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Could a machine think?

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For such it would require  an awareness of self, and an awareness of one's own consciousness of a subjective experience.



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  • smoothiesmoothie 434 Pts   -   edited January 2020
    Machines already "think" by assessing situations and accomplishing tasks programmed to do so, but I think you mean consciousness of the machine.

    Currently, AI is not that powerful yet. We do have machine-learning where the AI can learn by itself.... however for the machine to "wake up" and think exactly like us will take a lot of time.

    I believe the way to do this would be to look at an entire scan of a human brain and copy it into a program. The challenge is that the fully-developed human brain is massively complicated with around 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapse connections. People looking to do this task by hand would likely want to leave out the useless things not related to conconcious and thought, so a program might have a lot less, but nobody has sorted entirely which connections relate to this and how important some connections are, and it would take an enormous effort to do so. They would likely have to make an exact copy if they can't figure this out, which would take decades or centuries.

    After that, you could begin scanning and uploading an existing brain into a computer with automation. This would be a carbon copy of the scanned person's brain which could lead to android or machine copies of that person with human conconcious and thought.


    This article mentions the previous project of putting a brain of a roundworm, which is only 300 neurons, into a robot. It was successful, it proves we can copy the program of life into a machine.

    Edit: The article is being dumb so heres a link to the roundworm project: http://openworm.org/

    piloteer
    why so serious?
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @smoothie

    That link is not working which is a pity the article sounded interesting .

    ***** but I think you mean consciousness of the machine. 

    Yes that’s what I mean, which would mean that a machine has beliefs , desires feelings , it may simulate such but would there be genuine understanding on the machines part?
  • smoothiesmoothie 434 Pts   -   edited January 2020
    Dee said:

    ***** but I think you mean consciousness of the machine. 

    Yes that’s what I mean, which would mean that a machine has beliefs , desires feelings , it may simulate such but would there be genuine understanding on the machines part?
    It depends on the people building it, the roundworm project could simulate hunger and looking for food, the basics of survival just from copying its brain, so some may argue a human brain reconstruction could perfectly emulate human thought.

    With the entire reconstruction of the human brain, it is likely possible, but there is no definitive answer yet.

    Technically we are already organic machines, our brains use chemicals and sparks of electricity to stimulate. If we could reconstruct a machine version of the brain, who knows?


    From this article:

    The brain performs an incredible number of tasks including the following:

    • It controls body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and breathing.
    • It accepts a flood of information about the world around you from your various senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching).
    • It handles your physical movement when walking, talking, standing or sitting.
    • It lets you think, dream, reason and experience emotions.
    why so serious?
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @smoothie

    Thanks for the update will give it a read 
  • Happy_KillbotHappy_Killbot 5557 Pts   -   edited January 2020
    Machine intelligence as we current understand it is very different from evolved intelligence. When questions are asked about machine thought, it is common for people to anthropomorphize machines and assume that their intelligence is much like ours and that it is a matter of time before they start behaving and having thoughts that mirror human ones, but this is a bit of a misconception of how machines do business.

    Consider a super-human level computer that is designed to coordinate traffic throughout a city for optimum efficiency and accident avoidance. It would accomplish this role by monitoring traffic with CC TV cameras, manipulating traffic lights accordingly, and if necessary dispatching police. Such a system will probably exist within two or three decades, and will be installed in all major cities before the end of the century. If you were to try and interact with such a machine, it would not be anything like a conversation you might have with someone who is smarter or more knowledgeable than yourself, in fact it might not even be possible to have any kind of meaningful interaction at all, despite the fact that this intelligence routinely and effortlessly performs tasks that humans would take weeks to make an informed decision on, but transpire in seconds.

    This type of machine has no real need for self-awareness or consciousness as humans understand it, but it is possible that it will develop a sense of self as a necessity for expression of agency, in fact some neural networks have already developed such concepts, that although a far cry from subjective experience or what we call consciousness is evidence that the framework for understanding that you exist and can change the world may be a critical component of interacting with it. Such a device as our traffic computer may eventually come to know itself and what it can do without the engineers intending for it to do so.

    What exactly "thought" is is another concept that is heavily debatable, and I don't think any one definition can really fit all forms nicely. It is unlikely that a machine intelligence will ever have thoughts the way humans do, however they will produce results comparable just the same. You have probably heard of the exploits of Alpha go, when it played an unexpected move in the ancient game go that baffled everyone, but came back latter to prove a decisive action. Can we call this thought, even though the system doesn't know anything except the game of go? Where humans have very object oriented thoughts, machine thinking in the case of neural networks is based on bias, or in the case of quantum algorithms is based on higher dimensional maximization. Humans can loosely make association based on bias, however they can not think in terms of maximization because our minds are simply incapable of understanding higher dimensions. In this way, machine thought is probably more similar to getting a gut instinct, or having an intuition about certain things than deliberate and careful thought.

