Random Thought #25

[Guest]

I was thinking about artificial intelligence a moment ago and I realized that the problem with the idea of a computer being self aware for a lot people is the fact that it has no soul so to speak.

This can be interpreted as having no emotions because I beleive what we perceive as the definition of having a soul really equates to our emotions having a certain control on our thoughts. Those emotions are things like being happy or sad might cause you to do two very different things which is controlled by chemicals in your body. Chemicals that really only affect you because of your biological makeup.

Our biological components essentialy gives us our perceived intelligence. However when one thinks about just that subject alone you come to realize that perhaps you are not in control but rather your emotions and instincts are. Really, freedom of thought is the freedom to do what you wish when you wish to but would you ever try to jump off a 100 story building? Perhaps if the right emotions were in control of your body.

My point is that in our attempts so far to really create an artificial intelligence we haven't yet been able to really create any kind of emotion in a computer. Those biological impulses and chemicals are cruicial but if you can never influence a computers thoughts with any type of emotion what are you left with?

In humans anyway you tend to have very suicidal individuals. Perhaps natures design to make sure this doesn't happen in evolution to avoid something unwanted. Unemotional beings don't belong in the universe. Even the smallest insects have similar behaviors for it's particular species.

So perhaps, to create an artificial intelligence we should first be looking at how to create a shell or structure to implant the code that represents free thought that's affected by the structures instructions. The Mind or AI determins what to do but the structure places demands on the AI giving the AI a goal. Along with this could be basic survival "instincts" automaticaly programed into the AI.

The shell would imput demands in a similar fashion as our body's do to us in terms of hunger, thirst, happiness, etc...

[Don Carlos]

Kracus, the way as far as im aware of AI ebing messured us the answered it gives to questions?
In my opinion it is impossible for AI to recreat human emotion because AI is based on Logic. Humans lose Logic somethimes and go on instinct. Think I, Robot if you will?

[Canis]

Kracus needs to write some form of a biological philosophy book.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Yes....one published on a roll of ass-wipe.

[Canis]

I'd wipe my ass with it. I'd even go so far as to think of Kracus when I do so...

[saturn]

what a load of crap

[Massive Quasars]

what a load of crap

quite

[Transient]

1) The idea of the soul is brought on by religion.
2) Religion is bullshit.
3) Therefore, _______ is bullshit.

Fill in the blank.

edit: Hint: the answer is not "Transient"

[Canis]

1) The idea of the soul is brought on by religion.
2) Religion is bullshit.
3) Therefore, _______ is bullshit.

Fill in the blank.

"Transient"?....no...wait...."Kracus"?...hmm...

[Whiskey 7]

....... My point is that in our attempts so far to really create an artificial intelligence we haven't yet been able to really create any kind of emotion in a computer. Those biological impulses and chemicals are cruicial but if you can never influence a computers thoughts with any type of emotion what are you left with?

Exactly. I do believe emotions are chemically based.

We thankfully are a long way from a meaningful releationships with computers

[Transient]

1) The idea of the soul is brought on by religion.
2) Religion is bullshit.
3) Therefore, _______ is bullshit.

Fill in the blank.

"Transient"?....no...wait...."Kracus"?...hmm...

:icon32:

[Guest]

Yeah that wasn't really the point of my post. My point was that to have a good working AI the AI needs an exterior device to imput demands on the AI in the same way our bodies do to us in terms of hunger and basic needs.

[mjrpes]

You know, as much as Kracus's posts are filled with meandering bullshit, he does have enough common courtesy to divide them up into nicely sized paragraphs.

[Transient]

Before we think about AI, we need some way to truly allow computers to do randomized things.

[Transient]

You know, as much as Kracus's posts are filled with meandering bullshit, he does have enough common courtesy to divide them up into nicely sized paragraphs.

He didn't a few years ago. :/

[Tormentius]

1) The idea of the soul is brought on by religion.
2) Religion is bullshit.
3) Therefore, _______ is bullshit.

Fill in the blank.

edit: Hint: the answer is not "Transient"

Transient or Kracus are the only answers we can readily prove .

[^misantropia^]

Before we think about AI, we need some way to truly allow computers to do randomized things.

Uh, why?

[[xeno]Julios]

stuff

The idea of emotions being involved in intelligence is actually not far-fetched at all.

