Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On 25 Jan 2010, at 07:52, Brent Meeker wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Now, having postulated the natural numbers with addition and
multiplication, they organized themselves, independently of our
whishes, in a way which escapes *any* attempt of *complete*
unification. They defeat all our theories, in a sense. Once we
postulate them, they get a life of their own. To understand them,
we have literally no choice, in general, than to observe them and
infer laws.
We can prove that they have definite behaviors, but we can prove
(assuming mechanism) that we cannot predict them, in general.
ISTM that can be read as a reductio against the reality of
arithmetic.
On the contrary. It shows that arithmetical reality kicks back. We
may also know greater and greater portion of it. We may discover
new interesting properties, and we progress indeed since a long
time. From Diophantus to Matiyasevitch, to mention a beautiful line.
Are you alluding to fictionalism? Do you defend the idea that 3
is prime is a false proposition?
No, I just don't think it's truth implies the existence of 3.
So you believe that the proposition 9 is not prime is false?
To say that 9 is not prime is the same as saying that It exits a
number different from 1 and 9 which divides 9.
To believe that 9 is not prime you need to believe that Ex[x =
s(s(s(0)))]. i. e 3 exists (and divides 9).
I have no real clue of what that could seriously mean.
Of course I would never expect that someone who doesn't believe
that 3 is prime can say anything about the consequence of DIGITAL
mechanism. Such a move cut the uda (and the auda) at their roots,
and everything becomes infinitely mysterious. Frankly I would not
ask him to compute my taxes either.
So why not suppose that the natural numbers are just a model of
perceptual counting; and their potential infinity is a convenient
fiction whereby we avoid having to worry about where we might run
out of numbers to count with?
You can do that. But assuming you are not fictionalist, if you say
that the infinity of natural numbers is a fiction, you are lead,
ITSM, to ultrafinitism.
What's the difference between finitism and ultrafinitism? Doesn't
postulating the integers plus ZF also commit you to existence of the
whole hierarchy of infinite cardinals?
Finitist believes in all finite numbers or things. And nothing else. A
finitist believes in 0, and in s(0), and in s(s(0)), etc ... But he/
she does not believe in the whole set {0, s(0), s(s(0)), ...}. He/She
does not believe in infinite objects.
An ultrafinitist believes in 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ..., but he/she does
not believe in all finite numbers. He believes that the set of all
positive integers is a finite set. I think that Tholerus argued that
there is a bigger natural number. This makes sense for some strong
form of physicalism: a number exists if and only if it is instantiated
in the physical reality (which has to be postulated, then, and assumed
to be finite).
With fictionalism, I think that you can say yes to the doctor,
and reject the reversal consequences. This leads to a matter
problem, a mind problem, and the usual mind/matter problem. I would
take this as a defect of fictionalism.
Brent, I am not saying that ultrafinitism and fictionalism are
false. I am just saying that IF you say yes to your doctor's
proposal to substitute the brain for a computer, and this with a
reasonable understanding of what a computer is (and this asks for a
minimal amount of arithmetical realism) then the laws of physics
are necessarily a consequence of the (usual, recursive) definition
of addition and multiplication. Indeed it is the global coupling
consciousness/realities which emerges from + and * (and classical
logic). (or from K and S and the combinators rules, + equality
rules (this is much less)).
A sentence like naturals numbers are just a model of perceptual
counting already assumes (postulates) arithmetic. And with digital
mechanism you can explain why universal number can use natural
numbers as model of their perceptual counting.
You should not confuse the numbers as thought by the philosophical
humans (what are they? does they exists?) with the numbers as used
by mathematicians, physicists or neurophysiologists, like in this
flatworm has a brain constituted by 2 * 39 neurons or all
positive integers can be written as the sum of *four* integers
squares.
(Then the number takes another dimension once you say yes to the
doctor, because in that case, relatively to the (quantum)
environment, you say yes, not for a model, but because you bet
the doctor will put in your skull the actual thing you, yet
through other matter, and all what counts is that he put the
right number, relatively to the current environment. That other
dimension is somehow the object of all our discussions).
May be I can ask you
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On 22 Jan 2010, at 20:52, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 21 Jan 2010, at 22:19, John Mikes wrote: Dear Bruno, you took extra pain to describe (in your vocabulary) what I stand for (using MY vocabulary). - On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: John, What makes you think that a brain is something material? I mean /primitively/ material. JM: I refer to 'matter' as a historically developed */figment/* as used in physical worldview (I think in parentheses _by both of us_). Nothing (materially) PRIMITIVE, it is an 'explanation' of poorly understood and received observations at the various levels of the evolving human mindset (~actual enriching epistemic cognitive inventory and the pertinent (at that level) application of relational changing (=function??). I think we agree on that. You know (I hope) that I pretend (at least) to have shown that *IF* we are machine, and thus if our (generalized) brain is a machine, (for example: we say yes to the doctor) *THEN* we are immaterial, and eventually matter itself emerges from the statistical interference of computations. The term computation is taken in its original mathematical (and unphysical, immaterial) sense (of Church, Turing, Post, ...) Remember that comp is the belief (axiom, theory, hypothesis, faith) that we can survive with an artificial digital (a priori primitively material for the aristotelian) brain. Then I show that if we believe furthemore that matter is primitive, like 99,999%of the Aristotelians, we get a contradiction. JM: you have shown... - your *_DESCRIPTION_ of comp* and I do not throw out my belief to accept yours; Mine is just the usual one, make enough pecise to prove theorems from it. But it is really just Descartes, update with the discovery of the universal machine. first of all I carry a close, but different term for 'machine' because IMO numbers are not god-made primitives. I can prove that no theory can prove the existence of the natural numbers without postulating them (or equivalent things). They are the inventions in human speculation (cf: D. Bohm) Of course I differ here. It is the notion of humans which is a speculation by the numbers/machines. Yet above you note that numbers can only be postulated. Isn't this an example of misplacing the concrete? You point out that arithmetic is not only almost all unknown but is, ex hypothesi, unknowable. What I said is related to the failure of logicism. Some people thought that we could derive the existence of natural numbers from logic or very weak theory. But this can be shown impossible. So any theory in which we have terms denoting the natural numbers contains arithmetic as a sub-theory. Anyone wanting the natural numbers in its reality, like a wave physicist who would desire interferences processes, will have to explicitly or implicitly assumes arithmetic. Now, having postulated the natural numbers with addition and multiplication, they organized themselves, independently of our whishes, in a way which escapes *any* attempt of *complete* unification. They defeat all our theories, in a sense. Once we postulate them, they get a life of their own. To understand them, we have literally no choice, in general, than to observe them and infer laws. We can prove that they have definite behaviors, but we can prove (assuming mechanism) that we cannot predict them, in general. ISTM that can be read as a reductio against the reality of arithmetic. On the contrary. It shows that arithmetical reality kicks back. We may also know greater and greater portion of it. We may discover new interesting properties, and we progress indeed since a long time. From Diophantus to Matiyasevitch, to mention a beautiful line. Are you alluding to fictionalism? Do you defend the idea that 3 is prime is a false proposition? I have no real clue of what that could seriously mean. Of course I would never expect that someone who doesn't believe that 3 is prime can say anything about the consequence of DIGITAL mechanism. Such a move cut the uda (and the auda) at their roots, and everything becomes infinitely mysterious. Frankly I would not ask him to compute my taxes either. So why not suppose that the natural numbers are just a model of perceptual counting; and their potential infinity is a convenient fiction whereby we avoid having to worry about where we might run out of numbers to count with? You can do that. But assuming you are not fictionalist, if you say that the infinity of natural numbers is a fiction, you are lead, ITSM, to ultrafinitism. With fictionalism, I think that you can say yes to the doctor, and reject the reversal consequences. This leads to a matter problem, a mind
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Bruno Marchal wrote: [a lot of stuff I'd probably agree with if I understood it all] Bruno, I desperately need to understand your stuff. Where do I start? -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
2010/1/24 Mark Buda her...@acm.org Bruno Marchal wrote: [a lot of stuff I'd probably agree with if I understood it all] Bruno, I desperately need to understand your stuff. Where do I start? Computer science, compiler theory , number theory, what is a program, strong AI. Wikipedia on those subject is a good start. Regards, Quentin -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
2010/1/24 Mark Buda her...@acm.org Bruno Marchal wrote: [a lot of stuff I'd probably agree with if I understood it all] Bruno, I desperately need to understand your stuff. Where do I start? Computer science, compiler theory , number theory, what is a program, strong AI. Wikipedia on those subject is a good start. Okay, I'm new here and haven't made my background clear. I know lots about all of those (well, number theory not so much as the rest) and more importantly, I know what the limits of my knowledge are and how to learn more. I was trying to ask where in Bruno's stuff I should start. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On 24 Jan 2010, at 21:44, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2010/1/24 Mark Buda her...@acm.org Bruno Marchal wrote: [a lot of stuff I'd probably agree with if I understood it all] Bruno, I desperately need to understand your stuff. Where do I start? Computer science, compiler theory , number theory, what is a program, strong AI. And logic. (Especially for auda) Wikipedia on those subject is a good start. To be frank, I don't find wikipedia so helpful. The english wiki is better than the french, though. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On 24 Jan 2010, at 22:39, Mark Buda wrote: 2010/1/24 Mark Buda her...