Will machines become conscious someday?

IMO, consciousness is awareness and understanding one's environment. This is accomplshed by the mirror neural network which allows us to "share" observational and physical experiences.

Perhaps we may be able to use this natural function (a mirror matrix) into a AI. I am fascinated by the concept and current studies on mirror neural networks as our learning center.

 

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No they won't. Our most complex computer is dumber than a frog and we will never be able to create one . We lack the knowledge and cannot even agree what consciousness is , let alone replicate it in our creations. We will be dust { I mean humanity} long before we have a chance to create something like that, no matter what the eggheads at Google might wish for.

 

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My research into myself suggests no.

If you consider machines are already far more intelligent generally speaking than we are the idea they will match us in our awareness is questionable.

I've often thought perhaps the reason we aren't able to do so many calculations per second as machines are is because when something gains consciousness it inherently takes a certain amount of computing power away. So once a machine becomes self aware most of its abilities would be lost due to consciousness somehow taking away a great deal of that.

Also I am of the mind that only something organic can be self aware due to reasons unknown. Most likely we'd be silicon lifeforms and living like computers if evolution had deemed it worthy. I believe only something organic can be self aware even when a machine can mimic it.

Those are my thoughts

 

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But evolution needed humans to create the machine life. We still have a little ways to go yet. But we have made good progress don't you think?

 

I'm looking forward to the movie below.

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[video=youtube;owsZmlix_I0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owsZmlix_I0[/video]

 

Sounds grate... an i thank that most of us here will live long enuff to realize the reality of such stuff.!!!

 

Maybe, I'm hoping for another 20+ years. Do you think that will be enough time?

 

I think the film is more about the megalomania of the good doctor than the machine.

Billy T, I'm afraid all your measurements of photons don't answer the question. It's assumed that a reflected photon is the same as the impinging one. No way to tell, my initial hypothesis holds true i.e. energy loss/gain/spacetime such and such. It's too easy to get stuck in classical paradigms. Photons are handy models but... I thought the whole point of the 'Which Box' experiment was that the decision to perform an observation affects the history of the particle. Whether the observation is made 1 second or fifteen years later is irrelevant. It's supposed to be a quantum theory neutral experiment. The separation of the boxes is also irrelevant as the two paths could be a kilometre apart when the decision is made. What I'd like to know is whether the photon always comes out of the single slit or only half the times.

EF, I am not looking for an escape pod for the concept of soul. I'll be the first to shake hands with a robot, tell jokes, dance and all those other things with it. I was trying to suggest that if quantum effects play any part in the way our brains work it would a) explain how even little children can jump outside the frame of a problem, and b) why no program (I assumed the programming) is going to be conscious. So far strong AI has tackled particular tasks which humans can do, and indeed machines can better us in many. But they can't discuss stuff like this, they can't make use of... meta-programming? Jumping out of the paradigm? Maybe they just haven't written code that can do that yet. Personally I don't think it's possible to write consciousness, it has to evolve somehow.

And you still seem to be hung up on the dualistic thing. Cosmic consciousness (spiritual mumbo-jumbo) may have a perfectly rational scientific explanation and artificial consciousness may be able to partake of it. It wouldn't belittle the experience. The two are not mutually exclusive and it is pedantic and unscientific to believe otherwise. Only the closed mind is certain. There is no certainty in science.

As to all the stuff about memory design, 3D substrates and so on, it's missing the point. It matters not what form the machine takes. It could be cogs and wheels or protein interactions or photonics or anything at all. Maybe neutron stars are conscious. The medium doesn't matter.

 

At the very least... i thank wit-in 20 years it will be perty evident to most people that such a singularity is a reality.!!!

Yeah... it woud be tuff to make a movie that actualy involved a singularity sinse it woud be incomprehensible to us humans watchin it... lol... but im hopin it will give an interestin an plausable portrayal of the subject.!!!

I thank the "code" for "conscious machines" will be written by the machines humans build... an when machines do evolve to that pont... singularity will only be a hop skip an a jump away.!!!

 

I agree, IMO consciousness is an "emergent" property along with ability to process information and taking independent action. And, IMO, that is certainly achievable in the not too distant future.

Is there a natural law that forbids non-biological consciousness?

 

None i know of... but some peopole beleive thers somptin magical/god-like about consciousness so it cant be duplicated.!!!

 

Probably not here is the place to reply, but briefly: Photo reflected off a mirror has a momentum change (mirror getting the difference) and after refection has very slightly less energy. If you want to say that the original photon has been destroyed, OK, but then when I type I am destroyed too as my moving fingers are changing my momentum, and very small energy changes are reducing my total energy as striking the key is heating them. Summary you concept of "destroyed" allows NOTIHNG TO AVOID CONTINUOUS DESTRUCITON and so is useless.

