We're conditioned to think that almost anything conceived by science can become reality, because it seems unwise to bet against the stellar track record of science and tech. Still, it's not necessarily true that we'll have the ability to create the sentient machines that some people imagine. Our ideal of what we'd be able to accomplish in space has at this point far outpaced what we've actually been able to do, and that's relatively simple compared to making non-biological humans.

DWill wrote:We're conditioned to think that almost anything conceived by science can become reality, because it seems unwise to bet against the stellar track record of science and tech. Still, it's not necessarily true that we'll have the ability to create the sentient machines that some people imagine. Our ideal of what we'd be able to accomplish in space has at this point far outpaced what we've actually been able to do, and that's relatively simple compared to making non-biological humans.

If AI = Consciousness then we arent even close because we have no idea what gives rise to consciousness.

we have no idea what gives rise to consciousness

I don't think this is true.

We know it has something to do with brains. Any evidence we have ever had for consciousness has been tied to living brains.
That aint nothing. It's a good place to start.

And even if we could never know the whole truth of it, it still bears fruit to think about the topic and try to learn more.

johnson1010 wrote:

we have no idea what gives rise to consciousness

I don't think this is true.

We know it has something to do with brains. Any evidence we have ever had for consciousness has been tied to living brains.
That aint nothing. It's a good place to start.

And even if we could never know the whole truth of it, it still bears fruit to think about the topic and try to learn more.

We know it has something to do with brains therefore we know how sentience arises?

Is this some sort of joke?
Who do you think youre talking to here?

No scientific study has ever declared or confirmed we know how consciousness arises.

Stop with this fundamental scientism bullshit.

ant wrote:

johnson1010 wrote:

we have no idea what gives rise to consciousness

I don't think this is true.

We know it has something to do with brains. Any evidence we have ever had for consciousness has been tied to living brains.
That aint nothing. It's a good place to start.

And even if we could never know the whole truth of it, it still bears fruit to think about the topic and try to learn more.

We know it has something to do with brains therefore we know how sentience arises?

Sentience has been conflated with consciousness several times in this thread.

Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

Some interesting research looks into the psychological aspects of our increasing dependence on A.I. It's already being used in making legal judgements and forecasting for financial investment.

Because of inherent uncertainty about future events these machines will get things wrong. So how does this affect our trust in A.I. vs humans?
We tend to forgive fellow humans and the researcher thinks human traits such as admitting mistakes and showing a willingness to try and do better could be programmed into robots.

Wouldn't that be a sort of deception though? So if your local friendly stockbroker robot gives bad financial advice that bankrupts you, it might say.

Sorry about that! I'm only a robot,please don't remove my batteries,I'll try harder!

http://qz.com/693194/people-dump-ai-adv ... -the-same/

A lot of robot's used for interaction with humans are designed to look approximately like humans, with smiley faces,arms legs etc.
Of course we know that they are machines but they are designed to suggest human characteristics. I can imagine this increasingly developed similitude eventually providing a very convincing illusion of being human.

You are being all "ant" again.

try actually reading a post before you blow up with ignorant indignation.

johnson1010 wrote:You are being all "ant" again.

try actually reading a post before you blow up with ignorant indignation.

With all due respect to your unscientific hunches that the riddle of consciousness has been resolved, NO, it hasnt. We arent even close.

Are we? What scientific experiments have lead us to that conclusion?
Have they been tested for verification?
Where's the empirical evidence?

I have a scientific worldview, Johnson. I reject your faith in magical explanations appearing out of thin air.

Flann 5 wrote:Some interesting research looks into the psychological aspects of our increasing dependence on A.I. It's already being used in making legal judgements and forecasting for financial investment.

Because of inherent uncertainty about future events these machines will get things wrong. So how does this affect our trust in A.I. vs humans?
We tend to forgive fellow humans and the researcher thinks human traits such as admitting mistakes and showing a willingness to try and do better could be programmed into robots.

Wouldn't that be a sort of deception though? So if your local friendly stockbroker robot gives bad financial advice that bankrupts you, it might say.

Sorry about that! I'm only a robot,please don't remove my batteries,I'll try harder!

http://qz.com/693194/people-dump-ai-adv ... -the-same/

A lot of robot's used for interaction with humans are designed to look approximately like humans, with smiley faces,arms legs etc.
Of course we know that they are machines but they are designed to suggest human characteristics. I can imagine this increasingly developed similitude eventually providing a very convincing illusion of being human.

Dont forget that ultimately, things like purpose and love are illusions as well, love for instance is just a meaningless spandrell, as Interbane pointed out about a year or so ago.

Algorithms are inherently biased. They are biased because the author of any algorithm transfers his or her biases to the algorithm.

If robots one day mimic purpose effectively it is because theyve been intelligently designed. Whereas we are not.
It's rather ironic isnt it?

Because of inherent uncertainty about future events these machines will get things wrong. So how does this affect our trust in A.I. vs humans?

~ Flann

Im reading some interesting stuff on AI, Super Intelligent AI, and the limits of our own intelligence.

Just some more thoughts on this:

I think the current paradigm assumption is that the brain is like a machine that has programing/algorithmic vigor to it. But that may be an entirely false analogy. We seem not to think it is because science dependents on the presuppositions of its paradigm.

There are many problems our most advanced computers cannot solve. It's impossible for them to solve (ie the "Haulting Problem"). However, human beings are capable of solving some, depending on their size, to a certain extent. After which, they become too difficult to solve.
This demonstrates a difference in problem solving ability between machines and brains.

Brains may be greater than their biological architecture. What a machine cannot solve, a brain can. This might imply some form of quantum computational power the brain is able to perform.
The current consensus is that brain and mind are synonymous. But brains are able to still handily "out intellegence" our most sophisticated machines. It's hypothesized that a quantum computer could solve some of the unsolvable programming problems our current computers find impossible to handle.