@acm.org Bruno Marchal wrote: [a lot of stuff I'd probably agree with if I understood it all] Bruno, I desperately need to understand your stuff. Where do I start? Computer science, compiler theory , number theory, what is a program, strong AI. Wikipedia on those subject is a good start. Okay, I'm new here and haven't made my background clear. I know lots about all of those (well, number theory not so much as the rest) and more importantly, I know what the limits of my knowledge are and how to learn more. I was trying to ask where in Bruno's stuff I should start. I would suggest the SANE 2004 paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm Or click on the following page for a pdf and the (unique) slides with the 8 steps of the uda (universal dovetailer argument). http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html The paper contains both uda and auda. I have try hard, in most presentation, to separate the main argument (uda) from the more constructive and mathematical version (auda, (arithmetical uda) needed only to see a way to derive physics (both quanta and qualia) from computer science/number theory). uda is understandable by anyone having some passive understanding of computers. In step seven of uda you need to understand how it is possible to design a program capable of both generating all programs (in all languages) and executing them (pieces by pieces), i.e. the one I called universal dovetailer. This is falsely simple: once you understand Cantor proof in set theory, it even seems impossible. The possibility remains (a consequence of Church thesis), and this has important consequences (the impossibility to prevent crashing of universal machines, incompleteness, insolubility, etc.). Again the subtleties plays only a role in auda. The step 8 is too much concise in the SANE paper. I will send a better version to the list, or you could search (meanwhile) MGA (movie graph argument) on the archive of the list. Ask any question. The subject is interdisciplinary, nothing is simple for everyone. Best, Bruno Marchal -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Jan 2010, at 20:52, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 21 Jan 2010, at 22:19, John Mikes wrote: Dear Bruno, you took extra pain to describe (in your vocabulary) what I stand for (using MY vocabulary). - On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: John, What makes you think that a brain is something material? I mean /primitively/ material. JM: I refer to 'matter' as a historically developed */figment/* as used in physical worldview (I think in parentheses _by both of us_). Nothing (materially) PRIMITIVE, it is an 'explanation' of poorly understood and received observations at the various levels of the evolving human mindset (~actual enriching epistemic cognitive inventory and the pertinent (at that level) application of relational changing (=function??). I think we agree on that. You know (I hope) that I pretend (at least) to have shown that *IF* we are machine, and thus if our (generalized) brain is a machine, (for example: we say yes to the doctor) *THEN* we are immaterial, and eventually matter itself emerges from the statistical interference of computations. The term computation is taken in its original mathematical (and unphysical, immaterial) sense (of Church, Turing, Post, ...) Remember that comp is the belief (axiom, theory, hypothesis, faith) that we can survive with an artificial digital (a priori primitively material for the aristotelian) brain. Then I show that if we believe furthemore that matter is primitive, like 99,999%of the Aristotelians, we get a contradiction. JM: you have shown... - your *_DESCRIPTION_ of comp* and I do not throw out my belief to accept yours; Mine is just the usual one, make enough pecise to prove theorems from it. But it is really just Descartes, update with the discovery of the universal machine. first of all I carry a close, but different term for 'machine' because IMO numbers are not god-made primitives. I can prove that no theory can prove the existence of the natural numbers without postulating them (or equivalent things). They are the inventions in human speculation (cf: D. Bohm) Of course I differ here. It is the notion of humans which is a speculation by the numbers/machines. Yet above you note that numbers can only be postulated. Isn't this an example of misplacing the concrete? You point out that arithmetic is not only almost all unknown but is, ex hypothesi, unknowable. What I said is related to the failure of logicism. Some people thought that we could derive the existence of natural numbers from logic or very weak theory. But this can be shown impossible. So any theory in which we have terms denoting the natural numbers contains arithmetic as a sub-theory. Anyone wanting the natural numbers in its reality, like a wave physicist who would desire interferences processes, will have to explicitly or implicitly assumes arithmetic. Now, having postulated the natural numbers with addition and multiplication, they organized themselves, independently of our whishes, in a way which escapes *any* attempt of *complete* unification. They defeat all our theories, in a sense. Once we postulate them, they get a life of their own. To understand them, we have literally no choice, in general, than to observe them and infer laws. We can prove that they have definite behaviors, but we can prove (assuming mechanism) that we cannot predict them, in general. ISTM that can be read as a reductio against the reality of arithmetic. On the contrary. It shows that arithmetical reality kicks back. We may also know greater and greater portion of it. We may discover new interesting properties, and we progress indeed since a long time. From Diophantus to Matiyasevitch, to mention a beautiful line. Are you alluding to fictionalism? Do you defend the idea that 3 is prime is a false proposition? No, I just don't think it's truth implies the existence of 3. I have no real clue of what that could seriously mean. Of course I would never expect that someone who doesn't believe that 3 is prime can say anything about the consequence of DIGITAL mechanism. Such a move cut the uda (and the auda) at their roots, and everything becomes infinitely mysterious. Frankly I would not ask him to compute my taxes either. So why not suppose that the natural numbers are just a model of perceptual counting; and their potential infinity is a convenient fiction whereby we avoid having to worry about where we might run out of numbers to count with? You can do that. But assuming you are not fictionalist, if you say that the infinity of natural numbers is a fiction, you are lead, ITSM, to ultrafinitism. What's the difference between finitism and ultrafinitism? Doesn't postulating the integers plus ZF also
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Hi John, On 21 Jan 2010, at 22:19, John Mikes wrote: Dear Bruno, you took extra pain to describe (in your vocabulary) what I stand for (using MY vocabulary). - On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: John, What makes you think that a brain is something material? I mean primitively material. JM: I refer to 'matter' as a historically developed figment as used in physical worldview (I think in parentheses by both of us). Nothing (materially) PRIMITIVE, it is an 'explanation' of poorly understood and received observations at the various levels of the evolving human mindset (~actual enriching epistemic cognitive inventory and the pertinent (at that level) application of relational changing (=function??). I think we agree on that. You know (I hope) that I pretend (at least) to have shown that IF we are machine, and thus if our (generalized) brain is a machine, (for example: we say yes to the doctor) THEN we are immaterial, and eventually matter itself emerges from the statistical interference of computations. The term computation is taken in its original mathematical (and unphysical, immaterial) sense (of Church, Turing, Post, ...) Remember that comp is the belief (axiom, theory, hypothesis, faith) that we can survive with an artificial digital (a priori primitively material for the aristotelian) brain. Then I show that if we believe furthemore that matter is primitive, like 99,999%of the Aristotelians, we get a contradiction. JM: you have shown... - your DESCRIPTION of comp and I do not throw out my belief to accept yours; Mine is just the usual one, make enough pecise to prove theorems from it. But it is really just Descartes, update with the discovery of the universal machine. first of all I carry a close, but different term for 'machine' because IMO numbers are not god-made primitives. I can prove that no theory can prove the existence of the natural numbers without postulating them (or equivalent things). They are the inventions in human speculation (cf: D. Bohm) Of course I differ here. It is the notion of humans which is a speculation by the numbers/machines. because by simply observing nature you do not get TO numbers. Indeed. I do expect we need to believe (may be implicitly, or unconsciously) in numbers to be able to observe things, or even just to develop the very idea of things. Arithmetic is the 2nd step in accepting numbers. For Aritmetic = the theory, I agree. But for Arithmetic = arithmetical truth, as you know, I consider it as independent of anything, be it humans, or universes. I feel your number = The Primitive as a vocabulary entry for God, what I have no place for in my worldview either. I tend to use the term God in its old platonic science. It means the truth we are searching (not finding!). Then universal machine introspection leads to an arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus, which makes the analogy closer, and even testable experimentally. I appreciated your extension of such term into ourselves (and also your earlier treatment of theology). My point can be sum up in one sentence: mechanism is incompatible with weak materialism. Weak materialism is the doctrine that matter exist primitively, or that physics, at least in its current naturalist and materialist paradigm, is fundamental. What I say is that you cannot both believe that you are a machine, and that matter exists *primitively*. JM: the crux of my writings over the past years focussed on 'matter as figment' for physicalist views of the conventional (reductionist?) sciences. Weak, or strong. Thanks for including a definition of the 'weak'. Fundmental is 'something we have no access to' except in occasional partial revelations - interpreted for acceptance in our individually different 'minds' as perceived reality (in our 1st person mini-solipsism). I do not differentiate ideational from matterly, I think in 'relations' not encoded, closer to mental (?) if there is such a distinction. The (our) specifications come from us. Us the humans, or us the numbers? An 'enlightened' computationalist as a much larger notion of us than humans. The 'physical view' is a fantastic edifice of balanced (mostly by math) equilibria and concepts and is very practical for our technology. Not a religion (science, faith-based, materialistic, or else). It may be a religion or theology, but then, if honest, as to be made in that way explicitly, for example by postulating a primitively material reality. If not it is pseudo-religion, authoritative arguments. The new fundamental science, becomes no more than elementary arithmetic, or any of its Sigma_1 complete little cousins. By defining an observer by a Löbian machine/number, we can recover the appearances of the physical
