On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 02:23:52PM -0700, Alan Grayson wrote: > If you haven't viewed it, please do so. It's about the Turing Test, science > fiction, but the "special effects" aren't primarily photographic bells and > whistles, but the dialogue. the text, the logic of the script. Recently, we > have argued about consciousness, what it is, and how we can test for it in > the context of AI. I claimed that we could do some superficial surgery to > determine whether the subject of the test was a robot or a conscious > entity. But this is completely mistaken. All that that would reveal is > whether the subject was artificial, not whether it was "conscious". The > subject could have been a black box, and still showing signs of what we > can't really define; consciousness. I think Ex Machina provides an answer > of what we need to look for. Please view it and report back. But do NOT > read the plot, say in Wiki. It's a spoiler. AG
My loose thoughts, in no specific order: 1. The ultimate test of AI is when it does not play your game. Actually, very same can be said about humans. 2. Are there any readers of Stanislaw Lem here (besides me)? I consider Lem a philosopher, and a very conscious and contemporary one (he was more interested in a world around him and the future path of humanity rather than in subjects like whether the world or humanity exists), whereas I am afraid majority of public will have opinions based on poorly done cinematisation of some books he wrote. In his works, he gives, among other things, a gallery of automatons, whose actions are erratic in various ways. A protagonist usually shrugs it off as "requires repair or replacement", but sometimes he is not so sure. The errors become quite specific, suggesting underlying will and goal. There is a thin border line, a level of complication of electric brain, after which doubts start to appear. The appearance of real AI is burried in a whirl of human activity, always hurring somewhere, get home early, go to sleep, go to work, go see fiancee, drive children to school... Nobody will realize when such moment happens. Only in retrospect there may be speculation - "it happened during project M going on in skunk basement under the X-1 building... probably". Or during night watch of some lonesome programmer at his home/villa/castle. The movie "Ex machina" has more of Lem in itself than half of the movies "based on him" that I watched (the other half was great, but none of it were done on big budget, thus probably unknown beyound a circle of enthusiasts). 3. Who is going to judge consciousness of the black box? Humans are not equal. Not everybody is great athlete. In my opinion, not everybody is conscious to the same degree. Some folks I hear about (maybe meet with) are on the level of legendary talking animals. I am willing to believe that with some effort, they could upend themselves a bit, just like everybody could become better athlete with some patience (as long as he can steer a single muscle). So who is going to judge AI? How do we choose the judge(s)? From my observations, a good number of potential choices will still be naive and unable to overcome their biases. Who is going to judge consciousness of a tenured professor? Or a politician? Should we test voters? If yes, how exactly? What to do with those who fail? I guess, give them more blockbusters and entertainment... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:[email protected] ** -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/20200907183826.GA14902%40tau1.ceti.pl.
