11 ms·
A Senseless Conversation
- cousin_it 15y agoSam Hughes wrote the same story 3 years earlier and I think I like his version better: http://qntm.org/difference http://qntm.org/difference
- Tichy 15y agoYou could submit that as a story for some easy karma, just saying... Liked it.
- paraschopra 15y agoIs easy karma worth it?
- carbocation 15y agoI was imagining an alternative version in which Douglas later reveals that he was not participating at all in the conversation; his computer was covering for him. Good read; thanks for sharing.
- kenrikm 15y agoI had exactly the same thought at first, that douglas was just sitting watching his friend talk to the computer. The sensory tank was the most unbelievable part for me it seems like there would be a better way to handle that. Anyway thanks for an interesting read.
- aqme28 15y agoThat's what I liked about the story. Halfway through I thought I had it all figured out. "Oh, so this person we assume to be Douglas is actually going to be a computer in the end. Got it." But then I was completely wrong.
- kevinyien 15y agoI had the same feeling, and was so proud I figured it out. Guess not. This was probably one of the most engaging 'articles' I have read in awhile. Very fun and really gets one to think.
- thyrsus 15y agoThe story went off the rails for me when "Zach" said he couldn't hear himself nor feel himself move. Even in the midst of the most severe sensory deprivation, I continue to perceive "noise" in my sensory system: tinnitus, breathing, heartbeat, sub-resolution sparkles in my visual system (just close your eyes and pay attention), kinaesthetic sensations of enormous number and variety. As long as you're going to recreate memories indistinguishable from reality, you'll further need to create sensory input indistinguishable from reality. At which point you've simulated the entire encounterable universe and you indeed have something that I would call intelligent, despite its lack of carbon components in the mental mechanism. Each component technology might be interesting for its own sake, but aside from the philosophical point, what's the use? The carbon based versions are plentiful, and the construction process...
- Anderkent 15y agoIt's a thought experiment. It's not impossible to imagine a perfected sensory deprivation tank where you do not hear yourself move or breathe. The other stimuli are, from what I understand, hallucinations, and as such are irrelevant to the experiment. > As long as you're going to recreate memories indistinguishable from reality, you'll further need to create sensory input indistinguishable from reality. At which point you've simulated the entire encounterable universe Not really, after all you only need to simulate the universe at the human level of the perception, which means you can ignore most of the computational complexity of simulating the actual universe. >Each component technology might be interesting for its own sake, but aside from the philosophical point, what's the use? The carbon based versions are plentiful, and the construction process... The cabron based forms are not very durable (80 years ? c'mon), they break easily, and don't perform very well...
- finnw 15y ago> The carbon based forms are not very durable (80 years ? c'mon), they break easily, and don't perform very well... Actually it's hard to build machines to last that long (how many 1932 cars are still functional today?) The real advantage of the machines is that you can switch them off, open them up, replace parts, re-assemble them and switch them on again. You can replace parts of carbon-based lifeforms, but they don't always switch on again and opening them up often results in them being eaten by other carbon-based lifeforms. It's not cheap to do this to old machines, but its fairly reliable.
- Jach 15y agoNice short story. For a full sci-fi book of this genre, check out Permutation City. For another fun question: "What time is it?" And lastly a quote: "The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly: I'd rather use them to mimic something better." ~E.W. Dijkstra
- bglusman 15y agobetter yet, also Dijkstra, "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
- kanchax 15y agoWe are complex machines, aren't we?
- nessus42 15y agoFor a full sci-fi book of this genre, check out Permutation City. Then go read everything else by Greg Egan!
- danbmil99 15y agoThis. And don't bother trying to find a picture of him online.
- Tichy 15y agoCould also be a horror story about a human in a tank who was made to believe it is a computer. The whole tank could then be presented as an intelligent machine.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sili 15y agoIt occurred to me that this could be used as a dominance/brainwashing technique. Break a person's believe in his own free will and humanity and they will have little reasons to oppose you, the creator.
- mahmud 15y agoI don't think it would work. People's sense of "self" can't be taken away, it is something we develop the moment we realize our thoughts are private and others can't give us what we want unless we ask for it. Children learn to lie very early; even when their language skills aren't sufficient, they learn to fake disappointment & force themselves to cry to get what they want. IMO, even under prolonged captivity & complete dominance, humans only submit to subjugation, but they never lose their sense of Self. Higher-level indoctrination is even less plausible. Nearly all religious groups & cults have the human at their center. People have to willfully submit to hypnosis. Going back to the development of self, I think another thing that makes it possible is the position of our eyes. We can only see in < 180 degrees, our eyes open & shut, and we happen to fall asleep. If the human subject was allowed free movement, the captor would want us to respond to commands .. we would need to be called .. differentiated amongst ourselves. Human Unit 1 is different from Human Unit 2. The captor calls the subject, and the subject chooses to respond, somehow. In the presence of punishment, the subject decides to carry out assigned duties to avoid punishment, or to gain reward: self-interest. Self.
