Will AI robots ever be conscious?: Philosophy Forums

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Will AI robots ever be conscious?

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Will AI robots ever be conscious?

jsidelko
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Posted 07/13/09 - 12:59 PM: Subject: Will AI robots ever be conscious?	#1
Unless AI machines have exact copies of the wetware in the human brain, I doubt they will ever be conscious and obviously, we will never know for sure. The human brain is the product of millions of years of a sloppy evolutionary process where disparate parts were modified, enlarged, reduced and displaced as natural selection favored different historical periods. Human consciousness is a product of our somewhat erratic evolution from simplicity to complexity. AI machines not only consist of hardware rather than neural wetware, but have not been subjected to millions of years of natural selection. AI machines are not motivated by a need to avoid predators, warn competitors, find food, water and mates. Unless engineers can factor these elusive factors into the construction of their AI machines, it is highly doubtful they will ever install the right ingredients for consciousness.
thanatos

mway
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Posted 07/13/09 - 08:11 PM:	#2
AI machines have definately been subjected to evolution in it's entirety, as we are trying to build them, and we have been. Natural selection just hasn't favoured an AI design that we consider to be good yet. I see no prerequisite for predatorial or food motivators when designing consciousness (you might be right, but I believe its unlikely). In order for a machine to be made conscious, we need to know what consciousness is.
Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality.

swstephe
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Posted 07/13/09 - 09:22 PM:	#3
You posed the question about whether "AI robots" will be conscious. You can dispense with the term "robots", because AI is functionally comparable to consciousness on its own. Then your description is quick to run down the road of "human consciousness". If you go down that road, then you have already forced the argument into a fairly narrow definition which is guaranteed to expel the AI of your imagination, but you also expel a number of other humans, (what about autistic people). Why is AI consciousness rejected just because "he" isn't interested in sex and food? Why is that a fundamental property of human consciousness? If a human's sexual desires and food requirements are eliminated, do they cease to be conscicous? I think that consciousness is a pretty broad and poorly defined term, (look at Daniel Dennet's "Consciousness Explained"). Some AI programs may already fit within certain definitions of consciousness, (Popper and Skinner's definitions), even if humans aren't convinced due to the AI's lack of data. Given enough data, an AI program can simulate human consciousness even better than a human, but the human will be biased to seek out arbitrary exceptions to reject it. We humans are hard-wired to accept every human, (or animal's), actions as being motivated by a form of consciousness and purpose, and reject it from anything artificial. I don't think you can separate AI from the human anyway. AI isn't meant to replace human consciousness, but to extend it as a tool -- like hand tools extend the capabilities of the hand. They are adjunct capabilities of consciousness and so inherit the properties of consciousness.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

kkiiji
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Posted 07/13/09 - 10:25 PM:	#4
How do you know your computer isn't already experiencing some sort of consciousness with all the electric signals flying around in there? Isn't that all neuro activity is, a bunch of electric signals? Perhaps your computer really does experience some base form of conscious qualia, we just have no way of knowing this. EDIT: Holy shit right after I posted that my mouse stopped working for a minute, maybe my computer is trying to tell me something!! Freaky.
Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But Doctor... I am Pagliacci." Good joke, everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum... Curtains.

play
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Posted 07/15/09 - 09:14 PM:	#5
I don't think computers will ever become conscious unless we change how we build them. Computers process a linear binary sequence 1 bit at a time. They do it staggeringly fast now and will be even faster as the years go by. But brains work in an entirely different way and until we've reverse engineered the brain fully, I don't think a conscious artificial brain can be made.
There once was a man who said so, "It seems that I know that I know. But what I would like to see Is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know."

mway
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Posted 07/15/09 - 09:37 PM:	#6
play wrote: I don't think computers will ever become conscious unless we change how we build them. Computers process a linear binary sequence 1 bit at a time. They do it staggeringly fast now and will be even faster as the years go by. But brains work in an entirely different way and until we've reverse engineered the brain fully, I don't think a conscious artificial brain can be made. Turing machines can emulate parallel machines. It is for this reason that I am a proponent of consciousness within current computers. We may not have one that can do it quite as fast as the human brain yet (there a couple of super computers that can), but we are getting there.
Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality.

play
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Posted 07/15/09 - 10:04 PM:	#7
mway wrote: Turing machines can emulate parallel machines. It is for this reason that I am a proponent of consciousness within current computers. We may not have one that can do it quite as fast as the human brain yet (there a couple of super computers that can), but we are getting there. Another possibility is that the properties of neurotransmitters and brain chemicals have something to do with awareness that non-biological systems couldn't have. But that's just speculation.
There once was a man who said so, "It seems that I know that I know. But what I would like to see Is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know."

mway
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Posted 07/16/09 - 04:05 PM:	#8
play wrote: Another possibility is that the properties of neurotransmitters and brain chemicals have something to do with awareness that non-biological systems couldn't have. But that's just speculation. I totally agree, and I don't think science should rule out the possibilities of hidden properties, or even dualism, but we have to work with what we have got, and I think simulating neural structures is a good start.
Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality.

jsidelko
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Posted 07/16/09 - 05:58 PM:	#9
Although I gave my reasons why I doubt artificial intelligence will be conscious in the human sense, I believe these AI machines will become super-intelligent. I believe they will become complex adaptive systems that are able to accelerate their own level of intelligence thousands of times greater than the collective human intelligence on the planet. These super intelligent machines, I believe, will evolve into a single integrated quasi-conscious global system. What happens next is any body's guess. Possibly entropy will build up in a completely self referential feedback machine that lacks external corrections.
thanatos

mway
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Posted 07/16/09 - 09:10 PM:	#10
jsidelko wrote: Although I gave my reasons why I doubt artificial intelligence will be conscious in the human sense, I believe these AI machines will become super-intelligent. I believe they will become complex adaptive systems that are able to accelerate their own level of intelligence thousands of times greater than the collective human intelligence on the planet. These super intelligent machines, I believe, will evolve into a single integrated quasi-conscious global system. What happens next is any body's guess. Possibly entropy will build up in a completely self referential feedback machine that lacks external corrections. Why does it have to be "quasi"-consciousness? Also what is stopping us evolving with these machines? We are complex adaptive systems that are accelerating our own level of intelligence in an exponential fashion. If these machines are built in humanities image, then won't they also be human?
Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality.

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