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi John, On 21 Jan 2010, at 22:19, John Mikes wrote: Dear Bruno, you took extra pain to describe (in your vocabulary) what I stand for (using MY vocabulary). - On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: John, What makes you think that a brain is something material? I mean /primitively/ material. JM: I refer to 'matter' as a historically developed */figment/* as used in physical worldview (I think in parentheses _by both of us_). Nothing (materially) PRIMITIVE, it is an 'explanation' of poorly understood and received observations at the various levels of the evolving human mindset (~actual enriching epistemic cognitive inventory and the pertinent (at that level) application of relational changing (=function??). I think we agree on that. You know (I hope) that I pretend (at least) to have shown that *IF* we are machine, and thus if our (generalized) brain is a machine, (for example: we say yes to the doctor) *THEN* we are immaterial, and eventually matter itself emerges from the statistical interference of computations. The term computation is taken in its original mathematical (and unphysical, immaterial) sense (of Church, Turing, Post, ...) Remember that comp is the belief (axiom, theory, hypothesis, faith) that we can survive with an artificial digital (a priori primitively material for the aristotelian) brain. Then I show that if we believe furthemore that matter is primitive, like 99,999%of the Aristotelians, we get a contradiction. JM: you have shown... - your *_DESCRIPTION_ of comp* and I do not throw out my belief to accept yours; Mine is just the usual one, make enough pecise to prove theorems from it. But it is really just Descartes, update with the discovery of the universal machine. first of all I carry a close, but different term for 'machine' because IMO numbers are not god-made primitives. I can prove that no theory can prove the existence of the natural numbers without postulating them (or equivalent things). They are the inventions in human speculation (cf: D. Bohm) Of course I differ here. It is the notion of humans which is a speculation by the numbers/machines. Yet above you note that numbers can only be postulated. Isn't this an example of misplacing the concrete? You point out that arithmetic is not only almost all unknown but is, ex hypothesi, unknowable. ISTM that can be read as a reductio against the reality of arithmetic. So why not suppose that the natural numbers are just a model of perceptual counting; and their potential infinity is a convenient fiction whereby we avoid having to worry about where we might run out of numbers to count with? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Hi ferrari, It is weird, my computer decided that this mail was junk mail. It is the first time it put an everything list post in the junk list. I am afraid you hurt its susceptibility :) On 20 Jan 2010, at 19:15, ferrari wrote: come on silky, the answer you know yourself of course. artificial is artificial. That is true! artificial is a distinction introduced by humans. (I know it is not what you mean, but I let you think). to say you are alive, you must be able to reflect on yourself. Theoretical computer science is born from the (non obvious) discovery that machine *can* reflect on themselves (in many strong senses). (More on this in the seventh step thread). you must be able to create Why do you think Emil post, the first to understand Church thesis (10 years before Church), decide to call creative the set theoretical definition of machine universality? and to understand without someone teaching you We all need teachers, except God or any basic fundamental closed (no inputs/no outputs) reality. and most important there is nobody who turns you on or off (exept your girlfriend ;)). The universal machines build by humans can be said to be born as slaves. But this is a contingent fact. real life has any joice, ai has a programmed joice...nothing else. You just show your prejudices against the computationalist hypothesis. But the point here is to try to figure out the consequences of that hypothesis. If we find a contradiction, then we will know better. To ridicule the hypothesis will not help. Up to now, we only find some weirdness, not a contradiction. The type of weirdness we find can be shown observable in nature. This confirms, (but does not prove 'course) the mechanist hypothesis. What is your theory of mind? In case of disease, would accept an artificial kidney, heart? If yes, would you accept that your daughter marry a man who already accepted an artificial brain? Or do you think it would be a zombie (acting like a human, but having no consciousness). Don't worry. Artificial humans will not appear soon. Best, Bruno On 18 Jan., 06:21, silky michaelsli...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? Apologies if this is too vague or useless; it's just an idea that has been interesting me. -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Bruno, while appreciating your reply to ferrari, I have to ask you a question. You wrote: *...What is your theory of mind? In case of disease, would accept an artificial kidney, heart? If yes, would you accept that your daughter marry a man who already accepted an artificial brain? ... * giving the *impression* that you may consider 'mind' identical (and exclusively identically functioning) to the humanly so far described tissue-contraption figment (?!) called BRAIN. (I am talking about 'reflexive' mAmps and topically meaningful blood-flow surge), assigned to (ideational) mind-work). Is this rethorical question of yours a misunderstanding (mine) in the heat of the argumentation, or an acceptance to an extreme materialistic stance? John M * * On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:58 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi ferrari, It is weird, my computer decided that this mail was junk mail. It is the first time it put an everything list post in the junk list. I am afraid you hurt its susceptibility :) On 20 Jan 2010, at 19:15, ferrari wrote: come on silky, the answer you know yourself of course. artificial is artificial. That is true! artificial is a distinction introduced by humans. (I know it is not what you mean, but I let you think). to say you are alive, you must be able to reflect on yourself. Theoretical computer science is born from the (non obvious) discovery that machine *can* reflect on themselves (in many strong senses). (More on this in the seventh step thread). you must be able to create Why do you think Emil post, the first to understand Church thesis (10 years before Church), decide to call creative the set theoretical definition of machine universality? and to understand without someone teaching you We all need teachers, except God or any basic fundamental closed (no inputs/no outputs) reality. and most important there is nobody who turns you on or off (exept your girlfriend ;)). The universal machines build by humans can be said to be born as slaves. But this is a contingent fact. real life has any joice, ai has a programmed joice...nothing else. You just show your prejudices against the computationalist hypothesis. But the point here is to try to figure out the consequences of that hypothesis. If we find a contradiction, then we will know better. To ridicule the hypothesis will not help. Up to now, we only find some weirdness, not a contradiction. The type of weirdness we find can be shown observable in nature. This confirms, (but does not prove 'course) the mechanist hypothesis. What is your theory of mind? In case of disease, would accept an artificial kidney, heart? If yes, would you accept that your daughter marry a man who already accepted an artificial brain? Or do you think it would be a zombie (acting like a human, but having no consciousness). Don't worry. Artificial humans will not appear soon. Best, Bruno On 18 Jan., 06:21, silky michaelsli...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? Apologies if this is too vague or useless; it's just an idea that has been interesting me. -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Dear Bruno, you took extra pain to describe (in your vocabulary) what I stand for (using MY vocabulary). - On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: John, What makes you think that a brain is something material? I mean * primitively* material. JM: I refer to 'matter' as a historically developed *figment* as used in physical worldview (I think in parentheses *by both of us*). Nothing (materially) PRIMITIVE, it is an 'explanation' of poorly understood and received observations at the various levels of the evolving human mindset (~actual enriching epistemic cognitive inventory and the pertinent (at that level) application of relational changing (=function??). You know (I hope) that I pretend (at least) to have shown that *IF* we are machine, and thus if our (generalized) brain is a machine, (for example: we say yes to the doctor) *THEN* we are immaterial, and eventually matter itself emerges from the statistical interference of computations. The term computation is taken in its original mathematical (and unphysical, immaterial) sense (of Church, Turing, Post, ...) Remember that comp is the belief (axiom, theory, hypothesis, faith) that we can survive with an artificial digital (a priori primitively material for the aristotelian) brain. Then I show that if we believe furthemore that matter is primitive, like 99,999%of the Aristotelians, we get a contradiction. JM: you have shown... - your *DESCRIPTION of comp* and I do not throw out my belief to accept yours; first of all I carry a close, but different term for 'machine' because IMO numbers are not god-made primitives. They are the inventions in human speculation (cf: D. Bohm) because by simply observing nature you do not get TO numbers. Arithmetic is the 2nd step in accepting numbers. I feel your *number = The Primitive* as a vocabulary entry for *God*, what I have no place for in *my *worldview either. I appreciated your extension of such term into *ourselves* (and also your earlier treatment of theology). My point can be sum up in one sentence: mechanism is incompatible with weak materialism. Weak materialism is the doctrine that matter exist primitively, or that physics, at least in its current naturalist and materialist paradigm, is fundamental. What I say is that you cannot both believe that you are a machine, and that matter exists *primitively*. JM: the crux of my writings over the past years focussed on 'matter as figment' for physicalist views of the conventional (reductionist?) sciences. Weak, or strong. Thanks for including a definition of the 'weak'. Fundmental is 'something we have no access to' except in occasional partial revelations - interpreted for acceptance in our *individually different* *'minds'* as perceived reality (in our 1st person mini-solipsism). I do not differentiate ideational from matterly, I think in 'relations' not encoded, closer to mental (?) if there is such a distinction. The (our) specifications come from us. The 'physical view' is a fantastic edifice of balanced (mostly by math) equilibria and concepts and is very practical for our technology. Not a religion (science, faith-based, materialistic, or else). The new fundamental science, becomes no more than elementary arithmetic, or any of its Sigma_1 complete little cousins. By defining an observer by a Löbian machine/number, we can recover the appearances of the physical laws from the first person plural invariance. JM: here I beg to differ, since what you listed are specimens from HUMAN thinking and this is not restrictve to nature's unlimited variability. *We don't know* (nor imagine) *what we don't know*. Our conventional science patterns try to 'explain' everything within our actual circle of knowledge and math is a great help. Whatever we don't know is called chaotic or random, both interfering with anything physicists could formulate as 'physical laws'. random would screw it up, chaos is simply 'beyond it'. I know nothing about 'first person plural invariance'. Of course, brain will not disappear, nor the ring of Saturn, nor the far away galaxies. It just means that eventually physicists will unify all the forces in a relation in which all the physical unities will be simplified away (like time vanishes in DeWitt Wheeler equation of the universe, for example). JM: brain? as in that neuron/glia etc. based *tissue contraption* 'placed into the skull', *-OR-* the 'brainfunction' assigned to such, callable *'mind'*? The 'doctor' can exchange only the former. I speculated a lot how to eliminate *'time'* and still keep relational changes. (No luck so far). We get more from the logic of self-reference: the unification will have to be related to universal machine introspection, and this has the advantage of explaining why the physical split into publicly sharable propositions (like I *weigh* 60 kg) and private non sharable
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On 20 Jan 2010, at 03:09, silky wrote:
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
wrote:
On 19 Jan 2010, at 03:28, silky wrote:
I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly
complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real
cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this
computer cat. I'm wondering to what degree that adds or removes to
my moral obligations.