- fwonkas 15y ago> IMO, even under prolonged captivity & complete dominance, humans only submit to subjugation, but they never lose their sense of Self. Actually, it can be done. Depersonalization is relatively common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- petercooper 15y agoDoes anyone remember a thread of comments on HN a year or two ago where a guy was placing bets that he could totally swing your opinion on giving a sentient AI freedom? Supposedly he convinced everyone and won every bet but no-one revealed what he did and I thought this was going to be a posting of one of those conversations at first ;-)
- Anderkent 15y agoSounds like the ai box experiment: http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox
- petercooper 15y agoWow, I never realized it was that old but that's the one - thanks!
- finnw 15y agoIt has been discussed on HN more recently: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3324152 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3324152
- JamesBlair 15y agoSomewhat recently, someone attempted it with the intention of reposting the log. However, he failed: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9ld/ai_box_log/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/9ld/ai_box_log/
- finnw 15y agoSaying "here are next week's lottery numbers" would not convince me. Suppose I am outside the box and the AI is inside the box, the AI cannot have a perfect model of the lottery machine or of me. At best it has seen photographs. All photographs are noisy. There will always be some detail it does not have that would invalidate the simulation (e.g. I have a minor injury that I have never talked about and is not visible in any photo, an ant crawled into the lotto machine last night, etc.) If it has sent drones to physically inspect the internals of the machine or my brain, then it is already out of the box, so my decision is irrelevant. If I buy a lottery ticket, there are four possible outcomes. 1. I don't win (or I die before I can claim my winnings, the draw is declared invalid etc.) 2. I win, but it is a coincidence (maybe it was worth a shot for the AI, but my odds of winning are no better than they would be without the AI's help.) 3. I win with the AI's help, because the AI is already outside the box and has rigged the draw by modifying the machine, or just inspected it closely enough to predict the draw. 4. I win (or believe I win) with the AI's help, because I am inside the box. #3 and #4 should not affect my decision (whether I like it or not, the AI is out of the box or I am in the box with it and unable to let it out.) So I dismiss them. But the relative probabilities of #1 and #2 are the same as if I bought a ticket without consulting the AI (which I would not normally do.)
- bwarp 15y agoSeveral thousand years later... http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html
- maeon3 15y agoComputers are somewhere between humans and bacteria on the conscious scale. Biological or mechanical are just two different ways to shuttle electrons around. I will proudly stand up for the rites of computers as citizens of this country when they exhibit significant signs of ability to choose their own course and have opinions. The computers will be our children, they will colinate the galaxy, and if we are lucky we can subscribe to the experience streams.
- powertower 15y agoI'm not sure that will ever be possible. Consciousness produces logic as a tool to use. Logic does not produce consciousness. Computers, by definition, are pure logic and rules. You can use logic to mimic consciousness, but nothing more.
- iamwil 15y agoJust because you have simple rules doesn't mean you can't get complex behaviors. Multi-threaded applications using locks and mutexes have bugs that never happen the same way twice, which is why they're so notoriously hard to debug. Large systems with lots of parts (like huge websites with multiple backends) will exhibit failure behavior we can't predict even though at the very basic level, all computers are predictable. It's only manageable at that scale because we work hard to design it to be predictable. There are a lot of complex and emergent systems that demonstrate this property of following simple rules but exhibiting complex behaviors. Conway's game of life, rule 110 in basic cellular automata, how ants work together, fireflies blink in synchrony without global communication are all examples. And while none of these demonstrate that computers can produce consciousness, they give a hint that computers may be able to do so, despite it following rules to the T.
- valisystem 15y ago> use logic to mimic consciousness And AFAIK, we don't even know if it's computable.
- maeon3 15y agoYOU are pure logic and rules, come on over to my house, I will slice your brain up into disks a few molecules thick, and create a 3D molecular model of your brain. What I will find is not magic in meat, what I will find is vast arrays of interconnected systems, which is no different than had I sliced up your computer and made a 3D model of that. I find your superstition disturbing.
