abstract machines?.

the human consciousness.


the mind is seen as purely a machine, but machines go only by what they are proggrammed to do right? we are machine with our.

breathing,
hunger,
thirst,
reproduction desire,
natural instinct,



but theres one thing thats not machine, consciousness, the human awareness of itself is an abstract,

and machines do not have abstracts do they? they have primary/secondary etc objectives, they go by logic of the programme alone, so consciousness, cant really be classed as "machine" as all machines serve a purpose only,

we are machines with a driver thats abstract fromt he machine, (im not getting spiritual atall or saying anything about a soul)

the machine can observe itself, but can a machine know it is oberving itself? a machine can look through memory, but can the machine be abstract to that memory?

i will post more after a few responses because i have anouther few good points.


peace.

 

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I believe that machines will eventually have the capacity for self awareness; perhaps within this century.

In fact, machines might even have a sharper sense of self awareness than humans. It is possible that artificially intelligent entities will have self-knowledge as well as self awareness; that is they will be fully aware of the workings of their own internal processes in a way that humans generally are not. A self aware AI might be able to monitor all its own thought processes, and there would be no subconscious processing of data. Futher than that, an advanced AI entity might be able to retain memories with an arbitary degree of accuracy for an arbritary period of time; it could be possible to perform an internal audit on its own memories and thought processes, with all data clearly marked with its point of origin.

If and when self-aware machines are developed, that will not be the end of the process but just the start of an evolution which could result in some very remarkable entities indeed.

 

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about this subject

in an interview with david frost bill gates of microsoft said that unless there is a breakthrough he does not see computers becoming self aware

 

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although it might not seem like it, i do spend alot of time studying and learning about tech, especially nano tech and the future of it, it is very very impressive stuff,

but there is a difference between our minds/brains, and a machine, simply because a machine servs function only, there is no such thing as an abstract machine, and it dosent look like there will be any time real soon. machines are impressive and very functional, but they are not intelligent,

so i think calling the human mind a mere machine, is a false statement with no evident comparison, you could say there is a machine inside the mind, or we are part machine,

but everyone must be aware of the truth behind my statements. im not tryign to give any spiritual wordplay here whatsoever,

but im stating human minds cannot be classed purely as machine, because of our abstract nature to think freely, if we were just machines that stuck tot he task, served the primary and secondary function without signs of abstract behaviour, then i would say its safe to call us machine, but this is not the case,

even if you were to create a "machine" that had full human consciousness and abstact ability over function, then you cant really call that a machine either,


peace.

 

I think there's nothing magical about self-awareness of a machine. It means having a model of the world outside and a model of itself in order to care for its own needs.

If a machine is programmed in a way that forces it to care for getting its own energy and avoiding being turned off or destroyed, it probably has a kind of self-awareness automatically. A simple kind of self-awareness maybe, if it's a simple machine, the kind of self-awareness a bacterium or an ant might have.

 

Perhaps, but for it to be "conscious" it would have to be able to abstract its input, thus it would require the capacity for abstraction.. which currently eludes science.

That's not to say however, that we couldn't bastardize natural systems to act as "intelligent machines". The rat brain nuerons stimulated to fly a flight sim without crashing comes to mind.

Regardless, I just wanted to add that concepts are the resultant of abstraction. They are again, currently beyond the scope of science to my knowledge.

What's interesting about a concept to me is that they yield different outputs based on context. The "input" a concept has to the current context is dependent at least to some degree on that context. But context is also dependent to some degree on pre-existing concepts.

Yup. I think there still exists some missing fundamental piece of the puzzle. Mostly, the possibility of something being abstract, and the interaction of the abstract and the physical.

 

Machines still do not match the complexity or structure of the brain, but eventually they will. Already neural nets have been built with similar architecture, and programs can be written to simulate this structure using a typical computer. These types of machines are already used to predict stock market outcomes. Instead of following programs, they learn their tasks.

Kurzweil predicts that by the end of the century, computers will be more intelligent than people. They will appear to be self-aware and conscious, and we will believe them.

 

Well, you could say "humans appear to be self-aware and conscious, and we will believe them..."

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mainly, I think, because we believe ourselves to be self-aware and conscious. Except that we're not self-aware when we concentrate on other things, and we're not conscious when we're sleeping...

 

But every model is an abstraction, isn't it?

 

if I build a robot, in my mind it is a model...

but in reality it is a bunch of atoms or whatever, functioning as atoms do. its programming is a reflection of the comprehension of the will of the programmer, but that reflection is physical, again, atoms doing what they do.

so it depends upon to which you refer. the thought of the model, or the result of the thought.

 

Here is where I sense a flaw. There are two words... mind and brain. Some will argue that the mind IS the brain and other will argue they are two words for two different things. At first, you say mind = brain because you said the mind is a machine (brain).

Then you refer to conciousness as something different than the brain (your machine). Consciousness is part of the mind. So say that the mind and brain are seperate.

Which is it?

 

Maybe this helps:

Mind is the result of a functioning brain.

There, different and same sort of simultaneously. The mnd isn't exactly the brain, but it generate from the brain's function. Like the difference between code and hardware vs. the user experience, sort of.

Blah!

 

I thought we were talking about the model a machine can have...

 

Machines do what they are programmed to do, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily restricted in any way. A few examples:
- Machines can be based on rules, and the machine can change its own rules.
- Machines can change their own code base and thus program themselves.
- Machines can have genetic code that adapts to a changing environment.

 

you asked:

And I explained my understanding of what a model is. That is what we were talking about specifically. If you'd like to rephrase your question in terms of the greater context, I'll respond.

 

@wesmorris

I wrote:
I think there's nothing magical about self-awareness of a machine. It means having a model of the world outside and a model of itself in order to care for its own needs.

You wrote:
Perhaps, but for it to be "conscious" it would have to be able to abstract its input, thus it would require the capacity for abstraction.. which currently eludes science.

I wrote:
But every model is an abstraction, isn't it?


--> I meant that a machine has the capacity for abstraction already if it has a model because I assume that "self-awareness" and "conciousness" are synonyms and that every model requires abstraction by definition.

 

Wes, I remember about 2 years ago or so you and me agreed about hard determinism. Is that still true today?

 

Damnit sounds familiar but I've apparently forgotten the details. Can you point me in the direction, or summarize?

 

AH!

I didn't read the highlighted portion clearly enough.

And yes, I see your point and stand corrected.

I do however, think there is "magic" involved, in the sense that conceptualizaiton is key to forming a model as I think you mean it.

Machines already do what you've specified to some degree. It's arguable I suppoze that you could call them aware.. but I disagree on the principle that there is no evidential conceptualization, which IMO is imperative to awareness in terms of consciousness.

It seems to me that you basically shrug off the problem of abstraction by simply stating "you just do it".

 

I remember some debate and you were claiming it wa possible to predict anything, even human actions.

I will search for the thread, but I doubt I will come up with it.
Would be easier if I could do a thread intersection search

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