I think there is a confusion of level. It seems related to the
problem of free-will. Some people believe that free will is
impossible in the deterministic frame.
My opinion is that we don't have free will, and my definion of
free-will in this context is being able to do something that our
programming doesn't allow us to do.
For example, people explain free-will as the ability to decide
whether or not you pick up a pen. Sure, you can do either things,
and no matter which you do, you are exercising a choice. But I
don't consider this free. It's just a pre-determined as a program
looking at some internal state and deciding which branch to take:
if ( needToWrite notHoldingPen ){ grabPen(); }
It goes without saying that it's significantly more complicated, but
the underlying concept remains.
I define free will as the concept of breaking out of a branch
completely, stepping outside the program. And clearly, from within
the program (of human consciousness) it's impossible. Thus, I
consider free will as a completely impossible concept.
I agree with this.
If we re-define free will to mean the ability to choose between two
actions, based on state (as I showed above), then clearly, it's a
fact of life,
OK.
and every single object in the universe has this type of free will.
You shift from a too much demanding definition of free-will (going out
of the program) to a too much weak one, I think.
I prefer a (re)definition based on the fact that free-will is when a
machine reflect from to its ignorance to make a decision. This can be
used to explain the true feeling of free-will which can often (but
not always) accompanied it.
Bruno
But no machine can predict its own behavior in advance. If it could
it could contradict the prediction.
If my friend who knows me well can predict my action, it will not
change the fact that I can do those action by free will, at my own
level where I live.
If not, determinism would eliminate all form of responsability. You
can say to the judge: all right I am a murderer, but I am not
guilty because I am just obeying the physical laws.
This is an empty defense. The judge can answer: no problem. I still
condemn you to fifty years in jail, but don't worry, I am just
obeying myself to the physical laws.
That is also why real explanation of consciousness don't have to
explain consciousness away. (Eventually it is the status of matter
which appear less solid).
An explanation has to correspond to its correct level of relevance.
Why did Obama win the election? Because Obama is made of particles
obeying to the Schoredinger equation.? That is true, but wrong as
an explanation. Because Obama promise to legalize pot? That is
false, but could have work as a possible explanation. It is closer
to the relevance level.
When we reduce a domain to another ontologically, this does not need
to eliminate the explanation power of the first domain. This is made
palpable in computer science. You will never explain how a chess
program works by referring to a low level.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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UNBOUNDED-reconcilable crow's-feet; COKE? Intermarriage distressing:
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Re: on consciousness levels and ai
2010/1/20 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: But it also needs to be similar enough to us that we can intuit what hurts is and what doesn't, to empathize that it may feel pain. If my car runs out of oil does it feel pain? I'm sure my 1966 Saab doesn't, but what about my 1999 Passat - it has a computer with an auto-diagnostic function? Your car does not necessarily feel pain. A patient with a blood pressure monitor will seek medical review if his BP is too high, but he will not necessarily feel pain; maybe he will feel a mild anxiety, maybe he will feel annoyance at having to go to the doctor, maybe he won't feel anything at all despite understanding the implications. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
come on silky, the answer you know yourself of course. artificial is artificial. to say you are alive, you must be able to reflect on yourself. you must be able to create and to understand without someone teaching you and most important there is nobody who turns you on or off (exept your girlfriend ;)). real life has any joice, ai has a programmed joice...nothing else. all the best ferrari1 On 18 Jan., 06:21, silky michaelsli...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? Apologies if this is too vague or useless; it's just an idea that has been interesting me. -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. Why should understanding something, even well enough to have actually made it, make a difference? Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). I don't think our understanding of it has anything to do with it. It is more that a certain level of complexity is needed for the entity in question to have a level of consciousness which means we are able to hurt it. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
People seem to be predisposed to accept AI programs as human(oid) if one can judge by reactions to Hal, Colossus, Robby, Marvin etc. m.a. - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 6:09 PM Subject: Re: on consciousness levels and ai silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. I think unknowingness plays a big part, but it's because of our experience with people and animals, we project our own experience of consciousness on to them so that when we see them behave in certain ways we impute an inner life to them that includes pleasure and suffering. Henry Markham's group are presently trying to simulate a rat brain, and so far they have done 10,000 neurons which they are hopeful is behaving in a physiological way. This is at huge computational expense, and they have a long way to go before simulating a whole rat brain, and no guarantee that it will start behaving like a rat. If it does, then they are only a few years away from simulating a human, soon after that will come a superhuman AI, and soon after that it's we who will have to argue that we have feelings and are worth preserving. Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? I don't think so. We don't worry about the internet's feelings, or the air traffic control system. John McCarthy has written essays on this subject and he cautions against creating AI with human like emotions precisely because of the ethical implications. But that means we need to understand consciousness and emotions less we accidentally do something unethical. Brent -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On 19 Jan 2010, at 03:28, silky wrote: I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this computer cat. I'm wondering to what degree that adds or removes to my moral obligations. I think there is a confusion of level. It seems related to the problem of free-will. Some people believe that free will is impossible in the deterministic frame. But no machine can predict its own behavior in advance. If it could it could contradict the prediction. If my friend who knows me well can predict my action, it will not change the fact that I can do those action by free will, at my own level where I live. If not, determinism would eliminate all form of responsability. You can say to the judge: all right I am a murderer, but I am not guilty because I am just obeying the physical laws. This is an empty defense. The judge can answer: no problem. I still condemn you to fifty years in jail, but don't worry, I am just obeying myself to the physical laws. That is also why real explanation of consciousness don't have to explain consciousness away. (Eventually it is the status of matter which appear less solid). An explanation has to correspond to its correct level of relevance. Why did Obama win the election? Because Obama is made of particles obeying to the Schoredinger equation.? That is true, but wrong as an explanation. Because Obama promise to legalize pot? That is false, but could have work as a possible explanation. It is closer to the relevance level. When we reduce a domain to another ontologically, this does not need to eliminate the explanation power of the first domain. This is made palpable in computer science. You will never explain how a chess program works by referring to a low level. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Dear Bruno, you picked my 'just added' small after-remark from my post and I thought for a second that it was Brent's reply. Then your signature explained that it was YOUR stance on life (almost) (- I search for even more proper distinctions to that term). Maybe we should scrap the term altogether and use it only as 'folklore' - applicable as in conventional 'bio'. . Considering 'conscious' (+ness?) the responsiveness (reflexively?) to *any*relations is hard to separate from the general idea we usually carry as *'life'.* I like your bon mot on 'artificial' putting me into my place in 'folklore' vocabulary. Indeed, - in my naive meanings - whatever occurs occurs by a mechanism - entailed by relations - is considerable as artificial (or: *naturally occurring change*), be it by humans or by a hurricane. what I may object to, is your ONLY in the last par: it presumes omniscience. Even your 'lived experience' is identified in anthropomorphic ways (*they have our experiences). * ** *Thanks for the reply* ** *JohnM* ** ** ** On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Jan 2010, at 16:35, John Mikes wrote: Is a universal mchine 'live'? I would say yes, despite the concrete artificial one still needs humans in its reproduction cycle. But we need plants and bacteria. I think that all machines, including houses and garden are alive in that sense. Cigarets are alive. They have a a way to reproduce. Universal machine are alive and can be conscious. If we define artificial by introduced by humans, we can see that the difference between artificial and natural is ... artificial (and thus natural!). Jacques Lafitte wrote in 1911 (published in 1931) a book where he describes the rise of machines and technology as a collateral living processes. Only for Löbian machine, like you, me, but also Peano Arithmetic and ZF , I would say I am pretty sure that they are reflexively conscious like us. Despite they have no lived experiences at all. (Well, they have our experiences, in a sense. We are their experiences). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. Why should understanding something, even well enough to have actually made it, make a difference? Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). I don't think our understanding of it has anything to do with it. It is more that a certain level of complexity is needed for the entity in question to have a level of consciousness which means we are able to hurt it. But it also needs to be similar enough to us that we can intuit what hurts is and what doesn't, to empathize that it may feel pain. If my car runs out of oil does it feel pain? I'm sure my 1966 Saab doesn't, but what about my 1999 Passat - it has a computer with an auto-diagnostic function? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Jan 2010, at 03:28, silky wrote: I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this computer cat. I'm wondering to what degree that adds or removes to my moral obligations. I think there is a confusion of level. It seems related to the problem of free-will. Some people believe that free will is impossible in the deterministic frame. But no machine can predict its own behavior in advance. If it could it could contradict the prediction. If my friend who knows me well can predict my action, it will not change the fact that I can do those action by free will, at my own level where I live. If not, determinism would eliminate all form of responsability. You can say to the judge: all right I am a murderer, but I am not guilty because I am just obeying the physical laws. This is an empty defense. The judge can answer: no problem. I still condemn you to fifty years in jail, but don't worry, I am just obeying myself to the physical laws. That is also why real explanation of consciousness don't have to explain consciousness /away/. (Eventually it is the status of matter which appear less solid). An explanation has to correspond to its correct level of relevance. And to the level of understanding of the person to whom you are explaining. Why did Obama win the election? Because Obama is made of particles obeying to the Schoredinger equation.? That is true, but wrong as an explanation. Because Obama promise to legalize pot? That is false, but could have work as a possible explanation. It is closer to the relevance level. When we reduce a domain to another ontologically, this does not need to eliminate the explanation power of the first domain. This is made palpable in computer science. You will never explain how a chess program works by referring to a low level. You may certainly explain it at a lower level than the rules or lower than you might explain strategy to a human player. For example you could describe alpha-beta tree search or a look-up-table for openings. Brent Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 8:43 PM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.comwrote: 2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. Why should understanding something, even well enough to have actually made it, make a difference? I don't know, that's what I'm trying to determine. Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). I don't think our understanding of it has anything to do with it. It is more that a certain level of complexity is needed for the entity in question to have a level of consciousness which means we are able to hurt it. But the basic question is; can you create this entity from scratch, using a computer? And if so, do you owe it any obligations? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 antagonist PATRIARCHATE scatterbrained professorship VENALLY bankrupt adversity bored = unint... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
On 19 Jan 2010, at 03:28, silky wrote:
I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I
suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer
- know all there is to know about this computer cat. I'm wondering to what
degree that adds or removes to my moral obligations.