    Although this is a completely different discussion, I would just like to add that I am not convinced that mind uploading is ever going to be a path to higher intelligence, although perhaps to immortality. The reason I think this is specifically because it is easier to train a neural network on a set of data for which humans were never intended to operate under than it is to start with a human mind and adapt it to a new task for which no human can already accomplish. A traffic coordinating computer is one such example of a system that a human mind is not really intended to be able to do efficiently, since it requires coordinating many hundreds or thousands of different  vehicles and humans struggle to keep track of just 10 objects. On top of this there are moral questions about the way this would work anyways, because would that emulated mind have to always accomplish that task, or do they have time off for leisure in simulation? If so, it may be ultimately cheaper to have an unpaid AI do the task it is just happy to complete without question, complaint, or demands of off time.

    This is a deep and complex question that I don't know will ever be answered fully, because even if in the future an android or AI is created that claims to experience qualia and for all intents and purposes seems to have a subjective experience, we will never know for sure because we can not detect that experience to know if it is just a "smart zombie" or has an actual awareness that is the same as humans have. Furthermore, it is impossible for anyone to say for sure if anyone else has such experience anyways, or if other people have a greater perception than what you personally have. These questions are not truly answerable in any meaningful way, and at the end of the day we are just going to have to go with whatever seems to be the most useful.
    smoothie
    At some point in the distant past, the universe went through a phase of cosmic inflation,
    Stars formed, planets coalesced, and on at least one of them life took root.
    Through a long process of evolution this life 
    developed into the human race.
    Humans conquered fire, built complex societies and advanced technology .

    All of that so we can argue about nothing.
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @smoothie

    ***** , so some may argue a human brain reconstruction could perfectly emulate human thought. 

    Yes I agree , most of us think we’re inwardly aware of a magical mysterious inner something that a machine could never have , It’s no less  difficult to see how a lump of organic matter could have consciousness either how do you build such out of basically meat?  How would it be be so impossible with metal , materials and technology? 

    It would be interesting if we changed the organic neurons in a brain one with silicon ones one at a time say over a year , what would happen then  I wonder would feelings , thought and understanding go?
    smoothie
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5965 Pts   -  
    "Thinking" does not have a single universal definition; it is a somewhat vague term. Suppose someone writes a chat bot that emulates a human conversationalist extremely well, to the point where you can fall in love with it, being almost unable to distinguish it from a human... However, in reality it is just a very complicated script constantly scanning the Internet for real human conversations and building its responses based on that. Does this bot "think", or is it just a bunch of code? Is there even a difference?

    AlphaZero plays chess better than any human being in existence and better than any other computer program in existence; it is an extremely large and quick neural network which taught itself how to play chess by analyzing a very large number of games. As far as chess goes, AlphaZero is as much of a thinker as any human being, just much more advanced and capable one. However, AlphaZero cannot do anything other than play chess. Can we say that it "thinks" when it plays chess, just like humans do? Again, there is no simple answer.

    I look at this from the perspective of the Duck Test: "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck". To us humans, when we interact with each other, it does not really matter what happens deep inside our organisms; we can even think of our bodies and minds as black boxes and focus on what is actually being done and said on the outside. There is no need to study the content of these black boxes to interact with each other, although we might want to study them with the purpose of improving our functionality. Similarly, if, say, you have a robot friend, then it should not matter to you how exactly this robot functions: it talks to you, smiles at you, helps you go with the chores, etc. - it is an intelligent being from the outside perspective, and that is exactly how you should treat it. Now, if the robot breaks down and you have to fix it, then you might need to go into the details.

    The same reasoning applies to all related questions. "Is this alien intelligent? Is this dog intelligent? Is this tree intelligent? Is this machine intelligent?" And not even just about intelligence. There were quite a few debates on this website in the past about whether transsexual people should be called the gender their birth certificate denotes, or the gender they identify as. I always thought that the most appropriate way to call them would be based on how they look and behave, which, I know, is quite subjective, but still gives some general guideline. Of course, if someone asks me to call them "she", even if they do not look like a female, I will probably comply out of politeness - but in my mind it will be hard for me to think of them as "she".
    Dee
  • When a machine states "Cogito Ergo Sum" then we need to be worried. ;)
    piloteer



  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -   edited January 2020
    @ZeusAres42

     I never liked the cogito I think it’s a flawed statement . It would be funny to hear a machine state it though 
  • Can a machine think, yes? Any machine place given self-control demonstrates some level of thought. Any level of self-control takes place a application of thought.

  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @John_C_87

    You never read the whole piece 
  • Dee said:
    @ZeusAres42

     I never liked the cogito I think it’s a flawed statement . It would be funny to hear a machine state it though 

    @Dee why? I think a lot of people don't actually understand this statement. It's actually a reference to things that are self-evident truths.



