This topic is currently marked as "dormant"—the last message is more than 90 days old. You can revive it by posting a reply.
1modalursine
Not bloody likely!
Picking Our Brains: Can We Make a Conscious Machine?
New Scientist (04/06/10) Biever, Celeste
The effort to create artificial consciousness is gaining momentum. How would we know that we had succeeded?
"We have to
consider machine consciousness as a grand challenge, like putting a man on the
moon," says the University of Palermo's Antonio Chella, editor of the International
Journal of Machine Consciousness, which launched last year. The closest a software bot has come to attaining artificial consciousness may be the Intelligent
Distribution Agent (IDA), which was created by the University of Memphis' Stan
Franklin. In your dreams, guys, Nowhere close. IDA assigns sailors from the U.S. Navy to new jobs and must coordinate
naval policies, job requirements, changing costs, and sailor's needs. IDA has both
conscious and unconscious levels of processing. The updated Learning IDA was
recently completed, and it can learn from past experiences as well as feel emotions
in the form of high-level goals that guide the decision-making process. Feel emotions? What are those dudes smoking hey? The
University of Vermont's Josh Bongard has designed a walking robot that can maintain
its function after being damaged. The robot has a continuously updated internal
model of itself, which is considered a key part of human sentience What a mush!and takes the robot closer to self-awareness.
In a pigs eye it does! Every cell in your body has a copy of your DNA, hence a model of itself. So every cell in your body is individually conscious or has made a giant leap toward consciousness? I don't think so!
Meanwhile, the Carlos III University of Madrid's
Raul Arrabales recently developed Conscale, a program that compares the intelligence
of various software agents.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627542.000-picking-our-brains-can-we-mak...
The farmer took another load away.
It wasn't hay.
Picking Our Brains: Can We Make a Conscious Machine?
New Scientist (04/06/10) Biever, Celeste
The effort to create artificial consciousness is gaining momentum. How would we know that we had succeeded?
"We have to
consider machine consciousness as a grand challenge, like putting a man on the
moon," says the University of Palermo's Antonio Chella, editor of the International
Journal of Machine Consciousness, which launched last year. The closest a software bot has come to attaining artificial consciousness may be the Intelligent
Distribution Agent (IDA), which was created by the University of Memphis' Stan
Franklin. In your dreams, guys, Nowhere close. IDA assigns sailors from the U.S. Navy to new jobs and must coordinate
naval policies, job requirements, changing costs, and sailor's needs. IDA has both
conscious and unconscious levels of processing. The updated Learning IDA was
recently completed, and it can learn from past experiences as well as feel emotions
in the form of high-level goals that guide the decision-making process. Feel emotions? What are those dudes smoking hey? The
University of Vermont's Josh Bongard has designed a walking robot that can maintain
its function after being damaged. The robot has a continuously updated internal
model of itself, which is considered a key part of human sentience What a mush!and takes the robot closer to self-awareness.
In a pigs eye it does! Every cell in your body has a copy of your DNA, hence a model of itself. So every cell in your body is individually conscious or has made a giant leap toward consciousness? I don't think so!
Meanwhile, the Carlos III University of Madrid's
Raul Arrabales recently developed Conscale, a program that compares the intelligence
of various software agents.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627542.000-picking-our-brains-can-we-mak...
The farmer took another load away.
It wasn't hay.
2kukulaj
I think "consciousness" is a category a bit like "hurricane". Sure, there are very clear instances of the category hurricane. But down toward diffuse tropical storm, the line gets rather fuzzy.
Turing's test is of course the classical measure. I am fascinated by the evolving "captcha" technology and its battle with ever more sophisticated robot technology. Somehow it seems to me that the classical AI battles have just become obsolete by now. Remember when it was such a big deal, whether a computer could play chess?
The real frontier seems to be in the direction Rodney Brooks is working - see his Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI. Real intelligence arises from thick interaction with the environment. See also Computation and Human Experience by Philip Agre.
Turing's test is of course the classical measure. I am fascinated by the evolving "captcha" technology and its battle with ever more sophisticated robot technology. Somehow it seems to me that the classical AI battles have just become obsolete by now. Remember when it was such a big deal, whether a computer could play chess?
The real frontier seems to be in the direction Rodney Brooks is working - see his Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI. Real intelligence arises from thick interaction with the environment. See also Computation and Human Experience by Philip Agre.
3richardbsmith
Roger Penrose in Shadows of the Mind has listed 4 viewpoints about the relation between computation and consciousness. The footnotes credit Philip Johnson-Laird, Mental Models, pg 252.
