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From philosophy? Are you kidding? There's simply no way AI is ever going to come from a bunch of people arguing over what is "qualia" and what is "consciousness
by tachyonbeam 12y ago
From philosophy? Are you kidding? There's simply no way AI is ever going to come from a bunch of people arguing over what is "qualia" and what is "consciousness". There have been huge advances made in deep neural networks in the last few years. To the point where we now have human-competitive image recognition. That is computer science, and that is where AI is going to come from.
I think it will take a little while longer, maybe a few decades, and happen organically. At first, we'll have smart machines based on deep learning, possibly embedded in specialized hardware. We'll have smarter and smarter machines. Specialized robots doing basic tasks (e.g.: dish washing) are going to start roaming the world. They will be made increasingly capable as time goes on, and at some point, we'll begin to cross some sort of threshold where a robot's understanding of the world will be great enough. The robot will seem self-aware and "conscious" to an outside observer.
Computer scientists don't really need to care about the philosophy of consciousness, they care about building capable machines which can deal with the complexities world. At some point, to match or rival human capability, self-awareness is needed. That is, a model of the world that is "complete enough" and incorporates a model of you as an agent within this world. It will happen naturally, just as it did in nature.
- diminoten 12y agoCS isn't going to stumble onto AI, someone's going to have to theorize about it first. Much like CS doesn't "stumble" onto new equations for modeling physics, CS isn't going to accidentally build an AI. A generalist AI must be immensely difficult to create, but won't the most difficult part be the design? I don't think it'll be CS researchers coming up with the design, either -- it'll be doctors, biologists, neurologists, etc.
- tachyonbeam 12y agoIn my opinion, CS is going to provide the basic components (neural networks, computer vision, planning engines, knowledge bases) and engineers will put them together in a useful way. I think the reason CS hasn't provided AI yet is because general intelligence (as implemented in the human brain) is not one magic universal algorithm, it's an assembly of many necessary components, some of which are specialized for specific purposes. The human brain was created ad hoc through evolution, and its complexity is beyond what "pure" CS usually deals with, which is algorithms that can be described in one page or less. Creating a self-aware AI is going to take engineering work, experimentation and incremental improvement, rather than someone inventing an overarching design and going "yes, that's it, that will produce self-awareness".
- dominotw 12y agoI see that the term 'self-awareness' is being used a lot in this discussion. Can it be defined simply? Is it basically a mechanism which divides intelligence into two parts one of which is 'observing' the other ?
- tachyonbeam 12y agoTo me, self-awareness is, as I said before, having a model of the world that is complete enough that it incorporates a model of yourself within this world as well (and possibly other agents you encounter in this world). I guess I would add that the model should be sophisticated enough to be able to model your interactions with the world and make some sensible predictions about the future. I suppose according to this definition, a smart thermostat could be considered self-aware, but the bar for self-awareness goes up with the complexity of the interactions you can have with the world.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago> Much like CS doesn't "stumble" onto new equations for modeling physics Physicists come up with new equations for modeling physics. Metaphysicians make up elaborate reasons why they're actually intellectuals and not just on privileged-white-man welfare.