5 ms·

Who said anything about consciousness? Intelligence does not equal consciousness.

mjburgess 9y ago
Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious. Unless you mean "imitating intelligence", but that's not what AGI (artificial general intelligence) is targeting. An AGI robot would be one to include in any future line-up of "all the things that are intelligent". My view is that unless an AGI robot has a nervous system, it will never belong in that category. It is fashionable in tech today to speak metaphorically with abandon and to call whatever we like "intelligent" (and to have, machine "learning", etc.). These systems are no more intelligent than an abacus: upon inventing a wood-to-lcd converter, we could run Win95 on a few million wooden beads. Metaphorically, these are intelligent. They fill the role of prior uses of genuine intelligence -- ie., they can help us calculate and therefore substitute our calculative conscious behaviours for non-conscious substitutes. They are tools. My hammar is no more intelligent than my laptop however. Neither possess thoughts, nor can conceptualize or understand anything. A concept is a (biochemical) technique an animal acquires through a biochemical interaction with the world: an electric field can not have concepts. The argument that machines-which-seem-intelligent are intelligent is only a fallacy of ambiguity. What we mean, of machines, is a tool-which-helps-conceptualizing. We we mean of general intelligence is conceptualizing. The former and the latter are not the same. In a universe only of tools, nothing thinks to use them.
- ben_w 9y ago
  > Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious. The words “intelligent” and “conscious” are not sufficiently well defined to make that claim. By “intelligence”, do you mean: 1) “the ability to learn or understand or deal with new or trying situations”? Even current AI can do that. 2) “the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment”? That’s another rabbit hole itself. 3) “think abstractly as measured by [tests]”? I think current AI fails at this. 4) the thing which is separate to “body” in Cartesian Dualism? I don’t believe in that (i.e. souls) any more, so I can’t claim any AI would pass this test (nor any human). And “conscious”? Is that: 1) Opposite of unconscious? I’d say they are. 2) Opposite of subconscious? ‍️ 2)a) As in, not just autonomous functions like breathing or the equivalent for a robot? I’d say they are. 2)b) As in, “System 2 thinking”? ‍️I don’t know. 3) Critical self-evaluation? Generative adversarial networks pass, other than that I think AI fail this test. 4) Mirror test? Pass, but in a special case I don’t know the details of and which might well be newspaper fluff rather than proper AI.
  - mjburgess 9y ago
    > Even current AI can do that. No it can't. A machine's output is not deterministic from its input and can be sensitive to conditions not anticipated at-programming-time. That isn't understanding. A spinning top may spin on many surfaces not anticipated by the designer and acquire all sorts of interesting behaviors by doing so. "The opposite of consciousness" is not a meaningful criterion of interest. I'm not even sure it's a meaningful term. It seems to commit the buddhist fallacy that causal processes at work in the universe are differentiated into opposites. That whatever causes rocks to fall must be the opposite of the thing that causes fire to rise. It isnt -- there isnt really anyway to define "opposite" with respect to what causes what. Many of these tests you're outlining arent relevant to the question "does this robot have what we are interested in". Ie., is this piece of lead actually gold. Not "is it shiny with a brass coating" -- but can it participate in all the causal interactions gold can. I'm not concerned with how good the tool is, or how close we are to fooling people, i'm concerned with whether the robot can think. Does the robot posses any concept? Any idea? Any understanding? No, only metaphorically. It seems as-if it does to people who use it to aid in their understanding. It is only a trick, no more than an ancient human being being scared of a spinning top and wondering how it is so well able to navigate around the grain of the wood -- better than any beetle! Intelligence as it is possessed by the relevant subset of animals which we're targeting possess concepts. They are biochemically connected to their environment. The understand it. The dog's finding its bone is NOT the same as the spinning top find its grove. Only by an extremely confused metaphor. The dog puts to use thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. That it has acquired in its direct understanding of its environment. The spinning top merely topples towards its final point as-if it understood. Machines are rivers of electrical current that topple toward and outcome that it sensitive to their current state, like a top spinning about a board. They have no active, navigating, biochemical motivated concernful goal-directed action. My view is that they never will, since on all the best evidence, skillful concernful action is a neuro-bio-chemical process.