1 All thinking is computational, and awareness can be evoked precisely by computation
2 Awareness is a feature of the brain's physical action and can be simulated with computation, but simulation cannot achieve awareness
3 Awareness is a feature of the brain's physical action and the physical action cannot be properly simulated with computation
4 Awareness cannot be explained by physical, computational, or other scientific means
1 All thinking is computational, and awareness can be evoked precisely by computation
2 Awareness is a feature of the brain's physical action and can be simulated with computation, but simulation cannot achieve awareness
3 Awareness is a feature of the brain's physical action and the physical action cannot be properly simulated with computation
4 Awareness cannot be explained by physical, computational, or other scientific means
4modalursine
ref #2
...Turing's test is of course the classical measure.
Turing's test does not address the issue of consciousness.
Turings test was supposed to be a practical definition about how we would know that a machine is "intelligent".
I believe there is some discussion in philosophical circles about whether it is in principle possible for a crittur to be "intelligent" but not "conscious"; i.e. whether there are such things as "philosophical zombies". I'm not sure that the term "philosophical zombie" was even coined in Turing's lifetime ( He died1950's, if I have it right. Its a nasty story, actually)
An "intelligent" machine (say, one that plays chess at grand master level) is one thing, a "conscious" machine would be quite something else again.
I don't know how you tell if the fellow sitting next to you is conscious (or only faking it, i.e. "a zombie") let alone whether a machine is. Are dogs conscious? Any dog owner would say yes in a heartbeat, but could anybody develop evidence that would (or should) convince a skeptical outsider? What about squirrels? Birds? REptiles? Insects? Worms? Planaria? Ameoba?
How low does it go?
...Turing's test is of course the classical measure.
Turing's test does not address the issue of consciousness.
Turings test was supposed to be a practical definition about how we would know that a machine is "intelligent".
I believe there is some discussion in philosophical circles about whether it is in principle possible for a crittur to be "intelligent" but not "conscious"; i.e. whether there are such things as "philosophical zombies". I'm not sure that the term "philosophical zombie" was even coined in Turing's lifetime ( He died1950's, if I have it right. Its a nasty story, actually)
An "intelligent" machine (say, one that plays chess at grand master level) is one thing, a "conscious" machine would be quite something else again.
I don't know how you tell if the fellow sitting next to you is conscious (or only faking it, i.e. "a zombie") let alone whether a machine is. Are dogs conscious? Any dog owner would say yes in a heartbeat, but could anybody develop evidence that would (or should) convince a skeptical outsider? What about squirrels? Birds? REptiles? Insects? Worms? Planaria? Ameoba?
How low does it go?
5bjza
Philosophical zombies originate with the work of a more recent philosopher, David Chalmers. His blog: http://fragments.consc.net
The New Scientist article is needlessly bombastic, but it doesn't advance the conversation to just naysay one journalist's hyperbole. There are important philosophical questions to ask here, mostly in terms of clarifying definitions (self-aware, consciousness, emotion) and finding ways to decide between the four viewpoints richardbsmith listed.
For example, I don't think it's productive to compare the model in the 'mind' of Bongard's self-aware robot to DNA. Humans have an internal image of their body's position in space. Bongard set out to give a robot that same sensation and find a way to use the internal image in reasoning. This is simply a step toward computationally modeling a humanlike mind, and not even the New Scientist writer is saying it means this particular robot is conscious.
For the IDA: while I understand the skepticism at the claims as presented in New Scientist, I wonder what evidence we'd all need accept that an AI did feel emotions. Do some of us completely reject the possibility? On what grounds? The case described sounds interesting and like a practical application for an expert system that experiences feelings.
The New Scientist article is needlessly bombastic, but it doesn't advance the conversation to just naysay one journalist's hyperbole. There are important philosophical questions to ask here, mostly in terms of clarifying definitions (self-aware, consciousness, emotion) and finding ways to decide between the four viewpoints richardbsmith listed.
For example, I don't think it's productive to compare the model in the 'mind' of Bongard's self-aware robot to DNA. Humans have an internal image of their body's position in space. Bongard set out to give a robot that same sensation and find a way to use the internal image in reasoning. This is simply a step toward computationally modeling a humanlike mind, and not even the New Scientist writer is saying it means this particular robot is conscious.
For the IDA: while I understand the skepticism at the claims as presented in New Scientist, I wonder what evidence we'd all need accept that an AI did feel emotions. Do some of us completely reject the possibility? On what grounds? The case described sounds interesting and like a practical application for an expert system that experiences feelings.
7Atomicmutant
Conscious robots?
Oh, sorry, I thought we were talking about US.
*resumes regularly scheduled programming*
Oh, sorry, I thought we were talking about US.
*resumes regularly scheduled programming*
