI takes as axiomatic that the brain is a mechanical processing agent that if we only understood the mechanism well enough, we could digitally or in some way replicate consciousness mechanically. Is a human embryo sentient from conception? When does consciousnesses occur?
The massive amount of information required for the development of physical structure and high function is passed from thousands and thousands of previous human generations through code. At some point awareness is a foregone conclusion.
No specific human act will result in computers becoming self aware or sentient in an instant- humans will be entirely removed from the equation at some point. In the not-so-distant future, when man engineers a powerful enough platform, generations of quantum processing at unimaginable speed and memory along with the ability to learn and teach will result in a linear progression towards true AI.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2017 - 03:01pm PT
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DMT -- "So, of course, artificial intelligence won't tap into this mysterious source of yours."
Not just mine but also within you and outside of you and in every living entity in the entire cosmic manifestation.
You WILL "see" as there is NO escape.
You HAVE seen in many lifetimes but you don't recognize what you are seeing ....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 27, 2017 - 04:40pm PT
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In humans, the line between awareness and machine registration is debatable.
By who? And how defined?
What confuses people is that humans operate mostly in machine registration mode (all those unconscious processes), but are also conscious. It does not follow that the machine perforce, will eventually get there once the processing reaches a critical stage of learning, speed, etc. Again, there is no correlation here at all.
And take Contractor's belief: No specific human act will result in computers becoming self aware or sentient in an instant- humans will be entirely removed from the equation at some point. In the not-so-distant future, when man engineers a powerful enough platform, generations of quantum processing at unimaginable speed and memory along with the ability to learn and teach will result in a linear progression towards true AI.
This is drawn from evolutionary thinking, coupled to the creation metaphor that in this case blindly believes that mechanical process and complexity will "create" consciousness without the original designers of the "platform" ever understanding what sentience is, in mechanical terms, though they have trust, also blind, in the capacity of a syntactic engine to "evolve into" conscious by it's own hand, so to speak, once complexity, memory, and light speed (in short, mega data processing) are achieved, "some time in the future."
Once again, Contractor has simply bought into the common myth that sentience is an output. Beyond us to know what that is, but the machine will figure it out by way of computational powers unimagined by mortal man.
Problem is, at some point, even if you try and string out the "instant" sentience supposedly arises, the manipulation of symbols will somehow birth sentience.
The fact that so many people believe this is done deal, sure as Easter, is nothing short of amazing.
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Oct 27, 2017 - 05:29pm PT
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Is sentience a relative term? Does the uniqueness and level of our awareness define the definition and set the parameters?
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Oct 27, 2017 - 06:20pm PT
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Let's hope the directive is not propagation/competition based.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 27, 2017 - 08:38pm PT
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Is a human embryo sentient from conception? When does consciousnesses occur?
The massive amount of information required for the development of physical structure and high function is passed from thousands and thousands of previous human generations through code. At some point awareness is a foregone conclusion.
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This takes some unpacking, if you are actually asking a question - defined by the desire to know something you don't already know. Oftentimes what gets fobbed off for as questions here are not at all because the writers already has the "right" answer in their heads.
So far as evolutionary takes on consciousness goes, my focus in grad school was Process Philosophy so Teilhard de Chardin, Bergson, Whitehead, and Ghiselin and Barkow (evolutionary psychology) in particular were steady diets for me, so the ramblings of Moosedrool and others that the basic tenets are in the dark for me is sorta strange. Any reasonable intelligent person can get giggy with the basics.
Now let's look carefully at the first one, understanding that this is entry level stuff in the study of mind.
"Is a human embryo sentient from conception? When does consciousnesses occur?"
Before digging in, the logician always asks" What are the basic assumptions?
First, Contractor assumes that consciousness and sentience are selfsame, rather than related.
Second, the statement assumes that the creation metaphor is correct, including what's called a time vector. That is - human life started and progressed over time by way of an evolutionary process, and that both objective and subjective dimensions of human beings likewise "came into being," by increments, and by way of a complexification process.
That leaves a person adhering to this belief to understand that consciousness itself not only evolved over time, resulting in an increasingly conscious human (if one were to go from, say, Peking Man to modern man), but that each iteration of the archetype human, at any given stage of the process, also evolves through the life cycle starting with birth, advancing through the what psychologists call the individuation process, and into adulthood and finally the consciousness dies when the subject dies.
