74. Dr. Dean Radin And Dr. Roger Nelson Respond to Global Consciousness Project Criti

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

There are a growing number of people who wonder seriously if Google will become the first true AI. If that happens, it would indeed be a Global Consciousness, though it would seem to relate to Radin's conceptualization of it in the same way that a cellphone relates to telepathy.

How exactly do you see that working? I mean what would have to happen to change a program with a large database of subjects and addresses, plus some fancy matching rules, into a consciousness - with feelings, and wishes, and some at least of the things you yourself have? Take your favourite guru who has said that, and write to them - just how would this transformation be accomplished?

David

[fabkebab]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

How exactly do you see that working? I mean what would have to happen to change a program with a large database of subjects and addresses, plus some fancy matching rules, into a consciousness - with feelings, and wishes, and some at least of the things you yourself have? Take your favourite guru who has said that, and write to them - just how would this transformation be accomplished?

David

I thought exactly the same thing - Especially since it was coming from some of the more skeptical forum posters - I dont see it happening

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

How exactly do you see that working? I mean what would have to happen to change a program with a large database of subjects and addresses, plus some fancy matching rules, into a consciousness - with feelings, and wishes, and some at least of the things you yourself have? Take your favourite guru who has said that, and write to them - just how would this transformation be accomplished?

David

Well, some people imagine this might happen as an emergent property, similar to the way that our consciousness emerges from incredibly complex neural behavior. If you imagine each computer in the google infrastructure as a neuron, then you can see Google as already possessing a very complicated brain. And the Google engineers are always adding more and more intelligent heuristics to the system, so it can understand things with ever greater fidelity. It doesn't seem unreasonable to imagine that in the near future it will at least seem intelligent in a human way, and it seems reasonable to suspect that it would become sophisticated in its appearance of intellect as to be virtually indistinguishable from "real" intelligence, in which case, how can you tell the difference?

If you think of human consciousness as an effect of complexity in the brain, with we humans as simply a point along a spectrum, the problem of it being "really" intelligent falls away, as we're simply better at most species at appearing "really" intelligent.

I'm not saying I'm sure that Google will become conscious, I think it's an interesting idea and I have nothing personally invested in the notion. I do think that Google has the best shot at it if such a system will simply emerge, given that it's the largest, most robust and most sophisticated in the world.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

If you think of human consciousness as an effect of complexity in the brain, with we humans as simply a point along a spectrum, the problem of it being "really" intelligent falls away, as we're simply better at most species at appearing "really" intelligent.

I'm not saying I'm sure that Google will become conscious, I think it's an interesting idea and I have nothing personally invested in the notion. I do think that Google has the best shot at it if such a system will simply emerge, given that it's the largest, most robust and most sophisticated in the world.

You see, I felt like you do, back in the late 70's and 80's when AI was kicking off. It went through various phases, and I was involved directly to some extent - that helped to form the views I hold today.

Up until about that point, people had said AI was feasible, but the computers were not powerful enough to achieve it. At about that time, there was a feeling that there had to be enough compute power, it was 'just' a matter of writing the right code! I saw a lot of AI code, and really you could sum it all up as:

a) A collection of programming tricks, some of which are very useful, and still used today.

b) An attempt to write code which pretended to be human, but patently wasn't.

The fundamental problem was (and is) that nobody had a clue what consciousness was, so all they could think of, was programs that pretended to be conscious. Even so, after vast effort, nothing came of it all.

If someone here suggested that psi awareness was about to boost human consciousness on to another plane - or some such - you would be the first to scoff, yet you seem far more prepared to take vague predictions of that sort seriously. I am much more skeptical of that kind of prediction because I have herd it all before, and as far as I can see, there has been no fundamental new insight that changes the game.

When you think about it, consciousness is all about qualia - not just thinking. Until someone can come up with a serious, testable proposal as to how to create something that can experience qualia (other than in the bedroom!), I am very skeptical of AI-like ideas.

David

[fabkebab]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

When you think about it, consciousness is all about qualia - not just thinking. Until someone can come up with a serious, testable proposal as to how to create something that can experience qualia (other than in the bedroom!), I am very skeptical of AI-like ideas.

David

Is a clone an artificial intellegence?

