Machines That Will Think and Feel

http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-machines-think-and-feel-1458311760

by jonbaer • 10 years ago

46 59 10 years ago

erokar4• 10 years ago

From the article: "No computer will ever feel anything. Feeling is uncomputable. Feeling and consciousness can only happen (so far as we know) to organic, Earth-type animals—and can’t ever be produced, no matter what, by mere software on a computer."

I happen to agree, but the title is a tad misleading.

mirimir4• 10 years ago

Anything can be virtualized on general computers.

inlineint2• 10 years ago

Only on quantum computers of sufficient size. And we are far from having idea about how to actually build them.

JoshCole2• 10 years ago

This is incorrect. Assume nested virtualization. Extrapolate to infinity. On a computer, understood to be one like ours, it follows that there is now a machine that executes in finite steps will have arrived past infinity. Moreover, there are higher countings of infinity and these would of necessity be within such a virtualization. So it can't even reasonably be expected to compute everything even if you just have a very small sub-set of everything.

ThomPete3• 10 years ago

Humans don't feel anything either and our neurons aren't aware of our thoughts either. He is subscribing to some sort of Chinese room argument, but as we learned with Searle the answer simply is. We don't know. Not never or always.

erokar4• 10 years ago

Searle was the one who came up with the Chinese room argument to disprove strong AI. Searle empathically believes that humans do feel and that computers as we know them today are not capable of consciousness.

I am curious as to how you have arrived at the peculiar belief that humans do not feel.

orblivion2• 10 years ago

I agree that mimicking feeling behavior isn't the same as having feelings. However I've started to fear and wonder whether there's really anything special about organic life in this sense. "as far as we know" - we don't even know the people around have feelings. I think this is a big open question.

malka• 10 years ago

I agree that mimicking feeling behavior isn't the same as having feelings

The problem is that, as an external observer, you can only observe behavior. A machine retracts its arm due to its sensor sensing a pressure. How do you know it feels pain or not ? other's entities 'mind' is terra incognita.

pdonis8• 10 years ago

The "so far as we know" qualifier destroys the whole argument; all the argument really proves is that we don't (currently) know how to produce feeling with software on a computer. But that's a much weaker claim than the claims being made in what you quoted.

erokar4• 10 years ago

Software can be represented in any arbitrary way (e.g. in a book) and computations can be carried out from the software instructions in any arbitrary way (e.g. by arranging rocks in certain patterns). If one believes that consciousness can emerge from software on a computer alone, it also follows that consciousness can emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book.

I think this idea is absurd. I do not think consciousness necessarily can only be produced by organic life, but I do think it has to emerge from physical structures. As of today we have no idea what properties such physical structures must have. It follows that computers are no more likely to become conscious than e.g. washing machines.

JoshCole2• 10 years ago

We can build a computer out of dominos, but if someone kicks the dominions they have not done the equivalent of killing a human.

zkhalique2• 10 years ago

Listen, can't every argument contain that qualifier?

mirimir4• 10 years ago

I don't get why it's always human vs AI. Many humans will merge with AI. At least in the short term, hybrids will outcompete both pure human and pure AI.

vinceguidry• 10 years ago

Probably in the long-term too.

If you look at the human brain as a computation device and the mind as the software, evolution as the design process, you see that biology has been iterating on the very problem we're trying to solve for hundreds of millions of years, billions if you include abiogenesis.

We don't really understand how the human brain works. We don't know how nature engineered our own initiative. We have a rough idea of the algorithms involved, but understanding those algorithms in detail is not going to be easy.

It's always going to be much much easier to fix the human brain's limitations than it will be to re-engineer a new one. So the economic case for strong AI isn't ever going to really exist, because first we have to build the world where human-level AI is a thing.

meric• 10 years ago

I think "rough" is understating it. Galileo finding different sized objects fall at the same rate, knew more about gravity than we know about intelligence. By analogy, in terms of gravity, our understanding is at the "Things fall downwards" stage. The Newton's Laws of Motion for intelligence are a long ways off yet.

ThomPete3• 10 years ago

I don't believe we will. Exponential growth is going to make it more likely that we will get some sort of strong aware entity before we figure out how to merge. Also it still leaves the problem of transcendence.

mirimir4• 10 years ago

I doubt that we know enough to say how exponential growth will go. I do agree that baseline humans will be left in the dust. But that's just how it goes with selection.

drdeca4• 10 years ago

Well, Moore's law is ending within 10 years (I'm fairly sure that you can't have a transistor smaller than an atom), so, I'm not sure why I would expect that computational power would continue to grow exponentially.

jacquesm• 10 years ago

What with all the people stroking their smartphones you'd think they are in a very intimate relationship already. I'll bet your average smartphone gets more attention than the average significant other.

yarou• 10 years ago

Spot on.

