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I thought the beginning of the interview showed promise, but toward the end the conversation unmoors from the topic at hand. I really do wonder how many in the

I thought the beginning of the interview showed promise, but toward the end the conversation unmoors from the topic at hand. I really do wonder how many in the field of AI take as philosophically unsophisticated of an idea like intelligent computers seriously and see it as an obvious and uncontroversial possibility. What Hofstadter is dancing around is that intelligence requires semantics and semantics is exactly what computers, by definition, lack. Knowledge is semantic in nature and thus computers cannot, strictly speaking, know anything. They cannot reason because, again, reason requires semantics. Now, we are able to model and then formalize some domains of reality under some aspect well enough such that computers can behave in very useful ways, but no matter how sophisticated such programming gets, it cannot somehow magically cross over into semantics. The notion is patently absurd. So to say that AI is, literally, far from being intelligent is like saying the color red is far from being a strawberry. No amount of red will ever amount to a strawberry. P.S. I was reminded of this post about Sphex wasps and intelligence, with mention of Dennett and Hofstadter: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/12/da-ya-think-im-sphexy.html http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/12/da-ya-think-im-sphex...

jedharris 9y ago
Please explain how to tell if some being "has semantics". Suppose we encounter some alien made out of crystal and metal, but arranged in organic looking structures. We work out how to communicate, rather roughly (like Google Translate). They won't talk about their ancestors so we don't know if they were built or evolved. How do we find out if they have semantics?
- danielam 9y ago
  Computers aren't a black box mystery. We understand how they work. We understand that they are implementations of Turing machines (or similar computational models), and Turing machines are by definition a formalism and thus syntactic in nature. Computers are therefore no more than syntactic machines (I would further claim that computers aren't strictly speaking syntactic machines either, but physical artifacts -- and we can use different physical properties and states toward this end -- that simulate a formalized, syntactical system). Syntax as such is semantically blind, so to speak. Human beings, on the other hand, do "possess" meanings. We have concepts. Pure syntax can never amount to a single concept anymore than purely speaking about climbing Mt. Everest ever itself amounts to actually climbing Mt. Everest. Any semantics we associate with computer programs is entirely an act of interpretation on the human end.
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    You have not established that being a syntactic machine rules out semantics. The use of phrases like 'no more than' and 'purely' do not make the case; instead, their validity here is dependent on the premise.
symstym 9y ago
"intelligence requires semantics and semantics is exactly what computers, by definition, lack" This sort of assertion is experimentally untestable, not rigorously derivable from any axioms that people agree on, has no predictive power, and amounts to vague opinion passed off as fact. About a hundred years ago you might as well have been arguing about how "philosophically unsophisticated an idea like flying machines" was because flying is, strictly speaking, a behavior of flying animals.
orangecat 9y ago
Knowledge is semantic in nature and thus computers cannot, strictly speaking, know anything. And a group of biological neurons can?
- danielam 9y ago
  Can they?
- goatlover 9y ago
  They can by virtue of being embodied. It's the body interacting with an environment that provides semantics. For humans, a lot of that is cultural. Computers only have knowledge to the extent that we deem those patterns of 0s and 1s to be information.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    So you're saying we need a robot?
  - pixl97 9y ago
    Eh, your idea of embodiment is iffy. Computers can interact with an environment. Eventually computers will be far more able than humans to interact with environments. Humans are equipped with a very advanced set of input devices we call senses, but after that point we have to use technology to translate what we cannot perceive into information we can. You cannot see ultraviolet, you have to translate it into visual light, which is then translated into neural signals. A computer system directly, or indirectly connect with just about any sensor we can think of and directly manipulate that signal.
    - danielam 9y ago
      I don't know what goatlover meant, and I don't presume you are necessarily arguing this point, but adding sensors to computers does not overcome the fundamental nature of computers I described above.
  - danielam 9y ago
monochromatic 9y ago
> semantics is exactly what computers, by definition, lack What do you think the definition of a computer is?

jedharris 9y ago

Please explain how to tell if some being "has semantics". Suppose we encounter some alien made out of crystal and metal, but arranged in organic looking structures. We work out how to communicate, rather roughly (like Google Translate). They won't talk about their ancestors so we don't know if they were built or evolved. How do we find out if they have semantics?

danielam 9y ago
Computers aren't a black box mystery. We understand how they work. We understand that they are implementations of Turing machines (or similar computational models), and Turing machines are by definition a formalism and thus syntactic in nature. Computers are therefore no more than syntactic machines (I would further claim that computers aren't strictly speaking syntactic machines either, but physical artifacts -- and we can use different physical properties and states toward this end -- that simulate a formalized, syntactical system). Syntax as such is semantically blind, so to speak. Human beings, on the other hand, do "possess" meanings. We have concepts. Pure syntax can never amount to a single concept anymore than purely speaking about climbing Mt. Everest ever itself amounts to actually climbing Mt. Everest. Any semantics we associate with computer programs is entirely an act of interpretation on the human end.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  You have not established that being a syntactic machine rules out semantics. The use of phrases like 'no more than' and 'purely' do not make the case; instead, their validity here is dependent on the premise.

symstym 9y ago

"intelligence requires semantics and semantics is exactly what computers, by definition, lack" This sort of assertion is experimentally untestable, not rigorously derivable from any axioms that people agree on, has no predictive power, and amounts to vague opinion passed off as fact. About a hundred years ago you might as well have been arguing about how "philosophically unsophisticated an idea like flying machines" was because flying is, strictly speaking, a behavior of flying animals.

orangecat 9y ago

Knowledge is semantic in nature and thus computers cannot, strictly speaking, know anything. And a group of biological neurons can?

danielam 9y ago
Can they?
goatlover 9y ago
They can by virtue of being embodied. It's the body interacting with an environment that provides semantics. For humans, a lot of that is cultural. Computers only have knowledge to the extent that we deem those patterns of 0s and 1s to be information.
- mcguire 9y ago
  So you're saying we need a robot?
- pixl97 9y ago
  Eh, your idea of embodiment is iffy. Computers can interact with an environment. Eventually computers will be far more able than humans to interact with environments. Humans are equipped with a very advanced set of input devices we call senses, but after that point we have to use technology to translate what we cannot perceive into information we can. You cannot see ultraviolet, you have to translate it into visual light, which is then translated into neural signals. A computer system directly, or indirectly connect with just about any sensor we can think of and directly manipulate that signal.
  - danielam 9y ago
    I don't know what goatlover meant, and I don't presume you are necessarily arguing this point, but adding sensors to computers does not overcome the fundamental nature of computers I described above.
- danielam 9y ago

monochromatic 9y ago

> semantics is exactly what computers, by definition, lack What do you think the definition of a computer is?