    - ConfucianNardin 9y ago
      > Even current ("real") intelligence can do that. No it can't. A biological creature's output is not deterministic from its input and can be sensitive to conditions not anticipated at-programming-time. That isn't understanding. A spinning top may spin on many surfaces not anticipated by the designer and acquire all sorts of interesting behaviors by doing so. [...] Many of these tests you're outlining aren't relevant to the question "does this biological creature have what we are interested in". Ie., "is this piece of lead actually gold". Not "is it shiny with a brass coating" -- but can it participate in all the causal interactions gold can. I'm not concerned with how good the tool is, or how close we are to fooling people, i'm concerned with whether the biological creature can think. Does the biological creature posses any concept? Any idea? Any understanding? No, only metaphorically. It seems as-if it does to people who use it to aid in their understanding. It is only a trick, no more than the sun being ascribed agency by ancient human being. Intelligences which we're targeting do not possess concepts. They are not meaningfully connected to their environment. They don't understand it. The dog's finding its bone is just the same as the spinning top find its grove. The spinning is only much more intricate, and the nature of and interaction with the surface much less easily understandable. The dog experiences illusions of thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. Those have been caused by the nature of its environment. The spinning top topples towards its final point as-if it understood, just like the dog. Biological creatures are rivers of biochemical and electrical currents that topple toward and outcome that it sensitive to their current state, like a top spinning about a board. They have no active, navigating, motivated concernful goal-directed action. My view is that they never will, since on all the best evidence, skillful concernful action does not exist. It is merely illusions that emerge from chemical and electrical interactions. It is not obviously clear whether your argument is any more valid than the above (or the other way around). To expand, if a robot in every imaginable way behaves exactly like another human would, how can you know know that one possesses "intelligence" (or rather, consciousness), while the other doesn't? Why would it be possible to construct the high level structures from which intelligence emerges on top of one set of primitives (electrical/chemical in biological context), and not the other (electrical-based logic on silicon). The argument you pose have many signs of being an appeal to the ghost in the machine. For anyone interested in exploring ideas around (self)consciousness and the mind, The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett is a good read.

Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious. Unless you mean "imitating intelligence", but that's not what AGI (artificial general intelligence) is targeting. An AGI robot would be one to include in any future line-up of "all the things that are intelligent". My view is that unless an AGI robot has a nervous system, it will never belong in that category. It is fashionable in tech today to speak metaphorically with abandon and to call whatever we like "intelligent" (and to have, machine "learning", etc.). These systems are no more intelligent than an abacus: upon inventing a wood-to-lcd converter, we could run Win95 on a few million wooden beads. Metaphorically, these are intelligent. They fill the role of prior uses of genuine intelligence -- ie., they can help us calculate and therefore substitute our calculative conscious behaviours for non-conscious substitutes. They are tools. My hammar is no more intelligent than my laptop however. Neither possess thoughts, nor can conceptualize or understand anything. A concept is a (biochemical) technique an animal acquires through a biochemical interaction with the world: an electric field can not have concepts. The argument that machines-which-seem-intelligent are intelligent is only a fallacy of ambiguity. What we mean, of machines, is a tool-which-helps-conceptualizing. We we mean of general intelligence is conceptualizing. The former and the latter are not the same. In a universe only of tools, nothing thinks to use them.

ben_w 9y ago
> Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious. The words “intelligent” and “conscious” are not sufficiently well defined to make that claim. By “intelligence”, do you mean: 1) “the ability to learn or understand or deal with new or trying situations”? Even current AI can do that. 2) “the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment”? That’s another rabbit hole itself. 3) “think abstractly as measured by [tests]”? I think current AI fails at this. 4) the thing which is separate to “body” in Cartesian Dualism? I don’t believe in that (i.e. souls) any more, so I can’t claim any AI would pass this test (nor any human). And “conscious”? Is that: 1) Opposite of unconscious? I’d say they are. 2) Opposite of subconscious? ‍️ 2)a) As in, not just autonomous functions like breathing or the equivalent for a robot? I’d say they are. 2)b) As in, “System 2 thinking”? ‍️I don’t know. 3) Critical self-evaluation? Generative adversarial networks pass, other than that I think AI fail this test. 4) Mirror test? Pass, but in a special case I don’t know the details of and which might well be newspaper fluff rather than proper AI.