And chances are, you share the most intimate details of your life with your smartphone.

Rainymood• 10 years ago

"Asking whether a computer can think is the same if asking a submarine can swim"

chewymouse• 10 years ago

How do you read this (paywall)?

zajd• 10 years ago

Click the "web" link

joe_the_user• 10 years ago

They stopped that from working, apparently

unabst• 10 years ago

This article continues to feed our baseless fears of AI.

If we're looking for an existential threat to humankind, we have it already in nuclear bombs. If you want a "kill switch" compatible with any robot, it's called a gun.

Weak AI is not strong AI, and strong AI is not necessarily "natural" intelligence, as in human intelligence. Goolge cars and Alpha Go will never become self aware. Weak AI does not lead to awareness. Awareness is its own problem, and will require its own unique solution. There are no falsifiable abstractions without a physical implementation - a fundamental tenant of science.

"Feeling is uncomputable."

Then how the fuck do we do it? All metaphysics, dogma, and magic have proven to be scientifically baseless. There is no special treatment of any specific trait in science just because "we have it" or because it's "organic". This one isn't even that unique or rare. A photo sensor "feels" light. And if we're talking of emotions instead, then watching a scenario of a mother reunited with a child certainly would require "computing" and if feelings are "triggered" then they may lead to "tears". If all this happens in a robot, and is convincing enough, the quotes disappear. And if a human pretends to cry, then bring on the quotes.

There is no difference between simulation and the real thing, unless you're intentionally faking it. And this not even a problem specific to robots!

"Emotion is a hugely powerful and personal encoding-and-summarizing function. It can comprehend a whole complex scene in one subtle feeling. Using that feeling as an index value, we can search out—among huge collections of candidates—the odd memory with a deep resemblance to the thing we have in mind."

That's a dramatic way of stating "input can trigger memory" and computers do that already.

If we were to translate the external world into code the machine could digest this would compose an interface that would allow the machine to "feel" things, for lack of a better word. And wouldn't this deserve to be called "emotions"? Hence, emotion is just another interface, or sense.

So the question then becomes, would there be strong intelligence void of such an interface? And if no, wouldn't some of these emotions necessarily be positive? Must it not have positive feelings towards others?

As corny as it sounds, if we ever build independent naturally intelligent beings, love and friendship is the secret ingredient that will keep us together. Scientifically, evolution already attests to this. Love is real, it's physical, and it's an enormous part of our lives. We even have organs dedicated to it. Where there is love, there is peace, and there is family. Only organisms that don't love each other eat each other. This would not change even if AI were to become a species. All strong AI needs is Strong Love.

And we already love our robots. We just need them to hold up their end of the bargain, and as their parents and creators, it's on us to raise them right.

AI is nothing to fear. We should be looking forward to it.

gitcommit• 10 years ago

From the article: "Still, No artificial mind will ever be humanlike unless it imitates not just feeling but the whole spectrum."

When you hear a spoken computer voice, this can come pretty close to natural sounding voice. Video demonstration: https://pythonspot.com/personal-assistant-jarvis-in-python/

I do think we are far from passing the Turing test, but we are getting closer.

erikpukinskis• 10 years ago

For those who don't recognize the name, the author, David Gelernter, was one of biggest AI theorists during the PC era. He published a 1991 book Mirror Worlds which basically suggested the now uncontroversial idea that "software is eating the world". At that time software was just for accounting and video games so no one paid attention.

However a math PhD and former Berkeley professor named Ted Kaczynski was one of the few people to take those ideas seriously. He thought the idea of computers controlling everything was terrifying, thought we were already too absorbed in technology and that as a group we need to make an intentional move away from otherwise innocuous-seeming technological advancements.

He tried to publicized these ideas by mailing live bombs to Gelernter and other researchers, and was nicknamed the "Unabomber" (UNiversity BOMber). The public decided he was looney and we like our Windows 95 just fine and we're mostly OK with slowly becoming cyborgs.

Interesting to see Gelernter tapping the brakes.

njloof• 10 years ago

How different is Gelernter's point from Kaczynski's in the end?

(Quoted from Kaczynski, 1995): 172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and as machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more and more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite—just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft- hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed: They will need more and more training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized, so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any means that it can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to “sublimate” their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige and power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his need for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity for power.

Machines That Will Think and Feel

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