A cyberneticist and AI expert asks:
"'Where will it end? Where does computational power leave off and actual consciousness begin? I don't know, and this field has been my lifelong specialty. Nobody knows, and they've been wondering about it for two or three centuries."
-PART ONE, III, p. 31.
That is the wrong way to put it. Computation does not become consciousness merely by becoming more powerful. Why should it? To process more inputted symbols more quickly is to become conscious neither of the meanings of the symbols nor of anything else but an artifact that interacts sensitively with its environment as an animal or human organism does might become conscious of the environment as the organism is. It must not merely simulate the behavior of an organism and must somehow process sensory inputs as a brain does.
Having expressed his agnosticism about conscious AI, the cyberneticist then says that it will soon be possible to upload a personality into a computer. If, by a "personality," he means a self-conscious individual, then he is not agnostic on the issue! He then rightly shifts from the terminology of "computer" to "'...an advanced neural network...'" with "'...sensors and effectors.'" (ibid.) But he should have used the latter terminology in the first place.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
To be fair, I think it's possible that scientists working on or even beyond the cutting edges of knowledge and technology might well use inadequate terms for their work. That's probably the case in this instance.
Ad astra! Sean
I have profound doubts that AI is possible along the lines currently pursued, no matter how powerful the computers. A mind isn't a computer, and a computer is not a mind -in embryo-.
Indeed.
Brains have computational abilities. There was an uneducated Indian woman who, without knowing how she did it, could instantly give the answer, correct to six decimal places, to any mathematical calculation. She was quicker than a hand calculator that only went to four places. But her calculations were unconscious. The conscious part of her mind was occupied with answering questions from a TV interviewer. It was as if she had an internal computer but she was no more conscious of how it worked than of the beating of her heart.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I share that skepticism, as I think Poul Anderson also did. He was simply willing to play with the idea of AIs, to see where it MIGHT go IF true.
Paul: I have heard of "savant" talents like these. An example from chess, also from India, might be Sultan Khan. He had very similar abilities, when it came to chess, as this woman you mentioned.
Ad astra! Sean
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