Let’s call it machine learning, the AI term is just so far from what it actually is
FAST, CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL: A ROBOT INVASION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsumption_architecture
Subsumption architecture is a reactive robotic architecture heavily associated with behavior-based robotics which was very popular in the 1980s and 90s. The term was introduced by Rodney Brooks and colleagues in 1986.[1][2][3] Subsumption has been widely influential in autonomous robotics and elsewhere in real-time AI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot
iRobot Corporation is an American technology company that designs and builds consumer robots. It was founded in 1990 by three members of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, who designed robots for space exploration and military defense.[2] The company's products include a range of autonomous home vacuum cleaners (Roomba), floor moppers (Braava), and other autonomous cleaning devices.[3]
Edit: the direct sensory-action coupling idea makes sense from a control perspective (fast interaction loops can compensate for chaotic dynamics in the environment), but we know these days that brains don't work that way, for instance. I wonder how that perspective has changed in robotics since the 90s, do you know?
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1056602.1056608
https://donhopkins.com/home/TurtlesAndDefense.pdf
>TURTLES AND DEFENSE
>Introduction
>At Terrapin, we feel that our two main products, the Terrapin Turtle ®, and the Terrapin Logo Language for the Apple II, bring together the fields of robotics and AI to provide hours of entertainment for the whole family. We are sure that an enlightened application of our products can uniquely impact the electronic battlefield of the future. [...]
>Guidance
>The Terrapin Turtle ®, like many missile systems in use today, is wire-guided. It has the wire-guided missile's robustness with respect to ECM, and, unlike beam-riding missiles, or most active-homing systems, it has no radar signature to invite enemy missiles to home in on it or its launch platform. However, the Turtle does not suffer from that bugaboo of wire-guided missiles, i.e., the lack of a fire-and-forget capability.
>Often ground troops are reluctant to use wire-guided antitank weapons because of the need for line-of-sight contact with the target until interception is accomplished. The Turtle requires no such human guidance; once the computer controlling it has been programmed, the Turtle performs its mission without the need of human intervention. Ground troops are left free to scramble for cover. [...]
>Because the Terrapin Turtle ® is computer-controlled, military data processing technicians can write arbitrarily baroque programs that will cause it to do pretty much unpredictable things. Even if an enemy had access to the programs that guided a Turtle Task Team ® , it is quite likely that they would find them impossible to understand, especially if they were written in ADA. In addition, with judicious use of the Turtle's touch sensors, one could, theoretically, program a large group of turtles to simulate Brownian motion. The enemy would hardly attempt to predict the paths of some 10,000 turtles bumping into each other more or less randomly on their way to performing their mission. Furthermore, we believe that the spectacle would have a demoralizing effect on enemy ground troops. [...]
>Munitions
>The Terrapin Turtle ® does not currently incorporate any munitions, but even civilian versions have a downward-defense capability. The Turtle can be programmed to attempt to run over enemy forces on recognizing them, and by raising and lowering its pen at about 10 cycles per second, puncture them to death.
>Turtles can easily be programmed to push objects in a preferred direction. Given this capability, one can easily envision a Turtle discreetly nudging a hand grenade into an enemy camp, and then accelerating quickly away. With the development of ever smaller fission devices, it does not seem unlikely that the Turtle could be used for delivery of tactical nuclear weapons. [...]
It's a fun/interesting device in science fiction, just like the concept of golems (animated beings) are in folk tales. But it's complete nonsense to talk about it as a possibility in the real world so yes, the label of 'machine learning' is a far, far better label to use for this powerful and interesting domain.
> The creation of consciousness is impossible.
That's where I'd start my argument.
Machines can 'learn', given iterative training and some form of memory but they can not think nor understand. That requires consciousness, and the idea that consciousness can be emergent (which it is my understanding that the 'AI' argument rests upon), has never been shown. It is an unproven fantasy.
I would define thinking as the ability to evaluate propositions and evidence and arrive at some potentially useful plan or hypothesis.
I see no reason why a machine could not do this, but without any awareness ("consciousness") of itself doing it.
I also see no fundamental obstacle to true machine awareness either, but given your other responses, we can just disagree on that.
In my view, and in the view of major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc) plus various philosophers, consciousness is eternal and the only real thing in the universe. All else is illusion.
You don't have to accept that view but you do have to prove that consciousness can be created. An 'existence proof' is not sufficient because existence does not necessarily imply creation.
Particularly with Hinduism, its embrace of various philosophies is very broad and includes strains of Materialism, which appears to be the other person's viewpoint, so again, I should have been more careful with my wording.
1. People have different kinds of conscious experience (just talk to other humans to get the picture).
2. Consciousness varies, and can be present or not-present at any given moment (sleep, death, hallucinogenic drugs, anaesthesia).
3. Many things don't have the properties of consciousness that I attribute to my subjective experience (rocks, maybe lifeforms that don't have nerve cells, lots of unknowns here).
Given this, it's obvious that consciousness can be created from non-consciousness, you need merely to have sex and wait 9 months. Add to that the fact that humans weren't a thing a million years ago, for instance, and you have to conclude that it's possible for an optimisation system to produce consciousness eventually (natural selection).
I think pragmatic thinking, not metaphysics, is what will ultimately lead to progress in AI. You haven't engaged with the actual content of my arguments at all - from that perspective, who's the one talking about fantasies really?
Edit: in case I give the mistaken impression that I'm angry - I'm not, thank you for your time. I find it very useful to talk to people with radically different world views to me.
Quite obviously not true (and also untrue in a documented sense in that many great scientists have not been materialists). Science is a method, not a philosophical view of the world.
> it comes from interacting with the world as it is
That the world is materialistic is unproven (and not possible to prove).
You are simply propounding a materialist philosophy here. As I've said before, it's fine to have that philosophy. It's not fine to dogmatically push that view as 'reality' and then extend on that to build and push fantasies about 'artificial intelligence'. Again, we avoid all of this philosophical debate if we simply stick to the term 'machine learning'.
Thinking, understanding, self-aware, awake, integrated sensory stream, alive, emotional, visual, sensory, autonomy, adaptiveness, etc.
And machines can't learn.
AI is what we've called things far simpler for a far longer time. It's what random users know it as. It's what the marketers sell it as. It's what the academics have used for decades.
You can try and make all of them change the term they use, or just understand it's meaning.
If you do succeed, then brace for a new generation fighting you for calling it learning and coming up with yet another new term that everyone should use.