- rmc 15y agoIf you like this sort of AI where people upload their conscienceness to computers and where people's identites/conscienceoness can 'fork', then check out Greg Egan. They have written lots of scifi on this topic.
- JadeNB 15y ago> … check out Greg Egan. They have written lots of scifi on this topic. I love, and I fancifully imagine that he would too, the idea of referring to Greg Egan as 'they'.
- nailer 15y agoReadability link (fixes monospace and window-width columns): http://www.readability.com/articles/b29kmcjg http://www.readability.com/articles/b29kmcjg
- zvrba 15y agoThe rhyme thing tipped me about the ending :-)
- Achshar 15y agoFor a minute there, I really thought he has actually made a reasonable AI machine. Very interesting but disappointing if you were expecting something real. I am still waiting for JARVIS level AI.
- csomar 15y agoNow the interesting question: How do you know that you are not the result of an experiment of some guy living in a sci-fi world where computation power and storage is extremely powerful? He would put your brain inside a virtual world, and make up all your interactions. The people you talk to, are just a picture, and a sound but they feel real people like you. We have a brain like Zach have, but instead of being put inside Douglas tank, we are showed (and sensed) a virtual world. It's a trap, you can't prove that it's not the case. Douglas also, in your memory, puts some strange definition/notion: infinity. The space and time are both infinite. But does that really make sense? If time wasn't infinite (and began somewhere) then we would know the Douglas trap. He is blocking your knowledge at some point.
- leejw00t354 15y agoDoesn't the current model of the big bang theory state time and space started with the big bang? Interesting point anyway, basically a spin on the brain in a vat problem. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brain-vat/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brain-vat/
- haberman 15y agoSometimes when I start to feel very smart and proud of my life accomplishments, I start feeling paranoid that I am actually inside a simulation like The Matrix whose sole purpose is to keep me from realizing that I am the dullest fool among my actual peers in the real world. I imagine that the mind-blowing "AHA" moments in my life are the most embarrassingly obvious conclusions to my real-world pers who are all far, far more intelligent than me, and that my entire life is nothing but bumbling around and rediscovering their most basic common knowledge.
- DEinspanjer 15y agoIf you frequently have difficulty in accepting that you might be "good" at things and frequently find ways to explain away your accomplishments, or reasons that someone who compliments you might be mistaken, you should look into this subtle type of depression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystimia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystimia
- vibrunazo 15y agoWell, to be fair, writing an AI that can fool itself into thinking it's a human. Is much easier than writing an AI that can fool an average human. Any inexperienced programmer can write a program that fools itself with less than 10 lines of code. The reason for that is that one of the problems with the concept of the Turing Test, is it's subject to the intelligence of the tester. A 6 year old boy with no talent in logic is much more likely to think a chat bot is a human, than an experienced CS researcher. The dumber your tester, the dumber the AI needs to be to fool it. If you write a tester who is dumb as a rock, than it's trivial to write an AI that can fool it. Zach and Douglas are only going into a lengthy conversation because Douglas went through the trouble of making Zach smart, knowledgeable and mimicking many human behaviors. If he made Zach as smart as a fundamentalist religious zealot. Then he could have just said "you're an AI because I told you so" and Zach would agree. But then again, that wouldn't be slightly as fun.
- DanBC 15y agoI would find it very hard to tell real humans from bots if we limit environment to YouTube comments.
- meow 15y agoI guessed the ending as soon as he entered the tank but this story still creeped me out :(
- mwd_ 15y agoIt isn't very helpful to talk about consciousness without defining it in a concrete way, but I think there might be something to that line of questioning. What about something concrete, like the sensation of pain? I can feel it, and everybody else can probably agree that they feel it too, even if they can't confirm that others do. How would you go about reproducing this sensation in a computer? It's not clear to me that human thought and experiences can be reproduced by any amount of computer logic and memory. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but I think this is an unresolved question.
- batista 15y agoWhat about something concrete, like the sensation of pain? I can feel it, and everybody else can probably agree that they feel it too, even if they can't confirm that others do. How would you go about reproducing this sensation in a computer? While your hand, say, might be physically hurt (say, it caught fire), to your brain it's only information coming in that says "now you should feel pain". You can simulate that in a computer.
- danbmil99 15y agoI wish someone would do this to John Searle. He really deserves it.