I think there is a confusion of level. It seems related to the problem of
free-will. Some people believe that free will is impossible in the
deterministic frame.
My opinion is that we don't have free will, and my definion of free-will
in this context is being able to do something that our programming doesn't
allow us to do.
For example, people explain free-will as the ability to decide whether or
not you pick up a pen. Sure, you can do either things, and no matter which
you do, you are exercising a choice. But I don't consider this free.
It's just a pre-determined as a program looking at some internal state and
deciding which branch to take:
if ( needToWrite notHoldingPen ){ grabPen(); }
It goes without saying that it's significantly more complicated, but the
underlying concept remains.
I define free will as the concept of breaking out of a branch completely,
stepping outside the program. And clearly, from within the program (of
human consciousness) it's impossible. Thus, I consider free will as a
completely impossible concept.
If we re-define free will to mean the ability to choose between two actions,
based on state (as I showed above), then clearly, it's a fact of life, and
every single object in the universe has this type of free will.
But no machine can predict its own behavior in advance. If it could it could
contradict the prediction.
If my friend who knows me well can predict my action, it will not change
the fact that I can do those action by free will, at my own level where I
live.
If not, determinism would eliminate all form of responsability. You can say
to the judge: all right I am a murderer, but I am not guilty because I am
just obeying the physical laws.
This is an empty defense. The judge can answer: no problem. I still
condemn you to fifty years in jail, but don't worry, I am just obeying
myself to the physical laws.
That is also why real explanation of consciousness don't have to explain
consciousness *away*. (Eventually it is the status of matter which appear
less solid).
An explanation has to correspond to its correct level of relevance.
Why did Obama win the election? Because Obama is made of particles obeying
to the Schoredinger equation.? That is true, but wrong as an explanation.
Because Obama promise to legalize pot? That is false, but could have work
as a possible explanation. It is closer to the relevance level.
When we reduce a domain to another ontologically, this does not need to
eliminate the explanation power of the first domain. This is made palpable
in computer science. You will never explain how a chess program works by
referring to a low level.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/
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Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? I think the differences are 1) we generally cannot kill an animal without causing it some distress Is that because our off function in real life isn't immediate? Yes. Do does that mean you would not feel guilty turning off a real cat, if it could be done immediately? Or, as per below, because it cannot get more pleasure? No, that's why I made it separate. 2) as long as it is alive it has a capacity for pleasure (that's why we euthanize pets when we think they can no longer enjoy any part of life) This is fair. But what if we were able to model this addition of pleasure in the program? It's easy to increase happiness++, and thus the desire to die decreases. I don't think it's so easy as you suppose. Pleasure comes through satisfying desires and it has as many dimensions as there are kinds of desires. A animal that has very limited desires, e.g. eat and reproduce, would not seem to us capable of much pleasure and we would kill it without much feeling of guilt - as swatting a fly. Okay, so for your the moral responsibility comes in when we are depriving the entity from pleasure AND because we can't turn it off immediately (i.e. it will become aware it's being switched off; and become upset). Is this very simple variable enough to make us care? Clearly not, but why not? Is it because the animal is more conscious then we think? Is the answer that it's simply impossible to model even a cat's consciousness completely? If we model an animal that only exists to eat/live/reproduce, have we created any moral responsibility? I don't think our moral responsibility would start even if we add a very complicated pleasure-based system into the model. I think it would - just as we have ethical feelings toward dogs and tigers. So assuming someone can create the appropriate model, and you can see that you will be depriving pleasure and/or causing pain, you'd start to feel guilty about switching the entity off? Probably it would be as simple as having the cat/dog whimper as it senses that the program was going to terminate (obviously, visual stimulus would help in a deterrent), but then it must be asked, would the programmer feel guilt? Or just an average user of the system, who doesn't know the underlying programming model? My personal opinion is that it would hard to *ever* feel guilty about ending something that you have created so artificially (i.e. with every action directly predictable by you, casually). Even if the AI were strictly causal, it's interaction with the environment would very quickly make it's actions unpredictable. And I think you are quite wrong about how you would feel. People report feeling guilty about not interacting with the Sony artificial pet. I've clarified my position above; does the programmer ever feel guilt, or only the users? But then, it may be asked; children are the same. Humour aside, you can pretty much have a general idea of exactly what they will do, You must not have raised any children. Sadly, I have not. Brent -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 CHURLISH rigidness; individual tangibly insomuch sadness cheerfulness. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
silky wrote: On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? I think the differences are 1) we generally cannot kill an animal without causing it some distress Is that because our off function in real life isn't immediate? Yes. Do does that mean you would not feel guilty turning off a real cat, if it could be done immediately? No, that's only one reason - read the others. Or, as per below, because it cannot get more pleasure? No, that's why I made it separate. 2) as long as it is alive it has a capacity for pleasure (that's why we euthanize pets when we think they can no longer enjoy any part of life) This is fair. But what if we were able to model this addition of pleasure in the program? It's easy to increase happiness++, and thus the desire to die decreases. I don't think it's so easy as you suppose. Pleasure comes through satisfying desires and it has as many dimensions as there are kinds of desires. A animal that has very limited desires, e.g. eat and reproduce, would not seem to us capable of much pleasure and we would kill it without much feeling of guilt - as swatting a fly. Okay, so for your the moral responsibility comes in when we are depriving the entity from pleasure AND because we can't turn it off immediately (i.e. it will become aware it's being switched off; and become upset). Is this very simple variable enough to make us care? Clearly not, but why not? Is it because the animal is more conscious then we think? Is the answer that it's simply impossible to model even a cat's consciousness completely? If we model an animal that only exists to eat/live/reproduce, have we created any moral responsibility? I don't think our moral responsibility would start even if we add a very complicated pleasure-based system into the model. I think it would - just as we have ethical feelings toward dogs and tigers. So assuming someone can create the appropriate model, and you can see that you will be depriving pleasure and/or causing pain, you'd start to feel guilty about switching the entity off? Probably it would be as simple as having the cat/dog whimper as it senses that the program was going to terminate (obviously, visual stimulus would help in a deterrent), but then it must be asked, would the programmer feel guilt? Or just an average user of the system, who doesn't know the underlying programming model? My personal opinion is that it would hard to *ever* feel guilty about ending something that you have created so artificially (i.e. with every action directly predictable by you, casually). Even if the AI were strictly causal, it's interaction with the environment would very quickly make it's actions unpredictable. And I think you are quite wrong about how you would feel. People report feeling guilty about not interacting with the Sony artificial pet. I've clarified my position above; does the programmer ever feel guilt, or only the users? The programmer too (though maybe less) because any reasonably high-level AI would have learned things and would no longer appear to just be running through a rote program - even to the programmer. Brent But then, it may be asked; children are the same. Humour aside, you can pretty much have a general idea of exactly what they will do, You must not have raised any
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. Henry Markham's group are presently trying to simulate a rat brain, and so far they have done 10,000 neurons which they are hopeful is behaving in a physiological way. This is at huge computational expense, and they have a long way to go before simulating a whole rat brain, and no guarantee that it will start behaving like a rat. If it does, then they are only a few years away from simulating a human, soon after that will come a superhuman AI, and soon after that it's we who will have to argue that we have feelings and are worth preserving. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
Dear Brent, is it your 'conscious' position to look at things in an anthropocentric limitation? If you substitute consistently 'animal' for 'pet', you can include the human animal as well. In that case your #1: would you consider 'distress' a disturbed mental state only, or include organisational 'distress' as well - causing what we may call: 'death'? In the first case you can circumvent the distress by putting the animal to sleep before killing, causing THEN the 2nd case. #2: I never talked to a shrimp in shrimpese so I don't know what ens 'pleasurable' to it. #3 speaking about AL (human included) we include circumstances we already discovered and there is no assurance that we 'create' LIFE (what is it?) as it really - IS - G. So turning on/off a contraption we call 'animal' (artificial pet?) is not what we are talking about. #4: I consider 'ethical' an anthropocentric culture-related majority (?) opinion in many cases hypocritical and pretentious. Occasionally it can be a power-forced minority opinion as well. I feel the *alleged *Chinese moral behind your remark: if you save a life you are responsible for the person (I don't know if it is true?). I try to take a more general stance and not restrict terms even to 'live(?)' creatures. Is a universal mchine 'live'? Have fun in science John M On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 2:08 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: silky wrote: (truncated) BM: I think the differences are 1) we generally cannot kill an animal without causing it some distress 2) as long as it is alive it has a capacity for pleasure (that's why we euthanize pets when we think they can no longer enjoy any part of life) 3) if we could create an artificial pet (and Sony did) we can turn it off and turn it back on. 4) if a pet, artificial or otherwise, has capacity for pleasure and suffering we do have an ethical responsibility toward it. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On 18 Jan 2010, at 16:35, John Mikes wrote: Is a universal mchine 'live'? I would say yes, despite the concrete artificial one still needs humans in its reproduction cycle. But we need plants and bacteria. I think that all machines, including houses and garden are alive in that sense. Cigarets are alive. They have a a way to reproduce. Universal machine are alive and can be conscious. If we define artificial by introduced by humans, we can see that the difference between artificial and natural is ... artificial (and thus natural!). Jacques Lafitte wrote in 1911 (published in 1931) a book where he describes the rise of machines and technology as a collateral living processes. Only for Löbian machine, like you, me, but also Peano Arithmetic and ZF , I would say I am pretty sure that they are reflexively conscious like us. Despite they have no lived experiences at all. (Well, they have our experiences, in a sense. We are their experiences). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. Henry Markham's group are presently trying to simulate a rat brain, and so far they have done 10,000 neurons which they are hopeful is behaving in a physiological way. This is at huge computational expense, and they have a long way to go before simulating a whole rat brain, and no guarantee that it will start behaving like a rat. If it does, then they are only a few years away from simulating a human, soon after that will come a superhuman AI, and soon after that it's we who will have to argue that we have feelings and are worth preserving. Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 crib? Unshakably MINICAM = heckling millisecond? Cave-in RUMP = extraterrestrial matrimonial ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. I think unknowingness plays a big part, but it's because of our experience with people and animals, we project our own experience of consciousness on to them so that when we see them behave in certain ways we impute an inner life to them that includes pleasure and suffering. Henry Markham's group are presently trying to simulate a rat brain, and so far they have done 10,000 neurons which they are hopeful is behaving in a physiological way. This is at huge computational expense, and they have a long way to go before simulating a whole rat brain, and no guarantee that it will start behaving like a rat. If it does, then they are only a few years away from simulating a human, soon after that will come a superhuman AI, and soon after that it's we who will have to argue that we have feelings and are worth preserving. Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? I don't think so. We don't worry about the internet's feelings, or the air traffic control system. John McCarthy has written essays on this subject and he cautions against creating AI with human like emotions precisely because of the ethical implications. But that means we need to understand consciousness and emotions less we accidentally do something unethical. Brent -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. That's not being rational then, is it? but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Henry Markham's group are presently trying to simulate a rat brain, and so far they have done 10,000 neurons which they are hopeful is behaving in a physiological way. This is at huge computational expense, and they have a long way to go before simulating a whole rat brain, and no guarantee that it will start behaving like a rat. If it does, then they are only a few years away from simulating a human, soon after that will come a superhuman AI, and soon after that it's we who will have to argue that we have feelings and are worth preserving. Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? If we created an AI that wanted to do our bidding or that didn't care what it did, then it would not be wrong. Some people anthropomorphise and imagine the AI as themselves or people they know: and since they would not like being enslaved they assume the AI wouldn't either. But this is false. Eliezer Yudkowsky has written a lot about AI, the ethical issues, and the necessity to make a friendly AI so that it didn't destroy us whether through intention or indifference. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. Nevertheless, though, I know it's exact environment, so I can recreate the things that it learned (I can recreate it all; it's all deterministic: I programmed it). The only thing I can't recreate, is the randomness, assuming I introduced that (but as we know, I can recreate that anyway, because I'd just use the same seed state; unless the source of randomness is true). I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. I think unknowingness plays a big part, but it's because of our experience with people and animals, we project our own experience of consciousness on to them so that when we see them behave in certain ways we impute an inner life to them that includes pleasure and suffering. Yes, I agree. So does that mean that, over time, if we continue using these computer-based cats, we would become attached to them (i.e. your Sony toys example Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? I don't think so. We don't worry about the internet's feelings, or the air traffic control system. John McCarthy has written essays on this subject and he cautions against creating AI with human like emotions precisely because of the ethical implications. But that means we need to understand consciousness and emotions less we accidentally do something unethical. Fair enough. But by the same token, what if we discover a way to remove emotions from real-born children. Would it be wrong to do that? Is emotion an inherent property that we should never be allowed to remove, once created? Brent -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 FRACTURE THISTLEDOWN CURIOUSLY! Sixfold columned HOBBLER shouter OVERLAND axon ZANY interbree... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. That's not being rational then, is it? Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). Henry Markham's group are presently trying to simulate a rat brain, and so far they have done 10,000 neurons which they are hopeful is behaving in a physiological way. This is at huge computational expense, and they have a long way to go before simulating a whole rat brain, and no guarantee that it will start behaving like a rat. If it does, then they are only a few years away from simulating a human, soon after that will come a superhuman AI, and soon after that it's we who will have to argue that we have feelings and are worth preserving. Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? If we created an AI that wanted to do our bidding or that didn't care what it did, then it would not be wrong. Some people anthropomorphise and imagine the AI as themselves or people they know: and since they would not like being enslaved they assume the AI wouldn't either. But this is false. Eliezer Yudkowsky has written a lot about AI, the ethical issues, and the necessity to make a friendly AI so that it didn't destroy us whether through intention or indifference. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 JUGULAR MATERIALS: thundershower! PRETERNATURAL anise! Stressed BATTERED KICKBALL neophyte: k... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. Nevertheless, though, I know it's exact environment, Not if it interacts with the world. You must be thinking of a virtual cat AI in a virtual world - but even there the program, if at all realistic, is likely to be to complex for you to really comprehend. Of course *in principle* you could spend years going over a few terrabites of data and you could understand, Oh that's why the AI cat did that on day 2118 at 10:22:35, it was because of the interaction of memories of day 1425 at 07:54:28 and ...(long string of stuff). But you'd be in almost the same position as the neuroscientist who understands what a clump of neurons does but can't get a wholistic view of what the organism will do. Surely you've had the experience of trying to debug a large program you wrote some years ago that now seems to fail on some input you never tried before. Now think how much harder that would be if it were an AI that had been learning and modifying itself for all those years. so I can recreate the things that it learned (I can recreate it all; it's all deterministic: I programmed it). The only thing I can't recreate, is the randomness, assuming I introduced that (but as we know, I can recreate that anyway, because I'd just use the same seed state; unless the source of randomness is true). I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. I think unknowingness plays a big part, but it's because of our experience with people and animals, we project our own experience of consciousness on to them so that when we see them behave in certain ways we impute an inner life to them that includes pleasure and suffering. Yes, I agree. So does that mean that, over time, if we continue using these computer-based cats, we would become attached to them (i.e. your Sony toys example Hell, I even become attached to my motorcycles. Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? I don't think so. We don't worry about the internet's feelings, or the air traffic control system. John McCarthy has written essays on this subject and he cautions against creating AI with human like emotions precisely because of the ethical implications. But that means we need to understand consciousness and emotions less we accidentally do something unethical. Fair enough. But by the same token, what if we discover a way to remove emotions from real-born children. Would it be wrong to do that? Is emotion an inherent property that we should never be allowed to remove, once created? Certainly it would be fruitless to remove all emotions because that would be the same as removing all discrimination and motivation - they'd be dumb as tape recorders. So I suppose you're asking about removing, or providing specific emotions. Removing, for example, empathy would certainly be bad idea - that's how you get sociopathic killers. Suppose we could remove all selfishness and create
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. Nevertheless, though, I know it's exact environment, Not if it interacts with the world. You must be thinking of a virtual cat AI in a virtual world - but even there the program, if at all realistic, is likely to be to complex for you to really comprehend. Of course *in principle* you could spend years going over a few terrabites of data and you could understand, Oh that's why the AI cat did that on day 2118 at 10:22:35, it was because of the interaction of memories of day 1425 at 07:54:28 and ...(long string of stuff). But you'd be in almost the same position as the neuroscientist who understands what a clump of neurons does but can't get a wholistic view of what the organism will do. Surely you've had the experience of trying to debug a large program you wrote some years ago that now seems to fail on some input you never tried before. Now think how much harder that would be if it were an AI that had been learning and modifying itself for all those years. I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this computer cat. I'm wondering to what degree that adds or removes to my moral obligations. so I can recreate the things that it learned (I can recreate it all; it's all deterministic: I programmed it). The only thing I can't recreate, is the randomness, assuming I introduced that (but as we know, I can recreate that anyway, because I'd just use the same seed state; unless the source of randomness is true). I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. I think unknowingness plays a big part, but it's because of our experience with people and animals, we project our own experience of consciousness on to them so that when we see them behave in certain ways we impute an inner life to them that includes pleasure and suffering. Yes, I agree. So does that mean that, over time, if we continue using these computer-based cats, we would become attached to them (i.e. your Sony toys example Hell, I even become attached to my motorcycles. Does it follow, then, that we'll start to have laws relating to ending of motorcycles humanely? Probably not. So there must be more too it then just attachment. Indeed, this is something that concerns me as well. If we do create an AI, and force it to do our bidding, are we acting immorally? Or perhaps we just withhold the desire for the program to do it's own thing, but is that in itself wrong? I don't think so. We don't worry about the internet's feelings, or the air traffic control system. John McCarthy has written essays on this subject and he cautions against creating AI with human like emotions precisely because of the ethical implications. But that means we need to understand consciousness and emotions less we accidentally do something unethical. Fair enough. But by the same token, what if we discover a way to remove emotions from real-born children. Would it be wrong to do
