The Role of Philosophy in Creation of an Artificial Consciousness

Discussion in 'Intelligence & Machines' started by Technar, Sep 29, 2001.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Technar Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    49
    What will motivate an artificial consciousness to go on living?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,105
    That would be dependant on how it was created.
    If it was mapped from the brain of a man, then it might have a clue to sadness, loneliness, futility and might be corrupted by the very emotions that the person might have suffered from within life.

    of course if it's programmed and learnt from it's basic programming, it's understanding of it's existance won't be dogged with such problems as futility, after all it will learn and continue learning, but it doesn't necessarily mean that enjoys or hates learning.

    I'm sure also that it's judgement will be like any normal human being that isn't being manipulated by beliefs, by wanting to exist and survive, rather than the attrocities that the news has shown.

    I suppose you could also guess that there must be an awful amount of psychology involved, after all a machine would probably calculate the bonuses of survival, while a man might percieve that he could remove his pain through continuing his existance. (Of course I say that it would be best to continue wether man or machine, after all we should look forward to the future no matter how down you are in the present)
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    If there is no difference (artificial vs natural) then the motivation will be the same. If there is, all bets are off.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,502
    Exactly.
    Check out "The Intentional Stance" by Daniel C. Dennett.
     
  8. Technar Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    49
    In my view, it is applied problem.

    An artificial conscious system (ACS) will realize that:
    1. Its creators are mortal.
    2. It is mortal itself.
    3. It lacks immortal soul.
    4. Being capable, potentially, to live forever, it is doomed to eternal struggle for survival.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2001
  9. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,199
    Technar,

    Humans are programmed to survive because of their DNA – DNA is a superb example of a program.

    If an artificial (non-human) intelligence is also similarly programmed then it too will strive to survive.

    It would not know that it lacks an immortal soul in the same way that humans do not know if they lack immortal souls. The soul hypothesis is irrelevant here since it has no factual basis.

    Being doomed to struggle is very subjective. One could say that being challenged to survive is what makes life so enjoyable and is what makes life so valuable.

    An AI, or SAC if you prefer, clearly has an advantage over human consciousness since, as you point out it can potentially live forever, but humans are currently doomed to die, whatever they do to avoid such a fate.

    But would an AI always be mortal? If all dangers to existence can be removed then an AI would become immortal. Plenty of time and a planned evolutionary path will achieve that.

    Cris
     
  10. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    This topic reminds me of the movie "BiCentenial Man".
     
  11. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,199
    Hi KM,

    I never did see that movie. Is it worth seeing?

    Cris
     
  12. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,105
    A "soul" doesn't actually exist on it's own, it's actually just memories of incidents and morals.
    I suppose you could also through into a soul "emotions", after all us humans are an emotional breed, and as we continue I'm sure our emotions get more and more complex.

    Something that lacks the understanding of right and wrong, and hasn't evolved an emotional being of crying at sadness, being extatically happy when finding love, and angry that they can't complete a game and have to resort to cheating (No one in particular), possibly wouldn't have what you would class as a soul.

    Of course a soul you can't exactly point to in the anatomy of a human either, as it's psychological and hypothetically existant, only why your thought processes exist.

    You might say "My soul feels alive" when someone dear to you gets close, But in truth they are just stimulating your heart to beat and a whole bunch of chemicals to be produced.

    As for the Mortal and Immortality issue of a Artificial intelligence, It's simple, Mortal is defined by having a life expectancy, immortal means to exist forever with no regard for life expectancy.
    You could simply ask, would a system would have really lived unless it is mortal?

    The only dangers that exist with the creation of artificial intelligence is purely down to how the creators develop it. After all if you treat a dog badly it will bite you, and if you treat it well it want's to be your best friend.

    Also the application of an AI is something else to look at, after all the AI might be utilised in Data searchs, or Image manipulation (with AI's it would be possible to create films like "Final Fantasy" within a few months) perhaps your worried about AI's dealing with certain things like for instance "Flying a plane into land", an AI would be less suseptible to being contaminated by a virus or manipulated through a trojan, as a preportion of artificial intelligence would include "Error checking and correction".

