Will machines become conscious someday?

Discussion in 'Intelligence & Machines' started by Magical Realist, Sep 19, 2012.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps you should check up on the latest research into nano technology and quantum computing. Speed will not be a problem.

    When we can custom fold proteins for specific functions, we can build living, sentient beings. Not human, but sentient.

    http://fold.it/portal/info/science

    I won't argue the particulars of size and speed, but when you use the word "fox" in a search engine on the internet you will get all the answers you just provided, complete with images. And all that information was simulataneously available everywhere. Was the internet "curious" about a "fox" for just a moment?

    http://lateralaction.com/articles/computers-creativity/
    http://www.dtreg.com/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

    ??? What can man not do??? Have sentience, just like the slug, or an advanced slug like a cuttle fish? It is one of the common denominators of being classified as an living organism. All living things that react to stimulus are sentient, down to the chemical and even quantum level. The universe itself is an artificial sentience (see David Bohm). How is it that the universe allows creation and evolution of species and intelligence? From single celled amoebas to the human brain, from whence the Creativity?
    Are you telling me that intelligence and creativity is unnatural or supernatural?

    Humans are being programmed from the moment they are born. This is via the mirror neural system and we are beginning to build these in computers. Combining this technology with Holographic technology we might actually be able to follow the thought patterns of a computer as it constructs images.

    Every visionary has been declared insane by someone who did not stop to consider our extraordinary ability to create.

    No one is saying that we can do this now, but learning is an exponential function and I am confident that we will be able to construct sophisticated decision making computers very shortly (perhaps a few decades)
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2013
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  3. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Again read the links about neuromorphic chips, they are not software or "programmed" they operate in a in hardware manner meant to replicate (reverse engineer) the functions of biological neurons and synapses in silico!

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    "A new "neuromorphic" design instead tries to recreate the brain's hardware, using analogue components last seen in the early days of computing. "On our system, you can physically point to the neuron," says Karlheinz Meier of the University of Heidelberg in Germany." -- http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628925.100-brainlike-chip-outstrips-normal-computers.html
     
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  5. kangle Registered Member

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    Of course machines will be conscious, the human brain has a certain number of neural connections, the computer doesnt compare at the moment but every day its getting closer, so the computer will not only be smarter then the human brain, but it will be comparable to humans to the monkeys, except in this case the humans are the monkeys..........but nevertheless even if i was wrong about this, i could still argue that machines will without a doubt be conscious in the future,as we replace our bodies with mechanical parts, prosthetics controlled by microchips in the brain already do this, we will become the machines, stop thinking about it as in the Matrix its us against the machines, everyday we are advancing in turning our weak human body into a mechanical machine. Think about this.... our brain passes data, once we can process the same data at a faster rate, we theoretically could copy the data, or even transfer it. The U.S army already uses prosthetics that make their injured soldiers not just ready for combat, but faster and stronger then they were originally. through prosthetics robotic legs and arms. So imagine we could give you a synthetic avatar, that looked and felt human in everyway, and then simple copied your brain data, ur conscious into this machine. Then the machine would have conscious and could technically live for ever.

    But if you are bit more imaginative you could also realise that once this happens, space travel will never be an issue for us, as machines time would no longer be as relevant, but imagine we could find a planet with intelligent life, if they had machines, we could send our conscious across space and simply upload at the other side.

    even on a smaller scale if you remove space travel it would mean that we could instantly travel anywhere around the world, teleportation. Emails only take a second, when internet speeds are that fast and we are machines, wouldnt you upload where you wanted to be?

    The Oldest Human Ever Found was 7 Million Years Old, and in 7 Million Years of Human Evolution, We are the first generation that has the possibility of living forever through machines, and even if the first model isnt that good, who cares you can upgrade, but the human body dies and leaves this world. We, as a species are very close and we should really be trying much harder to reach that goal sooner.
     
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  7. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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  8. Pithikos Registered Member

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    The human brain can't multitask either. You can't think about two things at the same time, thus a linear calculation is sufficient to mimic the human thought.

    What about object oriented programming? That does quite simply that. Most of the code in a program with graphic interface never runs. Other than that you could have some thousands of comparisons on the same line and thus be certain that part of the code never runs on specific occasions. It is complex but it's doable.

    Example:
    Code:
    IF (wife NOT here AND hungry AND NOT thirsty AND only me in kitchen AND kitchen looks like last time without the people AND mood is relaxed AND NOT other things to do AND not visible moving objects)
    THEN
    (make a sandwitch)
    I truly believe that a person's one day can be analyzed to some millions if-then-else sentences. Find a programmer with patience and he can make a replica out of you. Is the replica going to have consciousness? Probably not. That would take some more coding.