  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    How are they self evident?

    Can you see any flaws or assumptions in the statement?

    I will address why I think it's flawed tomorrow it's late here off for a kip 



  • piloteerpiloteer 1577 Pts   -  
    Dee said:
    @ZeusAres42

    How are they self evident?

    Can you see any flaws or assumptions in the statement?

    I will address why I think it's flawed tomorrow it's late here off for a kip 



    What the hell is a kip?
  • piloteer said:
    Dee said:
    @ZeusAres42

    How are they self evident?

    Can you see any flaws or assumptions in the statement?

    I will address why I think it's flawed tomorrow it's late here off for a kip 



    What the hell is a kip?

    Slang for sleep lol. Or like a nap.
    Dee



  • Dee said:
    @ZeusAres42

     I never liked the cogito I think it’s a flawed statement . It would be funny to hear a machine state it though 

    @Dee why? I think a lot of people don't actually understand this statement. It's actually a reference to things that are self-evident truths.
    @ZeusAres42 ;

    The issue is that it is not funny to hear a machine state it’s thought as they are forever and always industrial accidents. A machine does not have a limitation between thought an action so murder is never the translation to motive. Meaning a machine only act out thought.

    Any machine that is automated with a level of self-control must think in some basic root form to hold self-control.

    @ Dee
    I read it three times, all the way threw, thank you. The only thing that is sure is I will not have a right answer. Self-aware, consciousness, and subjective experience is not a quality to describe for any machine's need as puppet, as a demonstration of intelligence a machine does not have a wish to be human in thought like Pinocchio. It is only human to artificial intelligence, it is the machine that holds intelligences, order, and rules of action as just the creation of humans, The person is chaotic but is driven there by self-preservation machines have two thoughts one is on, two is off.  

    Machines are always built to be a well focus but limited human. Always.


  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    ***** why? I think a lot of people don't actually understand this statement. It's actually a reference to things that are self-evident truths. 


    The conclusions of the cogito are limited. If we accept the fact I am thinking at all proves that I exist , it says nothing about what I am , apart from a thinking thing.
     
    Descartes error was to have used the words “ I think” he claimed his approach was from scepticism to be consistent he should have said “ there are thoughts” he made an assumption if there are thoughts there must be a thinker . This is open to doubt. 
    Prehaps thoughts could exist independently of thinkers. 

    The “I” in the “I think” may be the same kind as the “it” in “It “ is raining, which refers to nothing.

    Descartes himself was not happy with the “ therefore “ and wrestled a long time over it ,also the original wording was different 
  • The process of establishing a principle of thought consciousness comes by way of self-evident truth. 
    " I think, therefore, I think I am." So, if I do not think, I am no longer just I. This a phrase is derived by meditation of Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist at a peek some type of silent sitting the highest consciousness of meditation.

    There is a different version which also go.
    "' I, possession of change."

    There is even the famous wood carvings. Hear nothing. See nothing , Speak nothing.
    This can be translated more by the phrase.
    "A fool try's to thinks nothing of basic feeling."
    Again expanded
     "The full mind try's to think of nothing of basic feeling."
  • RS_masterRS_master 400 Pts   -  
    Yes. Machines can already decide. Making a choice using informaation is thinking because you have a belief and you are making decisions based on your thoughts.
  • JGXdebatePROJGXdebatePRO 408 Pts   -  
    RS_master said:
    Yes. Machines can already decide. Making a choice using informaation is thinking because you have a belief and you are making decisions based on your thoughts.
    The human, and indeed animal, brain works in an entirely different way to that of a computer chip.
    The brain can establish new neuropassegeways without external influence. In layman's terms, we can learn.
    The only way a computer can mimic this is a software update and this is done not by the machine, but by the human operating it.
    xlJ_dolphin_473
    “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” – Marcus Aurelius
  • xlJ_dolphin_473xlJ_dolphin_473 1712 Pts   -  
    RS_master said:
    Yes. Machines can already decide. Making a choice using informaation is thinking because you have a belief and you are making decisions based on your thoughts.
    The human, and indeed animal, brain works in an entirely different way to that of a computer chip.
    The brain can establish new neuropassegeways without external influence. In layman's terms, we can learn.
    The only way a computer can mimic this is a software update and this is done not by the machine, but by the human operating it.
    Wrong again. There are many ways machines can learn other than software updates. Have you heard of a neural net? These are computers that can learn from their mistakes completely independently from humans. Have you heard of deep learning? If, as you say, machines cannot learn, how do you propose AlphaZero beat the world’s best chess computer when it had first seen a chess board 4 hours before, and humans taught it nothing, not even standard openings? @JGXdebatePRO
  • onethinhandle56onethinhandle56 19 Pts   -   edited March 2020
     
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