Now the problem with this is two fold. First, it assumes that the whole truth and nothing but the truth about consciousness can be understood by way of a 3rd person evaluation of objective biological functions. Second it assumes that physical structure, and the DNA passed from generation to generation inherently has the stuff required that once the physical parts in in place, consciousness is a "foregone conclusion."
But the biggest error here, in my experience and opinion, is the assumption that all of consciousness is, and can be fully understood, as the output of an evolved, biological structure.
While it won't find much favor on this thread, my understanding is that when you ask: What is consciousness, most people will seem a mechanism to "explain it," in this case, a bio mechanism.
However if you look into the realm of mind itself, as opposed to the objective process some believe "creates" or sources same, you will eventually understand that and encounter two incontrovertible facts: that consciousness has a twin aspect: That which we are aware of and perceive (content), and the fact that we are aware of that content. Without knowing and recognizing this distinction - which is a kind of first step in any medatative or introspective practice - consciousness will always be understood as a kind of composite objective function.
Now if you were to look at a newborn child, once it is more than a few days old it is clear that it is aware of both internal and external phenomenon. It had no idea WHAT (content) it aware of because it's consciousness in totally undeveloped. But the crucial thing to get here is that awareness itself is not a process or a function or output that develops or increases or ever changes. Consciousness changes and develops as the structure becomes more complex with experience.
Accordingly, consciousness can be viewed as the evolving interface between brain generated content (thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories) and awareness. All the data and complexity and learning and so forth belongs to the consciousness process. Awareness itself never changes. We don't actually become "more aware" of this or that. What happens is that consciousness becomes more and more proscribed, and the impediments to awareness become increasingly transparent until a clearer version of content can be experienced.
But blah blah blah. I really only jot out this stuff to make it clear to myself. Ultimately for this drift to make any real sense you have to do some real close study of perception itself and make it all known that way, where you can see the impossibility of equating awareness with content of any kind, on as an output.
The advantage of this POV is that you avoid Chalmer's Hard Problem, which is a trick question because it assumes an mechanistic explanation is possible for awareness, and while some believe awareness is a foregone conclusion when looking at the biology and time line, explaining how this occurs, in real world terms, is not possible because it isn't a matter of code or data. That all applies to content, not awareness.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 27, 2017 - 09:12pm PT
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What confuses people is that humans operate mostly in machine registration mode (all those unconscious processes), but are also conscious. It does not follow that the machine perforce, will eventually get there once the processing reaches a critical stage of learning, speed, etc. Again, there is no correlation here at all
When we act on instinct, is that not "machine registration" which overlaps "awareness"? Out of the corner of your eye you glimpse a speeding car and instinctively jump out of the way, without thought or volition and possibly without even being conscious of the threat.
It's unfortunate some of us here are irredeemably confused, stumbling through corridors of metaphysics and Eastern religions, conflating pathetically. And to think, we accuse you of strawmanship.
;>(
John, anyone believing in the possibility of Strong AI is a believer:
"I believe strong AI is possible"
"I believe strong AI is not possible"
Far ends of a continuous and broad spectrum of thought. You're not giggy with subtleties are you?
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Oct 27, 2017 - 09:32pm PT
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Strong A1 is definitely possible.
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Oct 27, 2017 - 09:53pm PT
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Largo- Yeah, that's a pretty darn good definition related this discussion and to the human aspect of consciousness (contemplation of awareness of being aware). You nailed it...thanks for putting it out there!
In those terms or by those peramiters, I agree, AI is an implausible concept- but not by law of nature or physical limitations. It's implausible because we are not mentally equipped to correlate the merger of chance and time in a galactic sense.
You may very well be right, Chance and time may be running parallel in this instance, never coming to an intersection, however; as long as time remains, chance remains.
If someone told me a billion years ago that someday, a concoction of water, carbon, a few elements and a little electricity would be having this discussion....
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Oct 28, 2017 - 05:20am PT
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“Do nothing that is of no use.”
~ Miyamoto Musashi
Soshin
openness, eagerness, and lack of preconception
Mushin
being present
Zanshin
Inclusive awareness
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 28, 2017 - 07:42am PT
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moosedrool says to Largo -- You seem to have knowledge, but can't come to logical conclusions.
Life itself is never bound nor restricted under the finite rules of logical conclusions.
The gross materialists are shackled to their uncontrolled dualistic minds .....
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