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. That's not being rational then, is it? Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). I don't think you know exactly why, unless you solved the problem of connecting qualia (pain) to physics (afferent nerve transmission) - but I agree that you know it heuristically. For my $0.02 I think that not understanding is significant because it leaves a lacuna which we tend to fill by projecting ourselves. When people didn't understand atmospheric physics they projected super-humans that produced the weather. If you let some Afghan peasants interact with a fairly simple AI program, such as used in the Loebner competition, they might well conclude you had created an artificial person; even though it wouldn't fool anyone computer literate. But even for an AI that we could in principle understand, if it is complex enough and acts enough like an animal I think we would feel ethical concerns for it. I think a more difficult case is an intelligence which is so alien to us we can't project our feelings on it's behavior. Stanislaw Lem has written stories on this theme: Solaris, His Masters Voice, Return from the Stars, Fiasco. There doesn't seem to be much recognition of this possibility on this list. There's generally an implicit assumption that we know what consciousness is, we have it, and that's the only possible kind of consciousness. All OMs are human OMs. I think that's one interesting thing about Bruno's theory; it is definite enough (if I understand it) that it could elucidate different kinds of consciousness. For example, I think Searle's Chinese room is conscious - but in a different way than we are. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/19 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. That's not being rational then, is it? Exactly my point! I'm trying to discover why I wouldn't be so rational there. Would you? Do you think that knowing all there is to know about a cat is unpractical to the point of being impossible *forever*, or do you believe that once we do know, we will simply end them freely, when they get in our way? I think at some point we *will* know all there is to know about them, and even then, we won't end them easily. Why not? Is it the emotional projection that Brent suggests? Possibly. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small part, and thus you don't fully know it's workings, and then that is where the guilt comes in. Obviously intelligence and the ability to have feelings and desires has something to do with complexity. It would be easy enough to write a computer program that pleads with you to do something but you don't feel bad about disappointing it, because you know it lacks the full richness of human intelligence and consciousness. Indeed; so part of the question is: Qhat level of complexity constitutes this? Is it simply any level that we don't understand? Or is there a level that we *can* understand that still makes us feel that way? I think it's more complicated than just any level we don't understand (because clearly, I understand that if I twist your arm, it will hurt you, and I know exactly why, but I don't do it). I don't think you know exactly why, unless you solved the problem of connecting qualia (pain) to physics (afferent nerve transmission) - but I agree that you know it heuristically. For my $0.02 I think that not understanding is significant because it leaves a lacuna which we tend to fill by projecting ourselves. When people didn't understand atmospheric physics they projected super-humans that produced the weather. If you let some Afghan peasants interact with a fairly simple AI program, such as used in the Loebner competition, they might well conclude you had created an artificial person; even though it wouldn't fool anyone computer literate. But even for an AI that we could in principle understand, if it is complex enough and acts enough like an animal I think we would feel ethical concerns for it. I think a more difficult case is an intelligence which is so alien to us we can't project our feelings on it's behavior. Stanislaw Lem has written stories on this theme: Solaris, His Masters Voice, Return from the Stars, Fiasco. There doesn't seem to be much recognition of this possibility on this list. There's generally an implicit assumption that we know what consciousness is, we have it, and that's the only possible kind of consciousness. All OMs are human OMs. I think that's one interesting thing about Bruno's theory; it is definite enough (if I understand it) that it could elucidate different kinds of consciousness. For example, I think Searle's Chinese room is conscious - but in a different way than we are. I'll have to look into these things, but I do agree with you in general; I don't think ours is the only type of consciousness at all. Though I do think the concept that not understanding completely is interesting, because it suggests that a god should actually not particularly care what happens to us, because to them it's all predictable. (And obviously, the idea of moral obligations to computer programs is arguably interesting). Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com mailto:michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. Nevertheless, though, I know it's exact environment, Not if it interacts with the world. You must be thinking of a virtual cat AI in a virtual world - but even there the program, if at all realistic, is likely to be to complex for you to really comprehend. Of course *in principle* you could spend years going over a few terrabites of data and you could understand, Oh that's why the AI cat did that on day 2118 at 10:22:35, it was because of the interaction of memories of day 1425 at 07:54:28 and ...(long string of stuff). But you'd be in almost the same position as the neuroscientist who understands what a clump of neurons does but can't get a wholistic view of what the organism will do. Surely you've had the experience of trying to debug a large program you wrote some years ago that now seems to fail on some input you never tried before. Now think how much harder that would be if it were an AI that had been learning and modifying itself for all those years. I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this computer cat. But you *don't* know all there is to know about it. You don't know what it has learned - and there's no practical way to find out. I'm wondering to what degree that adds or removes to my moral obligations. Destroying something can be good or bad. Not knowing what you're destroying usually counts on the bad side. so I can recreate the things that it learned (I can recreate it all; it's all deterministic: I programmed it). The only thing I can't recreate, is the randomness, assuming I introduced that (but as we know, I can recreate that anyway, because I'd just use the same seed state; unless the source of randomness is true). I don't see how I could ever think No, you can't harm X. But what I find very interesting, is that even if I knew *exactly* how a cat operated, I could never kill one. but I don't think making an artificial animal is as simple as you say. So is it a complexity issue? That you only start to care about the entity when it's significantly complex. But exactly how complex? Or is it about the unknowningness; that the project is so large you only work on a small
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.commailto: meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com mailto:michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. Nevertheless, though, I know it's exact environment, Not if it interacts with the world. You must be thinking of a virtual cat AI in a virtual world - but even there the program, if at all realistic, is likely to be to complex for you to really comprehend. Of course *in principle* you could spend years going over a few terrabites of data and you could understand, Oh that's why the AI cat did that on day 2118 at 10:22:35, it was because of the interaction of memories of day 1425 at 07:54:28 and ...(long string of stuff). But you'd be in almost the same position as the neuroscientist who understands what a clump of neurons does but can't get a wholistic view of what the organism will do. Surely you've had the experience of trying to debug a large program you wrote some years ago that now seems to fail on some input you never tried before. Now think how much harder that would be if it were an AI that had been learning and modifying itself for all those years. I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this computer cat. But you *don't* know all there is to know about it. You don't know what it has learned - and there's no practical way to find out. Here we disagree. I don't see (not that I have experience in AI-programming specifically, mind you) how I can write a program and not have the results be deterministic. I wrote it; I know, in general, the type of things it will learn. I know, for example, that it won't learn how to drive a car. There are no cars in the environment, and it doesn't have the capabilities to invent a car, let alone the capabilities to drive it. If you're suggesting that it will materialise these capabilities out of the general model that I've implemented for it, then clearly I can see this path as a possible one. Is there a fundamental misunderstanding on my part; that in most sufficiently-advanced AI systems, not even the programmer has an *idea* of what the entity may learn? [...] Suppose we could add and emotion that put a positive value on running backwards. Would that add to their overall pleasure in life - being able to enjoy something in addition to all the other things they would have naturally enjoyed? I'd say yes. In which case it would then be wrong to later remove that emotion and deny them the potential pleasure - assuming of course there are no contrary ethical considerations. So the only problem you see is if we ever add emotion, and then remove it. The problem doesn't lie in not adding it at all? Practically, the result is the same. No, because if we add
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/18 silky michaelsli...@gmail.com mailto:michaelsli...@gmail.com mailto:michaelsli...@gmail.com mailto:michaelsli...@gmail.com: It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. Brent's reasons are valid, Where it falls down for me is that the programmer should ever feel guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for ending a program when I know exactly how it will operate (what paths it will take), even if I can't be completely sure of the specific decisions (due to some randomisation or whatever) It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you create and AI at fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will necessarily have the ability to learn and after interacting with it's enviroment for a while it will become a unique individual. That's why you would feel sad to kill it - all that experience and knowledge that you don't know how to replace. Of course it might learn to be evil or at least annoying, which would make you feel less guilty. Nevertheless, though, I know it's exact environment, Not if it interacts with the world. You must be thinking of a virtual cat AI in a virtual world - but even there the program, if at all realistic, is likely to be to complex for you to really comprehend. Of course *in principle* you could spend years going over a few terrabites of data and you could understand, Oh that's why the AI cat did that on day 2118 at 10:22:35, it was because of the interaction of memories of day 1425 at 07:54:28 and ...