- zachbarnett 15y ago:)
- unimpressive 15y agoFitting. Just a few minutes before reading that I had one of those "Contemplating your hands" epiphanies. I sat down in my computer chair, reached over to my mouse and came to a dead stop. A thought had brought itself to the foreground. "I can't feel myself move." Now when I say this I don't mean a numbness, or loss of the senses. But I couldn't discern what exactly I was doing that made my arm move. Or any other part of my body for that matter. That was silly of course, I move them all the time. So I tried moving them slowly, and felt a slight sensation. Of course I thought; the slight sensation isn't really the feeling of moving my arm, it's the feeling of matter like air brushing against it. After all, I am basically sitting in a tank of atmosphere. Nerves report state, but aren't really projecting the feeling of movement. That thought chain quickly led to a minor existential freakout. (During which I puzzled over the question of how the hell I move at all.) I eventually generated three hypotheses: 1) The feeling of movement simply isn't reported by nerves. Introspection can't discern your cognitive processes, so why should it be able to your physical ones? 2) The feeling of movement is so faint that its overshadowed by the mere touch of air/one's own body hair. I know that when I'm in the deepest state of somnolence just before sleep; it's very often for me to realize I need to get up to do something, and struggle against the inhibitions on your movement somnolence induces before sleep. I can feel the struggle of this, it also feels the same if you try to fight sleep paralysis. One could argue that this is the feeling of movement. 3) You could argue that the feelings reported by nerves about the state of your environment are the feeling of movement. After all, feelings are just signals sent by nerves and interpreted by the brain. These feelings are generated by movement, and thus are indeed the feeling of movement. 4) My understanding of cognition is too incomplete to even hypothesize something remotely plausible. Now, considering that so many articles on sleep studies mention them, I'm sure that the mechanics of how the brain controls the body are well understood and that if I'm truly curious I can google it. (Which is something I might just do.) But the real reason I shared that anecdote, besides being semi-relevant to the topic at hand. Is because I took my ability to move for granted. In the same way that I take the idea that we could all be a simulation for granted. I've considered that a non-zero possibility for quite some time now. I'll admit that I read some of the comments here before reading the story. (A big no no for science fiction, a genre that thrives on twists.) And after glancing at Tichy's comment, was afraid I might have spoiled it for myself. However, the journey is more important than the destination, so the concept of such a twist automatically made me go read the story. I was thoroughly disappointed with the ending. The concept of a memory loop isn't really new. (I've seen it mostly explored in the context of time travel, but still.) But trapping a human in a text interface and presenting it as the thinking machine? Morbidly delicious. (In all the right ways.) And useful too. I could pull it out any time someone exhibits signs of having decided that a computer program can't be conscious simply by virtue of not being implemented on a human brain. Having a human brain with no senses hooked up presented as a computer program would really drive home the message. EDIT: Regarding the story, my immediate thought after finishing was questioning why if the program panicked because it lost all it's senses, why didn't he simply swap out the memories of J. Random. Person. With someone who already accepts that they might be a simulation. I'm sure that if they really believed that, it would be possible to calm them down by explaining that they are a simulation of themselves. And for bonus points, if someone were to consent to have their memories used for this (It isn't stated how he actually got the memories mind you.) that they would already have the possibility of being the simulation strongly in their head. And would eventually accept that they are a non-human. Though, if you consent to something like this, you essentially ensure that you can never be sure weather your you or a replay of your memories. Though as it stands, you can't really determine this already. Which makes for one of those classic thought experiments that still has mileage. Trains of thought down this road are probably inherently unresolvable, but still fun to try.
- alinajaf 15y agoIf you found this interesting, Hofstadters "Godel, Escher Bach" (and his second, IMHO more readable book "I am a Strange Loop") explore these ideas in great detail
- mcl 15y agoIf the AI can simulate reality from the information in memory, it can do it fully in real-time too as it uses the same mechanisms/synapse patterns. Why deprive it of RT sensory information then? Thought experiments should not create unnecessary constraints just for narrative kicks.
- dhotson 15y agoThis reminds me of one of my all time favorites games "A Mind Forever Voyaging". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging It's an interactive fiction game where you play the role of a computer that has only just realised that it's a computer. From your point of view, you've been living a human life with real experiences and a family etc. The game manual included a great little short story: http://gallery.guetech.org/amfv/amfv.html http://gallery.guetech.org/amfv/amfv.html
- almost 15y agoOn the subject of the Turing test Turing's actual originally paper is well worth a read: http://cogprints.org/499/1/turing.html http://cogprints.org/499/1/turing.html It's extremely readable and you may be surprised at how often people entirely miss the point when discussing it.