I suspect that our first artificial intellegences will be basically biological in nature -

we wont worryabout what consciousness is, but just go ahead rewire existing "technology" for our purposes- (yes it does sound kind of scary to me!)

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

You see, I felt like you do, back in the late 70's and 80's when AI was kicking off. It went through various phases, and I was involved directly to some extent - that helped to form the views I hold today.

Yes, yes, David, you've said all this many, many times before. Your views boil down to "but they're not conscious, really" because you want to believe that. I understand. You worked on a problem and were unable to solve it, so to avoid feeling like you failed at your task, you imagine that the task must have been impossible. Why, it's inherently insoluble, and you know what? That means I didn't fail, because I couldn't *possibly* have succeeded! Yay! Psi's the way to go! That's some Grade A reduction of cognitive dissonance, there, my friend.

If someone here suggested psi was about to boost human awareness to another plane, then you're absolutely right, I'd scoff. I wouldn't do so because I'm being closed-minded or anything, but because I'd consider the claims, and find good reason to scoff. Take a look at the first sentence of the paragraph, and count how many unproven ideas are in it. I count two. I would scoff that an unknown, undefined, and unproven field/thing would elevate human consciousness to an ill-defined, unknown, unquantified field/thing. I don't think that's terribly unreasonable of me.

By contrast, imagining that a series of computers (which we already know exist) which are already showing a number of the trademarks of intelligence (which we already knows exists), could be made to mimic the rest of the effects of intelligence (again, we already know human brains exist) isn't *that* much of a stretch.

Psi elevating humanity versus a simulation being made better by known means isn't a good comparison, David; they're not even in the same ballpark.

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by fabkebab

we wont worryabout what consciousness is, but just go ahead rewire existing "technology" for our purposes- (yes it does sound kind of scary to me!)

What scares you about rewiring things we wired in the first place? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by fabkebab

Is a clone an artificial intellegence?

I suspect that our first artificial intellegences will be basically biological in nature -

we wont worryabout what consciousness is, but just go ahead rewire existing "technology" for our purposes- (yes it does sound kind of scary to me!)

Well, people have been using sheep dogs for millennia to round up sheep - do we call the trained dogs artificial intelligent?

This way of thinking is fascinating - a refusal to acknowledge that there is a real problem here - that we don't understand what consciousness is, and have absolutely no idea how to create it - other than perhaps to incorporate a conscious biological entity into some sort of machine and play with words by calling the result an AI!

David

[fabkebab]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Well, people have been using sheep dogs for millennia to round up sheep - do we call the trained dogs artificial intelligent?

This way of thinking is fascinating - a refusal to acknowledge that there is a real problem here - that we don't understand what consciousness is, and have absolutely no idea how to create it - other than perhaps to incorporate a conscious biological entity into some sort of machine and play with words by calling the result an AI!

David

Its the difference between science and engineering

I dont refuse to acknowledge the problem (read my previous posts) , I just project that our shortest route to sentient, domestic servant type robots will probably come through biological means

[fabkebab]

And why do I think bio-engineering is scary (if it is our route to getting robots etc?) here is a decidedly left-brain lyric to a song I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago:
Apologies for the use of pseudo-scientific terms (its a song lyric after all rather than a peer reviewed paper!)




(Even though I shouldnt) I Feel Love
(c) 2009

v1/
Everything inside is scanned, MRI'd and measured
All the things I've feared and all the things I've treasured
Byte by byte I've been constructed, analyzed and checked
Edited and debugged to eliminate defects

ch/
But when the wind blows through the long grass
On the hillside
Shadows passing from the clouds above
There inside
she's in a tiny corner
And even though I shouldnt I feel love

v2/
I'm told that I'm not human - I'm a bio-robot slave
I have no heart to offer and I have no soul to save
I know they can program me, and they would if they knew
But I know theres more to me than all I think or do

ch/
But when the wind blows through the long grass
On the hillside
Shadows passing from the clouds above
There inside a she's in a tiny corner
And even though I shouldnt I feel love

v3/
Her tender voice my secret as I work the fields all day
A Neuro-plastic residue deep in my DNA
A fire that could consume me or a beacon on a hill
Tiny sparks of human dreams I never will fulfill

ch/
But when the wind blows through the long grass
On the hillside
Shadows passing from the clouds above
There inside a she's in a tiny corner
And even though I shouldnt I feel love