 

Yes, IMO, there is an unfair standard being used, comparing man's mind with AI.
It took us 300,000 years to produce Karpov (world champion chess player) and in a few years we built a computer that beat him.. Give AI a few hundred years and man may be considered the sacred creator or a pesky nuisance (much as ants are to us today). It makes for great sci-fi!

 

Yes, for finding optium solution to well defined problem with many alternatives choices / variables to consider, commuters designed spiciflically for that problem are already fasters and better than man; However, man is not so limited, but a general problem solver.
Furthermore, man interacts with the environment, and senses it to do so. On doing that, AI machines are decades from reaching first grade level, if not centuries.

When a computer driven machine can solve and do this cup stacking problem repeatedly even 10% as well as humans can - say no errors and not more than 10 times slower, I'll stop laughing at your humans becoming a "pesky nuisance."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0YgrUKfTcA or more tries at new record and slow motion of it done and side-by-side competitors see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annot...&feature=iv&src_vid=3xeFvKz6uh8&v=1RtZFDccTRI And this one, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7IMT8n0lJM opens with a kid who looks to be no more than four years old -plus about 4 minutes into video - see it done blind folded! (Only tactile and sonic, no visual, interaction with the environment)
All at the world championships - 18 countries and more than 1000 contestants! - An Olympic Sport in 2020?

As a display of human abilities, which I predict no AI machine will match in even 1000 years of progress, cup stacking is right up there with gold metal level ice skating, but yes AI machines can now often walk on level, obstacle-free, ground. Don't sell short what 300,000 years of Darwinian selection has produced.

 

Precisely, that is why I pointed out the evolutionary time element. From the trillions of natural experimentations to produce the human brain in 300,000 years it is reasonable to assume a very sophisticated evolutionary result.

But if we were to purposely program and refine AI, such as giving it sophisticated "sensory abilities" and "mirror neural networks", I see no reason to assume that AI cannot BECOME so intelligent as to acquire a consciousness, a self awareness. (which may be different than human self awareness.)
In this case Nature is not the "random" evolutionary force, but Science would be the "focused" evolutionary causality.

Today we cheat evolution all the time. It is what can make us either gods (to AI) or pesky nuisances to Gaia.

 

Not that ther woud be a necessity for it... but less than hundred years from now... creatures... includin dionsaurs... an yes... even "humans"... lol... woud be reproducible in the blink of an eye.!!!

Wit-in the next 50 years... "humans" will be mor machine than biological... but it will be a relatively gradual process... an only the close-minded old-timers an supersticious will be nay-sayers about the inevitable progress... much like the people who were outraged over hart transplants... worried that the soul might be transfered to the new body... lol.!!!

Humans... grab you'r ankles an kiss you'r biololgical Azz good-by... an live forever as a machine

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Self aware AI may or may not ever come about, but I'm pretty sure more advanced computers will augment the human brain directly. Even now we are making progress in telling computers what to do mentally. The science channel did a full hour program on it, for helping the physically handicapped.

But once something can be done, it won't be limited to just handicapped people. The gamers will be drooling for it and students will have instant access to any information on the Internet. I could go on and on about the possibilities of direct brain contact with computers. But I shouldn't have to go over the obvious.

Any human that is able to augment their brain with a computer will never willingly give it up. I sure wouldn't. It will become such a tight bond that if that connection is lost for whatever reason, that human will become and feel severely handicapped until the connection can be restored.

Because of the energy needs of the human brain, it's about as big as it can be biologically speaking. So the only way intelligence can continue to evolve is for the biological brain to be augmented externally and we are in the process of doing just that.

 

Look forward to the movie, but dread the reality. Scary stuff! If schlock Sci-Fi has taught us anything it is to fear computers smarter than we are.

 

Yes that's true, but in the case of this movie, isn't the plot about uploading a human personality into the machine? This would not be a computer anymore would it? It's more about a human gaining the resources of the machine and being corrupted by the power it gave him. Personally I don't think humans would be willing to give up their bodies to become a disembodied super intelligent machine. The process of being connected to a machine with a mind interface will develop slowly over many decades of developing, refining and improving the interface for a very large segment of the population and not just one power mad individual.

 

The concept is one of the main concerns of Transcendence in general. Imagine if Hitler's mind had been uploaded into a computer... It can be perceived that he was a sick man for the sorts of things he believed and if he'd been placed into a machine the question would have been if that sickness would have persisted. It's an argument I had at a Transhumanist talk in 2011, where someone was talking on the subject of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence Sentience. My point was "I fear the psychology of men more than the sentiency of a machine" mainly for the pretence that we can be sick, we can be deluded and we most definitely can be egocentric, and all of that isn't even breaking a program since we weren't running one to begin with.