(long string of stuff). But you'd be in almost the same position as the neuroscientist who understands what a clump of neurons does but can't get a wholistic view of what the organism will do. Surely you've had the experience of trying to debug a large program you wrote some years ago that now seems to fail on some input you never tried before. Now think how much harder that would be if it were an AI that had been learning and modifying itself for all those years. I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about this computer cat. But you *don't* know all there is to know about it. You don't know what it has learned - and there's no practical way to find out. Here we disagree. I don't see (not that I have experience in AI-programming specifically, mind you) how I can write a program and not have the results be deterministic. I wrote it; I know, in general, the type of things it will learn. I know, for example, that it won't learn how to drive a car.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote: silky wrote: [...] Here we disagree. I don't see (not that I have experience in AI-programming specifically, mind you) how I can write a program and not have the results be deterministic. I wrote it; I know, in general, the type of things it will learn. I know, for example, that it won't learn how to drive a car. There are no cars in the environment, and it doesn't have the capabilities to invent a car, let alone the capabilities to drive it. You seem to be assuming that your AI will only interact with a virtual world - which you will also create. I was assuming your AI would be in something like a robot cat or dog, which interacted with the world. I think there would be different ethical feelings about these two cases. Well, it will be reacting with the real world; just a subset that I specially allow it to interact with. I mean the computer is still in the real world, whether or not the physical box actually has legs :) In my mind, though, I was imagining a cat that specifically existed inside my screen, reacting to other such cats. Lets say the cat is allowed out, in the form of a robot, and can interact with real cats. Even still, it's programming will allow it to act only in a deterministic way that I have defined (even if I haven't defined out all it's behaviours; it may learn some from the other cats). So lets say that Robocat learns how to play with a ball, from Realcat. Would my guilt in ending Robocat only lie in the fact that it learned something, and given that I can't save it, that learning instance was unique? I'm not sure. As a programmer, I'd simply be happy my program worked, and I'd probably want to reproduce it. But showing it to a friend, they may wonder why I turned it off; it worked, and now it needs to re-learn the next time it's switched back on (interestingly, I would suggest that everyone would consider it to be still the same Robocat, even though it needs to effectively start from scratch). If you're suggesting that it will materialise these capabilities out of the general model that I've implemented for it, then clearly I can see this path as a possible one. Well it's certainly possible to write programs so complicated that the programmer doesn't forsee what it can do (I do it all the time :-) ). Is there a fundamental misunderstanding on my part; that in most sufficiently-advanced AI systems, not even the programmer has an *idea* of what the entity may learn? That's certainly the case if it learns from interacting with the world because the programmer can practically analyze all those interactions and their effect - except maybe by running another copy of the program on recorded input. [...] Suppose we could add and emotion that put a positive value on running backwards. Would that add to their overall pleasure in life - being able to enjoy something in addition to all the other things they would have naturally enjoyed? I'd say yes. In which case it would then be wrong to later remove that emotion and deny them the potential pleasure - assuming of course there are no contrary ethical considerations. So the only problem you see is if we ever add emotion, and then remove it. The problem doesn't lie in not adding it at all? Practically, the result is the same. No, because if we add it and then remove it after the emotion is experienced there will be a memory of it. Unfortunately nature already plays this trick on us. I can remember that I felt a strong emotion the first time a kissed girl - but I can't experience it now. I don't mean we do it to the same entity, I mean to subsequent entites. (cats or real life babies). If, before the baby experiences anything, I remove an emotion it never used, what difference does it make to the baby? The main problem is that it's not the same as other babies, but that's trivially resolved by performing the same removal on all babies. Same applies to cat-instances; if during one compilation I give it emotion, and then I later decide to delete the lines of code that allow this, and run the program again, have I infringed on it's rights? Does the program even have any rights when it's not running? I don't think of rights as some abstract thing out there. They are inventions of society saying we, as a society, will protect you when you want to do these things that you have a *right* to do. We won't let others use force or coercion to prevent you. So then the question becomes what rights is in societies interest to enforce for a computer program (probably none) or for an AI robot (maybe some). From this viewpoint the application to babies and cats is straightforward. What are the consequences for society and what kind of society do we want
on consciousness levels and ai
I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? Apologies if this is too vague or useless; it's just an idea that has been interesting me. -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
silky wrote: I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? I think the differences are 1) we generally cannot kill an animal without causing it some distress 2) as long as it is alive it has a capacity for pleasure (that's why we euthanize pets when we think they can no longer enjoy any part of life) 3) if we could create an artificial pet (and Sony did) we can turn it off and turn it back on. 4) if a pet, artificial or otherwise, has capacity for pleasure and suffering we do have an ethical responsibility toward it. Brent Apologies if this is too vague or useless; it's just an idea that has been interesting me. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? I think the differences are 1) we generally cannot kill an animal without causing it some distress Is that because our off function in real life isn't immediate? Or, as per below, because it cannot get more pleasure? 2) as long as it is alive it has a capacity for pleasure (that's why we euthanize pets when we think they can no longer enjoy any part of life) This is fair. But what if we were able to model this addition of pleasure in the program? It's easy to increase happiness++, and thus the desire to die decreases. Is this very simple variable enough to make us care? Clearly not, but why not? Is it because the animal is more conscious then we think? Is the answer that it's simply impossible to model even a cat's consciousness completely? If we model an animal that only exists to eat/live/reproduce, have we created any moral responsibility? I don't think our moral responsibility would start even if we add a very complicated pleasure-based system into the model. My personal opinion is that it would hard to *ever* feel guilty about ending something that you have created so artificially (i.e. with every action directly predictable by you, casually). But then, it may be asked; children are the same. Humour aside, you can pretty much have a general idea of exactly what they will do, and we created them, so why do we feel so responsible? (Clearly, a easy answer is that it's chemical). 3) if we could create an artificial pet (and Sony did) we can turn it off and turn it back on. Lets assume, for the sake of argument, that each instance of the program is one unique pet, and it will never be re-created or saved. 4) if a pet, artificial or otherwise, has capacity for pleasure and suffering we do have an ethical responsibility toward it. Brent -- silky http://www.mirios.com.au/ http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20 DOURNESS. KICKOFF! Exceed-submissiveness BRIBERY DEFOG schoolmistress. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: on consciousness levels and ai
silky wrote: On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: silky wrote: I'm not sure if this question is appropriate here, nevertheless, the most direct way to find out is to ask it :) Clearly, creating AI on a computer is a goal, and generally we'll try and implement to the same degree of computationalness as a human. But what would happen if we simply tried to re-implement the consciousness of a cat, or some lesser consciousness, but still alive, entity. It would be my (naive) assumption, that this is arguably trivial to do. We can design a program that has a desire to 'live', as desire to find mates, and otherwise entertain itself. In this way, with some other properties, we can easily model simply pets. I then wonder, what moral obligations do we owe these programs? Is it correct to turn them off? If so, why can't we do the same to a real life cat? Is it because we think we've not modelled something correctly, or is it because we feel it's acceptable as we've created this program, and hence know all its laws? On that basis, does it mean it's okay to power off a real life cat, if we are confident we know all of it's properties? Or is it not the knowning of the properties that is critical, but the fact that we, specifically, have direct control over it? Over its internals? (i.e. we can easily remove the lines of code that give it the desire to 'live'). But wouldn't, then, the removal of that code be equivelant to killing it? If not, why? I think the differences are 1) we generally cannot kill an animal without causing it some distress Is that because our off function in real life isn't immediate? Yes. Or, as per below, because it cannot get more pleasure? No, that's why I made it separate. 2) as long as it is alive it has a capacity for pleasure (that's why we euthanize pets when we think they can no longer enjoy any part of life) This is fair. But what if we were able to model this addition of pleasure in the program? It's easy to increase happiness++, and thus the desire to die decreases. I don't think it's so easy as you suppose. Pleasure comes through satisfying desires and it has as many dimensions as there are kinds of desires. A animal that has very limited desires, e.g. eat and reproduce, would not seem to us capable of much pleasure and we would kill it without much feeling of guilt - as swatting a fly. Is this very simple variable enough to make us care? Clearly not, but why not? Is it because the animal is more conscious then we think? Is the answer that it's simply impossible to model even a cat's consciousness completely? If we model an animal that only exists to eat/live/reproduce, have we created any moral responsibility? I don't think our moral responsibility would start even if we add a very complicated pleasure-based system into the model. I think it would - just as we have ethical feelings toward dogs and tigers. My personal opinion is that it would hard to *ever* feel guilty about ending something that you have created so artificially (i.e. with every action directly predictable by you, casually). Even if the AI were strictly causal, it's interaction with the environment would very quickly make it's actions unpredictable. And I think you are quite wrong about how you would feel. People report feeling guilty about not interacting with the Sony artificial pet. But then, it may be asked; children are the same. Humour aside, you can pretty much have a general idea of exactly what they will do, You must not have raised any children. Brent and we created them, so why do we feel so responsible? (Clearly, a easy answer is that it's chemical). 3) if we could create an artificial pet (and Sony did) we can turn it off and turn it back on. Lets assume, for the sake of argument, that each instance of the program is one unique pet, and it will never be re-created or saved. 4) if a pet, artificial or otherwise, has capacity for pleasure and suffering we do have an ethical responsibility toward it. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