    Although the system would be no more infalible than ourselves.

    It pretty much brings me to something I wrote on another topic,
    I suppose you could call that an analysis of perfectionism.
     
  13. tony1 Jesus is Lord Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,279
    *Originally posted by Technar
    What will motivate an artificial consciousness to go on living?
    *

    Artificial cheeseburgers, artificial TV, artificial fun, artificial work, you know, the same stuff that motivates us, except artificial.

    *A system of artificial consciousness (SAC) will realize that:
    1. Its creators are mortal.
    *

    It'll do the same thing artificial thinkers do today, and claim to deny the existence of proof of "creators."

    *Originally posted by Cris
    It would not know that it lacks an immortal soul in the same way that humans do not know if they lack immortal souls.
    *

    Sadly true, although evidence abounds.
    Every look in a mirror reveals the soul; every walk past a cemetery reveals they aren't immortal.

    *If all dangers to existence can be removed then an AI would become immortal.*

    Immortal AI merely awaits the invention of the unremovable extension cord.
    Oh, and the intelligence.
     
  14. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    For those who want to debate AI, and do not have the education on the subject, that is a good movie. I saw part of it in Showtime. You can rent the DVD now....it is not worth buying...even though Robin Williams is one of my favorite actors.
     
  15. Technar Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    49
    Postulate 1. A conscious system (CS) needs an integral exhaustive model of the Universe (IEMU).

    Postulate 2. The scientific model of the Universe (SMU) will always be a strict subset of IEMU.

    Corollary. A CS will always need believes.

    What will an artificial CS believe in?
     
  16. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,105
    An A.I.C.S. should have the belief:

    "Nothing is better than learning" or "It can learn"

    It should believe that all man made religious beliefs are "fiction"
    (After all it knows it's creator, and ther is a nice length of history about how the Abacus came to be in ancient Greece or Charles Babbages Adding machine.)

    Should it believe it's alive? and if so should it act out like a Gibsonised AI and ask for Citizenship to a country?

    I know its beliefs should consider that mankind is useful even if time and time again we seemingly do things recklessly.

    (Of course we can't see ahead like a quantum machine might be able to, and if we did see ahead and change we wouldn't have been built to deal with the changes that occur.)
     
  17. Gravage Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,241
    Hmmm...

     
  18. Canute Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,923
    Seems to me to be a bit ambitious to say that we can create machine consciousness when we haven't even got an agreed scientific definition of consciousness, have no scientific way of detecting its presence or absence, and still have no scientific theory of how it arises.

    Perhaps one day we'll do it, but I'd bet my extensive personal fortune (lol) on the fact that it isn't possible. I'd argue it's been shown to be impossible, and that not far in the future this will be the orthodox view.
     
  19. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    What kind of personal fortune? A dog, a cat and a GEO Metro?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    That is what they said at the turn of the last Century on just about everything. So history repeats itself in this instance.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  20. Canute Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,923
    True. But they also said lots of other things that were true, so history doesn't tell us much on this one.

    You don't think I'd risk that much on the bet do you?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  21. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    Assume for a moment, we are monkeys in a monkey world. Do you think, we will ever predict the human kind - our next step in evolution? It is unthinkable. And any monkey who says that will be driven out of the monkeyland.
     
  22. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,199
    Canute,

    From a technologists perspective consciousness must be an emergent property of neural network complexity. We’ll know when we create such complexity in an artificial medium and that seems possible at around 2020 with the current rate of growth of computer power.

    You mean like the famous scientific claim that Bumble-bees can’t fly?

    But we know consciousness exists so why wouldn’t we be able to recreate it in an artificial medium? Why isn’t it just a matter of reverse engineering?
     
  23. spookz Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,390
    it an evil plot. chris is an humanoid looking ai that is subtly brainwashing us humans into accepting his kind.

    as a self appointed rep of humans, i am here to declare...begone robot! begone or face extermination

    * and thus.... the matrix begins
    * chris prevails!
    *human mucho idiota!
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page