Hacker News Reader

Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

>OUR MOST PREMIUM AI SERVICES WILL BE ADVERTISED AS CONSCIOUSNESS-FREE

I always assumed that breakthroughs in AI would come from philosophy than computer science. We don't even know if have the capability to define the word 'consciousness'.

View on HN

From philosophy? Are you kidding? There's simply no way AI is ever going to come from a bunch of people arguing over what is "qualia" and what is "consciousness". There have been huge advances made in deep neural networks in the last few years. To the point where we now have human-competitive image recognition. That is computer science, and that is where AI is going to come from.

I think it will take a little while longer, maybe a few decades, and happen organically. At first, we'll have smart machines based on deep learning, possibly embedded in specialized hardware. We'll have smarter and smarter machines. Specialized robots doing basic tasks (e.g.: dish washing) are going to start roaming the world. They will be made increasingly capable as time goes on, and at some point, we'll begin to cross some sort of threshold where a robot's understanding of the world will be great enough. The robot will seem self-aware and "conscious" to an outside observer.

Computer scientists don't really need to care about the philosophy of consciousness, they care about building capable machines which can deal with the complexities world. At some point, to match or rival human capability, self-awareness is needed. That is, a model of the world that is "complete enough" and incorporates a model of you as an agent within this world. It will happen naturally, just as it did in nature.

CS isn't going to stumble onto AI, someone's going to have to theorize about it first. Much like CS doesn't "stumble" onto new equations for modeling physics, CS isn't going to accidentally build an AI.

A generalist AI must be immensely difficult to create, but won't the most difficult part be the design? I don't think it'll be CS researchers coming up with the design, either -- it'll be doctors, biologists, neurologists, etc.

In my opinion, CS is going to provide the basic components (neural networks, computer vision, planning engines, knowledge bases) and engineers will put them together in a useful way. I think the reason CS hasn't provided AI yet is because general intelligence (as implemented in the human brain) is not one magic universal algorithm, it's an assembly of many necessary components, some of which are specialized for specific purposes.

The human brain was created ad hoc through evolution, and its complexity is beyond what "pure" CS usually deals with, which is algorithms that can be described in one page or less. Creating a self-aware AI is going to take engineering work, experimentation and incremental improvement, rather than someone inventing an overarching design and going "yes, that's it, that will produce self-awareness".

I see that the term 'self-awareness' is being used a lot in this discussion. Can it be defined simply? Is it basically a mechanism which divides intelligence into two parts one of which is 'observing' the other ?

To me, self-awareness is, as I said before, having a model of the world that is complete enough that it incorporates a model of yourself within this world as well (and possibly other agents you encounter in this world). I guess I would add that the model should be sophisticated enough to be able to model your interactions with the world and make some sensible predictions about the future. I suppose according to this definition, a smart thermostat could be considered self-aware, but the bar for self-awareness goes up with the complexity of the interactions you can have with the world.

> Much like CS doesn't "stumble" onto new equations for modeling physics

Physicists come up with new equations for modeling physics. Metaphysicians make up elaborate reasons why they're actually intellectuals and not just on privileged-white-man welfare.

It a carelessly-used word. We use it both for 'not unconscious' and for 'self-aware'. The 1st is obvious - unless its offline, the AI is not 'knocked out' or asleep so its 'conscious'.

The 2nd is harder. Maybe by close questioning you could find out. "If you were self-aware, what would you think about yourself?" etc.

I think this is what will happen:

1. We create a "real" AI -- not necessarily a GAI

2. Philosophy recognizes that we have created a real AI.

Actually, 1 might have happened. I think that once we get a concrete understanding of consciousness, we will come to recognize that we have already made conscious systems.

We'll only get new answers to old questions if we're incorporating new inputs or new capabilities.

So I would only expect a breakthrough from philosophy if philosophy is integrating new results from computer science (or neuroscience, etc).

If General Relativity could benefit from the application of pre-existing pure mathematics (Riemannian geometry), why shouldn't it be conceivable that computer science could benefit from (possibly ancient) philosophical ideas?

Because General Relativity primarily benefited from evidence that a new model was necessary. A-priori thinking can help to expand the space of possible answers, but it's terrible at locating uniquely correct answers within any given space.

I don't accept that premise. It took a while to verify the predictions of General Relativity. It certainly wasn't driven by experimental evidence. Einstein started work on GR with a thought experiment (according to Wikipedia) and of course there's Minkowski's famous observation that SR could have been inferred before Einstein from Galilean Relativity, spatial isotropy and the probable existence of a geometric invariant. In other words, pure math didn't get there, but once they all arrived it could really give insight. Check out Minkowski's famous "staircase wit" comment.

Another example from physics is the extent to which Schrodinger was influenced by Eastern philosophy in his formulation of quantum mechanics.

How much "philosophy" was necessary for us to achieve the google search?

Are you implying that google search is somehow AI?

Google search can perform human-like behavior. If two things have the same behavior, can one have "consciousness" and the other not?

Coincidentally we were just discussing the Chinese Room [0] on IRC.

It's a philosophical debate, but the short version is No, a google search isn't conscious. It's AI, or machine learning, but it isn't self aware.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

>Google search can perform human-like behavior.

So can my toaster. I don't think my toaster has consciousness.

Then you're not operating scientifically. You have reasons not based on perception for believing something.

Is logic perception? Famously (I have to take them at their word) Quantum Physics describes behaviours which require the mathematician to abandon perception and manipulate the formula "blindly". Should we disbelieve them?

Also I thought science was (formally) the creation of beliefs based on falsifiable hypothesis supported by evidence? When did the news come that it's actually about excluding intuition and experience? I think quite a lot of grant applications are going to have to be rejected henceforth, but then, how shall we decide what to observe next?

It certainly was invented by PhD students in AI.

Well, someone had to sit down and do a lot of thinking about how to rank relevant search results from a huge set of data.

So it seems to me that philosophers and computer scientists share some key behaviors.

Based on your own theory of shared behavior, computer scientists are philosophers.

Therefore, quite a bit of philosophy was required for google search.

I think good understanding of conciousness comes from the meditative tradition, and their definition for it is "the part of the brain that observes the other parts".

BTW we've already implemented consciousness in a robot: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/automaton-robots-b... and it's useful. But AFAIK, i don't think it's used in any commercial system, although that's the kind of thing a commercial company won't advertise.

>Droids met the challenge of perceiving their self-image and reflecting on their own thoughts as part an effort to develop robots that are more adaptable in unpredictable situations

Who exactly is this entity doing the reflecting? .Isn't this a fundamental misunderstanding of what 'consciousness' means?

As a practical matter, especially for the robot ,it might not matter who is observing. The fact that one can observe oneself enables further capabilities like better feedback.

And by the way i think this observing robot has(or can have) an internal definition of self, and an observer beyond the self. It seems possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com