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> AI is just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not actually aware. There's no intelligence here. And the human brain is just a bundle of electrical signals. Why's that

> AI is just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not actually aware. There's no intelligence here. And the human brain is just a bundle of electrical signals. Why's that any different?

bangkoksbest 5y ago
More is different. Reductionism does not actually explain qualitative behavior.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
anonymousab 5y ago
> Why's that any different? Consciousness, sentience and sapience. Which is to say, that is indeed the multitrillion dollar question.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  But what makes you think binary vs analog is the key difference?
  - Cerium 5y ago
    To date, all systems composed of ones and zeros are not generally intelligent.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      Is that why they’re not intelligent? Or an entirely unrelated factor? Would anything change if you implemented exactly the same algorithms on a decimal computer instead? I don’t think it would.
      - Cerium 5y ago
        No, the ones and zeros are irrelevant, but like "leaves of three, let it be" you won't accidentally identify something as intelligent, just like you won't accidentally identify a plant as safe to touch. In both cases, the intelligence or the urushiol allergy are coincidal with the rule of thumb.
- kylevedder 5y ago
  >Consciousness What makes something conscious? Follow up: is that answer well-defined (it's not using other nebulous concepts to avoid having to rigorously define it), and does it accept all of the things you think should be called "conscious" and reject all of the things you think should not be?
hprotagonist 5y ago
> And the human brain is just a bundle of electrical signals. the more we look the more we find that this is not the case. and i don’t have to invoke any philosophy here, just remind you that neurotransmitter modulation and glial cells exist.
- kylevedder 5y ago
  Are you saying neurotransmitter modulation and glial cells cannot be represented by electrical signals? Honestly, the root of all this is whether you were trying to claim that the brain is doing super-Turing computation or not. Either 1) it's not, then you can't tell me Turing machines cannot do the same computation (and by extension neural nets can approximate it) 2) it is, then prove it and congratulations you have made a extraordinarily important and fundamental step forward in computer science. My money is on 1.
  - hprotagonist 5y ago
    > Are you saying neurotransmitter modulation and glial cells cannot be represented by electrical signals? Certainly neither of them are action potentials, which are usually the (exclusive and therefore imo incomplete) basis for the mental model of people who claim things like "the brain is just electrical signals." No. It's not. It's a vastly more complicated system of organ(s) than that even if you're willing to draw a line in the sand between brain and environment -- and that's no easy feat itself!
    - kylevedder 5y ago
      At the end of the day, saying "it's just electrical signals" is a crude way of saying "it's using a model of computation that we understand and can replicate". The first claim may not be strictly true, but it seems you're implying second one is. This is relevant because the universal function approximaters we are training everyday are capable of representing this computational model, undermining the argument that there is somehow a difference between the model of computation done in the brain and the computation done by neural networks.
lkschubert8 5y ago
This is the core of the materialism vs dualism debate.

> AI is just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not actually aware. There's no intelligence here. And the human brain is just a bundle of electrical signals. Why's that any different?

bangkoksbest 5y ago

More is different. Reductionism does not actually explain qualitative behavior.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

anonymousab 5y ago

> Why's that any different? Consciousness, sentience and sapience. Which is to say, that is indeed the multitrillion dollar question.

chrisseaton 5y ago
But what makes you think binary vs analog is the key difference?
- Cerium 5y ago
  To date, all systems composed of ones and zeros are not generally intelligent.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    Is that why they’re not intelligent? Or an entirely unrelated factor? Would anything change if you implemented exactly the same algorithms on a decimal computer instead? I don’t think it would.
    - Cerium 5y ago
      No, the ones and zeros are irrelevant, but like "leaves of three, let it be" you won't accidentally identify something as intelligent, just like you won't accidentally identify a plant as safe to touch. In both cases, the intelligence or the urushiol allergy are coincidal with the rule of thumb.
kylevedder 5y ago
>Consciousness What makes something conscious? Follow up: is that answer well-defined (it's not using other nebulous concepts to avoid having to rigorously define it), and does it accept all of the things you think should be called "conscious" and reject all of the things you think should not be?

hprotagonist 5y ago

> And the human brain is just a bundle of electrical signals. the more we look the more we find that this is not the case. and i don’t have to invoke any philosophy here, just remind you that neurotransmitter modulation and glial cells exist.

kylevedder 5y ago
Are you saying neurotransmitter modulation and glial cells cannot be represented by electrical signals? Honestly, the root of all this is whether you were trying to claim that the brain is doing super-Turing computation or not. Either 1) it's not, then you can't tell me Turing machines cannot do the same computation (and by extension neural nets can approximate it) 2) it is, then prove it and congratulations you have made a extraordinarily important and fundamental step forward in computer science. My money is on 1.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  > Are you saying neurotransmitter modulation and glial cells cannot be represented by electrical signals? Certainly neither of them are action potentials, which are usually the (exclusive and therefore imo incomplete) basis for the mental model of people who claim things like "the brain is just electrical signals." No. It's not. It's a vastly more complicated system of organ(s) than that even if you're willing to draw a line in the sand between brain and environment -- and that's no easy feat itself!
  - kylevedder 5y ago
    At the end of the day, saying "it's just electrical signals" is a crude way of saying "it's using a model of computation that we understand and can replicate". The first claim may not be strictly true, but it seems you're implying second one is. This is relevant because the universal function approximaters we are training everyday are capable of representing this computational model, undermining the argument that there is somehow a difference between the model of computation done in the brain and the computation done by neural networks.

lkschubert8 5y ago

This is the core of the materialism vs dualism debate.