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This is a retread of the traditional I'm-actually-a-dualist argument, and a pretty naive version of it at that. The brunt of the argument is the citation of Sea
by dmreedy 10y ago
This is a retread of the traditional I'm-actually-a-dualist argument, and a pretty naive version of it at that. The brunt of the argument is the citation of Searle's chinese room, which is treated as proven fact. I'll give it credit as being a powerful intuition pump, but it really just reduces to the dogmatic divide between those who believe that consciousness can be an emergent property of mechanical systems and those who believe consciousness is the domain of some kind of non-mechanical, non-physical thing, such as a soul.
Some other notes;
1) I dislike casting statistical learning and symbolic systems so starkly against eachother. They are both facets of the same underlying principles, and the relation is better illustrated as a continuum, rather than a sharp divide.
2) To succumb to participating in the retread, we don't know enough about the nature of language right now to know whether the premise of Searle's chinese room even stands on its own. We don't know if such a book of translation is possible. And we don't know how to measure its accuracy. This is an old question; c.f. the kerfuffle lately over what the Turing Test actually means.
3)
>>>A machine needs to at least have an analog of a desire to do something before it does it. For a biological system, it “wants” to live. This desire emerges from several millennia of evolution. A machine doesn’t want food, of course, but it has no direct reason to “want” to live.
We need operational definitions of all of the terminology involved before we can make statements like this. It's dangerous to take these understandings of 'desire', 'want', etc. as givens when we don't even really know how they apply to -us-. This is where an understanding of the history of philosophy is helpful.
I agree with the fundamental premise that AI isn't something that is so worrying as a lot of these overhyped press releases make it out to be. But I don't think Searle is on the right path here.
- Bartweiss 10y agoTo the extent that the Chinese Room is interesting, it's also irrelevant here. It's a worthwhile thought experiment for considering consciousness and learning, but as you say, it's dualism. That has very little impact on the here-and-now of questions like "are we all going to die?" The "analog of desire" passage was particularly egregious this way. If an AI follows its programming and thereby kills me (or kills everyone), I'll have very little interest in whether it desired that outcome. Asserting a difference between desires and goals one advances is a tough philosophical case (or semantic pedantry, depending), and not one I care to entrust my survival to. I appreciate your breakdown of the article, which managed to miss the state of several arts at once.
- inputcoffee 10y agoIf I had to do it over, I think I would shrink the rest of the piece, and expand the last section. (Maybe I still can, it is not paper after all). Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful feedback. I don't necessarily disagree with most of what you say, but here are a few responses: 1. For what it is worth, I think consciousness might be an emergent property of machines, but not of the sorts of machines we currently have. That is to say, I don't think symbolic logic or machine learning are those sorts of machines. 2. Why do you dislike casting statistical and symbolic machines against each other? (Because this is the internet: serious question.) alluding to your note (1) 3. I am aware of some of the original criticisms of Searle's Chinese room, but I am not sure what you are alluding to here (in your note 2). 4. You make a fair point about defining desire, wants and so forth. This is quite a departure from many of the other points that question the need for desires or wants. I would be very curious as to how you believe that would add an important dimension here. (again, because of the internet, serious question.) Thanks again for reading it and taking the time to comment.
- twblalock 10y agoSearle's Chinese Room argument has certainly generated a lot of debate over the years, and there have been many, many objections and replies, but I've never been able to get a good idea of how many people actually agree with it.