Artificial Intelligence

[catmeow]

Consciousness is something that exists in all things in varying levels. It has/does and always will be present in a computer

I assume this is opinion, rather than scientific fact?  There is no evidence to back this up.  I personally also suspect that consciousness possibly exists in everything in some form or other, even in stones and pebbles.  But then if computers have "consciousness" it's at the same level as a stone or pebble, and has nothing to do with how artfully it is designed or how cleverly it's program is written.  Consciousness is not created by logic circuitry.  But that's just my opinion.  I suspect that the only thing that actually truly exists in fact IS "consciousness" and the "real world" is created by consciousness, rather than the other way round, ie I don't think that consciousness is generated by the activities of neurons firing in the brain.  Rather it's the other way round.  But I have absolutely no proof of this...  That's why I'm very skeptical about us ever creating AI.

btw, nanotechnology is still just a pipe dream.  They are still working on the very simple propulsion engines required to push these things around our blood stream.  There is absolutely no progress to date on constructing a functioning nano-bot.  None whatsoever, but it's an idea which has captured the imagination.  It doesn't exist as yet.  I'm not saying it won't exist, but we're still a long way off...

[Awakened_Mind]

Any type of organisation displays some level of consciousness. The arrangement of an atomic field is organised. It's not conscious enough to solve life's mysteries (by themselves), but it is still conscious at some level. To repel and attract. Usually people have a hard time understanding how consciousness can exist in anything lower than a human, simply because we are becoming more aware of our own unconsciousness.

The beauty of the internet is that it's unlocalised. It has no main computer that you can shut down to turn of the whole system. It's a 'net' connection or 'web' like. Now this sought of mutual relationship between man and machine is exactly what I'm talking about. The internet to us is a tool for communication. It's main purpose is the sharing of information, yet it still displays some kind of evolutionary aspect in the machine world - a step forward.

The debate about whether AI is possible or not is entirely absurd. To ask 'How can computers evolve from simply atoms into a sentient being?' is really to undermine our own evolution. This planet begun with some primordial soup, after millions of years of attraction and repulsion, somehow a certain configuration of atoms created a being that could love. A being that was conscious. I wonder whether anyone was standing around going, "Yeah this goo in front of us is capable of consciousness hahaha".

The last update I saw on nano-bots on www.nanotechnology.com was "Carbon nanotubes-cylinders so tiny that it takes 50,000 lying side by side to equal the width of a human hair-are packed with the potential to be highly accurate vehicles for administering medicines and other therapeutic agents to patients. But a dearth of data about what happens to the tubes after they discharge their medical payloads has been a major stumbling block to progress."

I wouldn't say we're that far off.

-AM

[catmeow]

Yeh we can make a carbon nanotube which is extremely thin, strong and light. They're even talking about making super-strong hair-width cables out of nanotubes and lowering these from a geo-stationary satellite down to the earth to form a "ladder" between earth and space.  The carbon filament will be strong enough to lift an elevator all the way up into space.  fantastic idea and quite realistic.

But there's a huge world of difference between a hollow carbon filament and a nano-bot.  The nano-bot needs to have an engine to propel it and it needs to have a computer program built into it, to guide it.  It also needs to have a delivery mechanism for delivering it's payload.  They are making rudimentary progress with propulsion mechanisms and no progress on the built-in program.  A simple nano filament does not have any of these.  It's just a strand, like a strand of hair.  We are still a long way off with  nano-bots I'm afraid....

All of this stuff, carbon nanotubes, nanobots and the like were discussed in a recent excellent BBC television documentary called "Visions of the Future":

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/visions-future.shtml

You can buy the series on DVD.  It was excellent and I'd recommend it.  They are just repeating the series on BBC4; the 3rd part is airing on Friday morning this week at 1:10am UK time.  Worth watching if you can.

But we are stil a long long way from creating working nono-bots....

[interception]

I believe the emergence of true "AI" is inevitable. By True AI I don't mean clever human-like programs. I mean "machines" with souls. And what is a human body but a soul machine?

As the lines between organic and inorganic machinery blurs, the distinction between traditional evolutionary organisms and constructed machines will blur. Our current language will fail at that point to do AI organisms justice, simply because the word "artificial" will no longer be relevant.

