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Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

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Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#31

Post by mariodiana »

Have some fun and google the following:

    technological analogies for the human brain in history
For the last 30 or 40 years, the brain has been "a computer." Prior to that, it was: (insert latest and greatest technology).

I'm sure we're on to something, but I think it best we take it all with a grain of salt.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#32

Post by Zikes »

Animats wrote: post #28
andrewla wrote: post #22

> Look, clearly we’re machines governed by the laws of physics. We’re computers made of meat, as Marvin Minsky put it. This really seem inescapable to me. The remaining arguments all seem like smokescreens. Being able to copy computer programs? Reproducing the running state of even a moderately complex distributed system is effectively impossible, so this argument bothers me not at all. Even if there is some quantum…

"Reproducing the running state of even a moderately complex distributed system is effectively impossible, so this argument bothers me not at all." That's a feature of the Xen hypervisor.[1] You can even migrate a process from one machine to another without stopping it. [1] http://wiki.prgmr.com/mediawiki/index.php/Chapter_9:_Xen_Mig...

This puts a fun spin on the teleportation/cloning thought experiment.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#33

Post by joe_the_user »

andrewla wrote: post #22

> Look, clearly we’re machines governed by the laws of physics. We’re computers made of meat, as Marvin Minsky put it. This really seem inescapable to me. The remaining arguments all seem like smokescreens. Being able to copy computer programs? Reproducing the running state of even a moderately complex distributed system is effectively impossible, so this argument bothers me not at all. Even if there is some quantum…

That said, I feel that we are extremely far away from producing a computer-based consciousness

Views of distance to the production of "conscious" machines are likely all over the place because there aren't really any clear ideas about what consciousness is and why it's important.

* Is it one state of mind that represents another state of mind? We trivially can construct computers with states which reflect each other.

* Is it being able to act without external control, ie, apparently randomly? Computers can do that better than people right now.

And despite the fogginess and disagreement about what consciousness is, it's highly valued and thought necessary by many people looking into this stuff. If you think about that for a second, it's a reason to be even more skeptical about it.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#34

Post by Zikes »

Animats wrote: post #27

I've suggested before that AI focus on animal-level AI (operating in the real world) for a while and STFU about "consciousness". Blithering about consciousness doesn't seem to lead anywhere. Penrose is strange. He once sued a toilet-paper manufacturer for supposedly copying his Penrose non-repeating tiling scheme for the embossing pattern on their toilet paper. He lost.

I always assumed that AI consciousness would be an emergent property, not a feature we would (or even could) effectively develop towards.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#35

Post by AgentME »

crag wrote: post #9

The question isn't "can" but "should". Should we, assuming we could, create conscious (conscious meaning being self-aware and having the ability to learn) machines? There have been hundreds of books, movies, games - about this issue and all, come to the same conclusion... NO.

Creating consciousness has been a very popular thing for couples to do for many thousands of years!

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#36

Post by Zigurd »

I don't see a reason for AIs to be similar to human intellects. They are not animals. They are not "alive" the way an animal is. They cannot die as all animals do. They have no genes. They did not evolve. They don't have brains that evolved to keep hairless chimps alive. They don't have a "jump away from snakes" circuit. They won't have evolved our heuristics that make us suck at probability and risk assessment. When people use the word "consciousness" they mean usually mean the part of their brain that claims to have introspection but in fact cannot access the subconscious agents that make decisions in the human brain. Why should an AI have any of that?

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#37

Post by pasquinelli »

tim333 wrote: post #23
crag wrote: post #9

The question isn't "can" but "should". Should we, assuming we could, create conscious (conscious meaning being self-aware and having the ability to learn) machines? There have been hundreds of books, movies, games - about this issue and all, come to the same conclusion... NO.

I'm not sure they've concluded it's a bad idea, more that the machines and us living happily ever after makes for a dull movie.

right. those books and movies and whatnot express human anxiety about artificial consciousness. whether that anxiety is well-founded is really beside the point.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#39

Post by epx »

How useful would be a conscious computer? It would have to be protected by some rights (at the very least, equivalent to animal rights), they cease to be machines. The narrow-task AI efforts make more sense from an economical point of view, and I think they have actually more disruptive consequences (massive job extinction etc.).

That said, I believe that consciousness is "supernatural", something like another state of matter of a quantum phenomenon that cannot be manipulated like an Excel spreadsheet.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#40

Post by drabiega »

Zigurd wrote: post #36

I don't see a reason for AIs to be similar to human intellects. They are not animals. They are not "alive" the way an animal is. They cannot die as all animals do. They have no genes. They did not evolve. They don't have brains that evolved to keep hairless chimps alive. They don't have a "jump away from snakes" circuit. They won't have evolved our heuristics that make us suck at probability and risk assessment. When…

Well we might find, for instance, that in order to create a general purpose AI which can develop intellectually quickly enough to be useful we have to make it sufficiently like us that it can understand and participate in our culture.
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