On 10/22/07, Charles D Hixson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Aleksei Riikonen wrote: >> I think most of us would prefer potentially superhuman >> systems to not have goals/etc of their own. > > To me this sounds like wishing for a square circle. What we really want > is that the goals, etc. of the AI facilitate our own, or at minimum not > come into conflict with them. (Few would object if the AI wanted to > grant our every wish.)
An AI that only carries out our every wish would fall under what I described as "not having goals of its own". Its goals are ours, not something that emerges from an anthropomorphic ego of the AI. My terminology was imprecise, yes, but I found using it to be the best option when talking to someone just getting acquainted with the topics. Didn't want to get bogged down in technicalities, and I think I got the point across. >> (1) don't have instincts, goals or values of their own > > Do you have any specific reason to believe that such a thing is > possible? I don't believe it is, though I'll admit that the goal-set of > an artificial intelligence might be very strange to a human. Essentially I'm saying that the AI wouldn't have an ego in the sense that humans have (self-centered goals, subconscious instincts etc), and that certainly seems possible. >> (2) may not even be conscious, even though they carry out superhuman >> cognitive processing (the possibility of this is not known yet, at >> least to me) > > I think you need to define your terms here. It isn't clear to me what > you are talking about when you talk about something which is engaging in > superhuman cognitive processing not being conscious. Having a non-local > consciousness I could ... not understand, but accept. I suspect that a > non-centralized consciousness may be necessary for an intelligence to be > very much superior to humans in cognitive processing. Non-local is > harder to understand, but may be necessary. But it's not clear to me > what you could mean when you talk about "not even be conscious, even > though they carry out superhuman cognitive processing". Consciousness > is one component of intelligence, it seems to occur at the interface > between mind an language, so I suspect that it's related to > serialization, and, perhaps, to the logging of memories. No proof is known to me, that no non-conscious system could perform high-functioning cognitive processing. The phenomenon of consciousness (or that of intelligence) is not yet understoog well enough, that philosophical zombies of arbitrarily high intelligence could be ruled out. So I am taking into account both possibilities: either every system of high enough intelligence will be conscious, or not. -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=56440992-3955b9