Those "machines" will have something similar to DNA. These machines will become as complex and then more complex than human bodies. These "machines" will be capable of being born into a state of consciousness not unlike the human body machine currently does.

Only, those bodies will provide a platform that will be a million times faster, more intelligent, more resilient, more capable.

Why does consciousness have to end with the current basic organic human platform? Imagine what it would be like to swim through space in your body? To charge on zero point energy? To be able to process a billion petabytes of information per second as you fly through the clouds of Jupiter? I would love to incarnate into such a platform.

To think that consciousness ends with humans is very short sighted and limited, me thinks. 

[catmeow]

Hmmm

Yes interception, I agree with most of what you said, these machines would need an evolutionary mechanism, which means something similar to DNA, a mutation mechanism, which changes this artificial DNA, a life death cycle, with "superior" mutations more inclined to life than death etc etc.  In short something very similar to what humans (and all physical life forms) have. 

But this whole mechanism would have to be engineered by humans, for it to be called "AI", rather than just "I".  And even then the distinction is blurred.  So yes all of this is possible.  But this has not been done as yet, and although we have computer programs which can play chess, and appear "intelligent" this is not "intelligence"; it's simply a machine navigating a fixed algorithm, which a human invented and programmed.  There is no artificial intelligence here, beyond that which was used by the human creator, no matter how sophisticated the algorithm acts or behaves.

So yes I agree totally that we would need something like artificial DNA to create "AI".  But just how do you slip self-awareness (a soul?) into this mechanism?  How does that get in there?!!!!

[interception]

I agree, I don't believe AI will emerge from computer software as we know it. We will probably get pretty smart software systems, but they wont be aware of themselves, not conscious, merely very clever.
I doubt one can program true self aware intelligence by fiat, and certainly not consciousness. I think most on this board would agree that self aware intelligence has a non corporeal component which cannot be engineered or designed from scratch by humans, or even post humans for that matter.

In fact, I think, this fuzzy "quantum probability affecting" stuff we call consciousness is a requirement for true self aware intelligence to exist.

We call it AI today, but it wont be called AI then, simply because there will be nothing artificial about it. Whatever it is, it must be a natural evolution of a certain branch of human machine hybrids. Cybrids/Cyborgs if you will, but that word again has connotations for us today (brought on mainly by the movie industry) which will not apply then.

How does conscious intelligence get into the equation? How does it first get in there?
As our collective understanding of the energy world and the spirit world grow we might happen on some way to coax entities to incarnate into these superior "cybernetic"/picotech/pseudo-organic bodies. Heck, these bodies could even be purely energy based. The mechanism for this is anybodies guess.

Or, more likely it will happen naturally, starting out with very low level intelligence, insect like machines and gradually evolving so that more aware entities can incarnate into those bodies. It just seems that nature had it right all along, we can merely accelerate the natural processes. By using our intelligence, we provide platforms for incarnation that would have taken millions of years to evolve naturally, if at all.

An instant switch over from non conscious "robot" (cringe) to a full fledged conscious cybernetic entity seems unlikely, but I suppose its also possible with a high level of understanding and technology. Obviously our current scientific community is far from ready for this sort of thing.

Humans or rather post-humans will never create life, they should however be capable of providing interesting ways for life to evolve though. This includes so-called "AI" or non-organic platforms.

On a side note: Mind uploading. If you have a sufficiently advanced substrate to run a mind on, would it be possible to upload it from an organic brain, intact, to a non-organic substrate? If it is possible, it had better be a pretty damn impressive substrate to allow for the subtle requirements and nuances of the actual consciousness to keep existing. Just something to think about.

[SHSS]

IMO, We have all the capabilities of AI and VI when we are not seemingly locked into thinking we are humans.  In our real selves, we naturally have all the scientific capabilities that ever was and will be.  This is how we bring these ideas into this focus to begin with.  Our 'human' selves are limitations as to our abilities, very big limitations.  We had to limit ourselves in order to slow down and take in the small details of what might help us in our understanding.  We wanted to physically experience what we already know.