    What many programmers lack is imagination.
     
  9. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    we already have decent AI.
    for specific purposes some AIs are almost perfected.
    it's relatively easy to write a car diagnosis program.
    getting a computer to emulate intelligence isn't really a problem.
    getting it to decode what a CCD sends it is a different matter.
     
  10. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I did say true AI, not emulated intelligence.
     
  11. leopold Valued Senior Member

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  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Now imagine a self motivating operating system which tries to observe, learn, and classify everything it sees, hears, smells (tastes), and senses for three years among normally functioning adults. This is what human children do, from the moment we are born we begin to absorb knowledge of our surroundings.

    AI is only limited by processing power and storage capacity.....and clinical curiosity.
     
  13. Pithikos Registered Member

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    74
    I don't think plugging consciousness into a machine is that hard. The big deal is to make the machine creative. If that can be solved then I don't think there is a single hinder to make a robot do exactly what a human does: think, have consciousness, have emotions, draw, sing, come up with new solutions to problems.
     
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Creativity may well be an emergent property of need. If a slime mold (colony of brainless amoebas) can navigate a maze, a robot with "curiosity" and "desire" to experiment should be able to recognize, analyze, process and act, based on incomplete data.

    Just look at the extraordinary complexity and beauty of fractals which are simple self duplicating programs. In fact the very fabric of the universe may well be fractal based. (see Renate Loll, CDT (causal dynamic triangulation). An abstract idea which is not in conflict with either Relativity and QM, and that is something.

    God does not bring anything to knowledge of the universe, except an unprovable speculation.
     
  15. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    this might not be as hard as you think.
    the REAL problem in this area is DEFINING what creativity is.
    if you define creativity as making something that has never been seen before then yes computers can create.
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    IMO, there is no law in nature which forbids robots from becoming sentient is there? We do know a little about evolution (data) and nano-technology. In principle IA is a perfect candidate for being programmed to evolve into sentience.
     
  17. Pithikos Registered Member

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    Of course that is not creativity. Every single calculation made by a machine would then be considered creativity.
    Creativity is to take two or more abstract/concrete things and combine parts of them to create a new abstract/concrete thing. To me that seems hard to create in a very defined environment.
     
  18. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    can you create patterns with a spirograph set?
    what if you could adjust the holes in the gears, would the result be termed "creative"?
     
  19. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    we can precisely define chaotic equations that give an infinite boundary to a finite surface.
    some genius comes along and 1 ups everyone with this:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbulb
    remember, that's from a well defined formula.
     
  20. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    it's my opinion that if the human mind can be emulated by sheer processing power alone then the internet itself will provide the solution.
     
  21. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I disagree. Present day computers won't come alive, but future types of neural networks might. It would take a different kind of architecture. It would have to be self-learning.
     
  22. kwhilborn Banned Banned

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    I agree. I think I had said that earlier as well. It would need to be self learning and be from the future.

    From post 92,
    @ leopold,
    not very active on this thread but...
    There most certainly was a language called BASIC.

    From Wikipedia
    Remember...
    I have been programming since the age of 9.

    I had a 16k computer worth $1400.00 (TRS-80)

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    When I entered High School I had some Grade 9 classes but was taking Grade 11 Computer classes and teaching other students more than I learned. How could you NOT know about Basic?

    When all if/then statements needed a goto statement at the end, and all lines needed numbering. All programming today is still simply a variety of if/then statements and actions.

    In the 90's it was updated to be "VISUAL BASIC". I said I learned BASIC as a teenager. I did not say last week.
     
  23. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    not "a basic".
    like your quote stated, BASIC was a FAMILY of languages, these differences are known as dialects.
    doesn't mean much.
    programming is a skill that you either have it or you don't.
    those that DO have it quickly run out of challenges except for the oddball hard glitches.
    challenges such as new and novel problems.
    oh my god, a cassette drive.
    at least mine had 2 percom floppies, each gave about 150K of external storage.
    BASIC is the worst name that could be given to that language.
    the syntax was duck soup to understand and with machine code could match ANYTHING today.
    the BASIC i cut my teeth on was available around 1982 or so and included the else clause.
    this improvement resulted in more compact code because you didn't need a separate line for each if then.
    it also allowed you to set variables before executing a goto.
    i seem to have a great deal of problems with a program that doesn't have line numbers.
    a holdover from machine code programming maybe?
    you keep forgetting the human factor for some reason.
    visual basic is okay if you are into windows type of programs.
    i've found that the most need for programs are of the "specialized" types.
    straight basic is perfect for these types of applications.
     

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