I'm reading a book by Antonio Damasio called Descartes' Error, subtitled: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

Also took a course on AI last semester with a prof who wrote a book called "The Rationality of Emotion"


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846


From what I can gather, one of the elements of the idea is that you need emotion to act as a heuristic mechanism in decision making.

If we were to be purely "logical", we'd be paralyzed in decision making since there are an infinite number of branches of possibilities to consider. Emotional processing can "prune" some of these branches to make things efficient.

However, it's important not to fall into the trap of assigning "emotions" an immunity from determinism. Our brains evolve from one state to the next just as the state of an ocean evolves from one moment to the next. Emotions, thoughts, decisions, actions are all subject to this unfolding of reality.

Emotions are a biological phenomenon - systems within the brain are what are responsible for emotional functioning.

Moreoever, according to Damasio's "somatic marker hypothesis", is that emotions are manifest somatically. Somatically here refers to the sensations elicited by activity within the somatosensory cortex. Included here are touch sensations, and visceral sensations. An example of a visceral sensation would be the feeling of butterflies in your stomach/chest you experience in extreme fear or happiness. What defines one emotional experience from the next, is in part the array of somatic sensations involved.

Now as for the issue of what it means to feel these sensations, that's basically grappling with the so called "hard question" of consciousness. Daniel Dennett is a leading thinker within the western philosophical/scientific tradition on this issue. He considers the so called hard problem to based on a misguided intuition. Damasio, among others express similar sentiments.

I think the idea is toward something of an "embodied mind". Still trying to grapple with the idea myself.

[mjrpes]

...Daniel Dennett...

Wasn't there a thread here a while back that linked to a talk he gave about mimes?

[[xeno]Julios]

mimes?

memes you mean?

there's a full length video interview with him on http://www.meaningoflife.tv

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

lol

[mjrpes]

ah, that's it. thx julios.

[Guest]

stuff

The idea of emotions being involved in intelligence is actually not far-fetched at all.

I'm reading a book by Antonio Damasio called Descartes' Error, subtitled: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

Also took a course on AI last semester with a prof who wrote a book called "The Rationality of Emotion"


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846


From what I can gather, one of the elements of the idea is that you need emotion to act as a heuristic mechanism in decision making.

If we were to be purely "logical", we'd be paralyzed in decision making since there are an infinite number of branches of possibilities to consider. Emotional processing can "prune" some of these branches to make things efficient.

However, it's important not to fall into the trap of assigning "emotions" an immunity from determinism. Our brains evolve from one state to the next just as the state of an ocean evolves from one moment to the next. Emotions, thoughts, decisions, actions are all subject to this unfolding of reality.

Emotions are a biological phenomenon - systems within the brain are what are responsible for emotional functioning.

Moreoever, according to Damasio's "somatic marker hypothesis", is that emotions are manifest somatically. Somatically here refers to the sensations elicited by activity within the somatosensory cortex. Included here are touch sensations, and visceral sensations. An example of a visceral sensation would be the feeling of butterflies in your stomach/chest you experience in extreme fear or happiness. What defines one emotional experience from the next, is in part the array of somatic sensations involved.

Now as for the issue of what it means to feel these sensations, that's basically grappling with the so called "hard question" of consciousness. Daniel Dennett is a leading thinker within the western philosophical/scientific tradition on this issue. He considers the so called hard problem to based on a misguided intuition. Damasio, among others express similar sentiments.

I think the idea is toward something of an "embodied mind". Still trying to grapple with the idea myself.

Actualy yeah that's basicly what I'm saying.

It's true though that the idea that your emotions are really in control of you is kinda gloomy. It opens up a lot of deterministic views again in a way I hadn't really contemplated but it is very disturbing to think that our reality is really determined by our universe in a strange way.

Cause the universe affects everything, you know, it basicly contains everything. Those things contained affect each other. We has humans possessing senses see, feel, hear, smell and taste some of these changes which in effect causes our minds to interpret and react to them. Without all these connections we're really nothing. It's almost like we're part of a greater whole or inanimate objects interacting with other inanimate objects. Ecxept we don't realize it.

[Grudge]

[MKJ]

the simplest way to explain why there is no real AI yet (and will prolly take a while), is because a computer doesnt know a "maybe", only "yes" and "no".