candice schuster wrote:
Richard,
Thank you for a thought provoking response. I admire your ability to
think with both logic and reason. I think what Searle was trying to get
at was this...and I have read 'The Chinese Room Theory'...I think that
what he was trying to say was...if the human brain breaks down code like
a machine does, that does not make it understand the logic of the code,
it is afterall code. If you go back to basics, for example binary code,
it becomes almost sequence and you are (well some of us are, like
machines) able to understand how to put the puzzle together again but we
may not understand the logic behind that code, ie: The Chinese Language
as a whole.
Although for instance the AI has the ability to decifer the code
and respond, it does not understand the whole, which is funny in a way
as you call your cause 'Singularity'...which to me implies 'wholeness'
for some reason.
Regarding your comment on....shock, horror, they made an AI that has
human cognitive thought processes, quite the contrary Richard, if you
and the rest of the AI community come up with the goods I would be most
intrigued to sit your AI down in front of me and ask it.......'Do you
understand the code 'SMILE' ?'
A general point about your reply.
I think some people have a mental picture of what a computer does when
it is running an AI program, in which the computer does an extremely
simple bit of symbol manipulation, and the very "simplicity" of what is
happening in their imagined computer is what makes them think: this
machine is not really understanding anything at all.
So for example, if the computer is set up SMILE subroutine that just
pulled a few muscles around, and this SMILE subroutine was triggered,
say, when the audio detectors picked up the sound of someone laughing,
then this piece of code would not be understanding or feeling a smile.
I agree: it would not. Most other AI researchers would agree that such
a simple piece of code is not a system that "understands" anything.
(Not all would agree, but let's skirt that for the moment).
But this where a simple mental image of what goes in a computer can be a
very misleading thing. If you thought that all AI programs were just
the same as this, then you might think that it is just as easy to
dismiss all AI programs with the same "This is not really understanding"
verdict.
If Searle had only said that he objected to simple programs being
described as "conscious" or "self aware" then all power to him.
So what happens in a real AI program that actually has all the machinery
to be intelligent? ALL of the machinery, mark you.
Well, it is vastly more complex: a huge amount of processing happens,
and the "smile" response comes out for the right reasons.
Why is that more than just a SMILE subroutine being triggered by the
audio detectors measuring the sound of laughter?
Because this AI system is doing some very special things along with all
the smiling: it is thinking about its own thoughts, among other things,
and what we know (believe) is that when the system gets that complicated
and has that particular mix of self-reflection in it, the net result is
something that must talk about having an inner world of experience. It
will talk about qualia, it will talk about feelings .... and not because
it has been programmed to do that, but because when it tries to
understand the world it really does genuinely find those things.
This is the step I mentioned in the last message I sent, and it is very
very subtle: when you try to think about what is going on in the AI,
you come to the inevitable conclusion that we are also "AI" systems, but
the truth is that all AI systems (natural and artifical) possess some
special properties: they have this thing that you describe as
subjective consciousness.
This is difficult to talk about in such a short space, but the crude
summary is that if you make an AI extremely complex (with
self-reflection, and with no direct connections between things like a
smile and the causes of that smile) then that very complexity gives rise
to something that was not there before: consciousness.
Richard Loosemore
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