- mjburgess 9y ago
  > Even current AI can do that. No it can't. A machine's output is not deterministic from its input and can be sensitive to conditions not anticipated at-programming-time. That isn't understanding. A spinning top may spin on many surfaces not anticipated by the designer and acquire all sorts of interesting behaviors by doing so. "The opposite of consciousness" is not a meaningful criterion of interest. I'm not even sure it's a meaningful term. It seems to commit the buddhist fallacy that causal processes at work in the universe are differentiated into opposites. That whatever causes rocks to fall must be the opposite of the thing that causes fire to rise. It isnt -- there isnt really anyway to define "opposite" with respect to what causes what. Many of these tests you're outlining arent relevant to the question "does this robot have what we are interested in". Ie., is this piece of lead actually gold. Not "is it shiny with a brass coating" -- but can it participate in all the causal interactions gold can. I'm not concerned with how good the tool is, or how close we are to fooling people, i'm concerned with whether the robot can think. Does the robot posses any concept? Any idea? Any understanding? No, only metaphorically. It seems as-if it does to people who use it to aid in their understanding. It is only a trick, no more than an ancient human being being scared of a spinning top and wondering how it is so well able to navigate around the grain of the wood -- better than any beetle! Intelligence as it is possessed by the relevant subset of animals which we're targeting possess concepts. They are biochemically connected to their environment. The understand it. The dog's finding its bone is NOT the same as the spinning top find its grove. Only by an extremely confused metaphor. The dog puts to use thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. That it has acquired in its direct understanding of its environment. The spinning top merely topples towards its final point as-if it understood. Machines are rivers of electrical current that topple toward and outcome that it sensitive to their current state, like a top spinning about a board. They have no active, navigating, biochemical motivated concernful goal-directed action. My view is that they never will, since on all the best evidence, skillful concernful action is a neuro-bio-chemical process.
  - ConfucianNardin 9y ago
    > Even current ("real") intelligence can do that. No it can't. A biological creature's output is not deterministic from its input and can be sensitive to conditions not anticipated at-programming-time. That isn't understanding. A spinning top may spin on many surfaces not anticipated by the designer and acquire all sorts of interesting behaviors by doing so. [...] Many of these tests you're outlining aren't relevant to the question "does this biological creature have what we are interested in". Ie., "is this piece of lead actually gold". Not "is it shiny with a brass coating" -- but can it participate in all the causal interactions gold can. I'm not concerned with how good the tool is, or how close we are to fooling people, i'm concerned with whether the biological creature can think. Does the biological creature posses any concept? Any idea? Any understanding? No, only metaphorically. It seems as-if it does to people who use it to aid in their understanding. It is only a trick, no more than the sun being ascribed agency by ancient human being. Intelligences which we're targeting do not possess concepts. They are not meaningfully connected to their environment. They don't understand it. The dog's finding its bone is just the same as the spinning top find its grove. The spinning is only much more intricate, and the nature of and interaction with the surface much less easily understandable. The dog experiences illusions of thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. Those have been caused by the nature of its environment. The spinning top topples towards its final point as-if it understood, just like the dog. Biological creatures are rivers of biochemical and electrical currents that topple toward and outcome that it sensitive to their current state, like a top spinning about a board. They have no active, navigating, motivated concernful goal-directed action. My view is that they never will, since on all the best evidence, skillful concernful action does not exist. It is merely illusions that emerge from chemical and electrical interactions. It is not obviously clear whether your argument is any more valid than the above (or the other way around). To expand, if a robot in every imaginable way behaves exactly like another human would, how can you know know that one possesses "intelligence" (or rather, consciousness), while the other doesn't? Why would it be possible to construct the high level structures from which intelligence emerges on top of one set of primitives (electrical/chemical in biological context), and not the other (electrical-based logic on silicon). The argument you pose have many signs of being an appeal to the ghost in the machine. For anyone interested in exploring ideas around (self)consciousness and the mind, The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett is a good read.