Here`s a short question; what defines us as humans? There is two main approaches to this. Either Man is created by God, or God is created by Man. Are we something bigger than simply extremely complex machines or are we something that exceeds a mathematical formulae and machine logic? Are our choices our own, or are they simply the forces of chemicals and electricity in a vastly comprehensive mass of connections. If we are the Machines of God then we will match the technical know-how to create consciousness, it`s only a matter of time. When we do match it, it will go shooting far past our own capabilities. But `create consciousness`? Is that possible? It`s hard to image (little alone, accept), but just like proving the Earth wasn`t the centre of the Universe, as soon as we humble ourselves to the truth and get over our egocentric outlook we will see that the beginning of machine intelligence is not the end of humanity, it is the force of evolution. It is the next step. We can afford to put it off, but it will do us no good. It will come, the definition of machine will change, and we will never be the same.
Dionysus, I almost moved this to religion where you would get more responses. But really your suggestion is really more appropriate here. But it isn't really a question is it. You've already realized where human evolution is headed. You have no argument from me. BTW welcome to sciforums.
Chris, let this is thread talk intelligence and AI and other interesting stuff alone.Let us not get bogged down by Soul and other things.Please Move this to relegion,where it would be more suitable. request grant would be appreciated. thanks. bye!
I have no objections to having this thread moved. If it results in more feedback. I was looking for some opposite opinions, but perhaps I won`t find any Luddites here.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Don`t get me wrong, it`s not that I want to chanllenge people`s belief, I want to understand another viewpoint on this subject. One more thing; if anyone can point me in the direction of subjects like the one I have presented here, please by all means show me the way. Thank you. (Thank you also for welcoming me to the forum. It was unexpectant to see a sense of community.)
Moved from Intelligence and Machines to Religion upon request and reconsidered relevance. Enjoy. Cris
Lets say we create some damn good AI in the not so distant future. How do we know it's conscious? because it can respond to us? Because it tells us it is? I've talked on IM with scripts before and was fooled for a short time into thinking it was a person(a very strange one). I think at some point we'll create something that resembles humans too much to pawn off as just a machine (unless you want to say that people just are). even if the machines did replace us, wouldn't that be a much better way to go out rather than killing each other?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I think the Turing test isn't enough. It doesn't matter if it can fool someone into thinking it's another person, if all it is is a massive script. I think one key would be, can it learn and adjust its behavior. That's not consciousness, but it's the path there. Maybe, just like in movies and books, the machine becomes aware when it starts asking the human "who am I?" Of course, we still ask that ourselves.
The soul in it's pure form is an entity that is smaller than the cosmos and larger than all created elements within the cosmos....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! My stupid opinion
The Turing test really isn`t enough. But how can you really gauge intelligence, or most specifically consciousness? I think we`ll find that as machines test that question in the coming decades we`ll discover more about ourselves than most will really want to know. Are there really some questions better left unanswered? We could be facing a huge philosophical crisis in the next century. I`m glad we`re looking at it now.
I have a very strange opinion on a lot of things here. I think God created humans, sort of. But I think that what we know as God is really a part of all of us and without human souls there wouldn't be a God. I think what really makes us "human" is that we have the ability to gain intelligence as we live and that we have emotions that can largly effect what we do. I think we may be able to create a machine that can have false emotions, but I don't think we could create a machine that could have those emotions and act on them and remember what they did for the rest of their lives. Would a machine know the difference between right and wrong or only what they are programmed to see as right or wrong? If someone with bad morals makes this machine they could make it kill and make it love and program it to kill as a result of what the machine is programmed to consider love. Machines are programmed to do what the programmer wishes and even if we make a machine that is programmed to be like a human it won't do as it wants and it won't truely have a personality it will just develop in the ways that the programmer intended. Would a machine programmed to love a person unconditionally feel pain if the person they were programmed to fall in love with left them? I just think it is totally strange to think about machines that could feel emotions when not even humans fully understand what they feel. How could we program a machine to feel the way people do. I don't think we could create an alive machine. A machine that is like that would have to be totally apart from what programmers intended. A machine like that would need to have it's own free will to do as it wants and not what the programmers want. I've said enough.
spears, One approach that is being taken is not to try to understand how the brain works but simply to reproduce the way it works. The key to this is to develop a very high-resolution scanner that will map every essential detail of the brain and digitize it. A computer is then constructed that can accurately reflect the way that neurons form neural networks. The scanned data is then uploaded into the machine. The present estimate is that such a machine will be about 1 million times the power of a current modern day high-end desktop workstation, and that should be available within the next 10 years. The brain scanning technology is the current real challenge since the power needed to scan deep into the brain at the level of resolution required will essentially fry the brain. The most reliable approach will be to take a brain and slice it extremely thinly and then scan each slice and gradually build a 3 dimensional digital map. The donor if of course dead at this point. The hope of course is that the machine once activated will have all the same mental and emotional abilities as the original donor.
i don't think that will really work out. well not anytime soon. -you'd have to replicate the brain almost down to the neuron. connections and all. -a nerual network that is completly accurate to how actuall neurones work i think is farther off than AI people think(in my opinion). not that they won't have impressive networks, just that they won't be exactly like human brains. i think we'll create something that is more or less sentient. and that it won't be just a mechanical human. but it will be mechanical, so i guess no soul. I wonder how it will feel when we tell it that it has no soul?
Spears, No not "almost", exactly and hopefully more. But this is not a copy of a brain but a replication of the brain's functions using a non-biological substrate. Uploading isn't AI. AI is a parallel path to intelligent machines. The assumption is that there is no such thing as a soul, so the issue doesn’t arise.
spears, What are false emotions? What makes an emotion 'real'? They would see the same way as we do. They are programmed. Of course. Because it's a reaction to having something desired and thought of as needed, taken away. It only makes sense. Exactly, and would you want to?
This is interesting I believe completely in God, and I have no problem accepting the fact that human evolution is destined for machinery. How else will we survive eternally?
