1. Brains are physical systems
2. Physical systems can be simulated
3. Brains have human level AI
Therefore the possibility of human level AI is real. Hopefully something better than a simulated brain is possible though :p
2. Physical systems can be simulated
3. Brains have human level AI
Therefore the possibility of human level AI is real. Hopefully something better than a simulated brain is possible though :p
I follow the Idealism philosophy (which is the opposite of Materialism) that posits that the fundamental property in the universe is universal mind or consciousness and our individual thoughts and ego are derived from a filtering operation: we as individuals filter out a small part of this collective unconsciousness (to use Carl Yung's term) and that is what gives us our identity while we are alive. All of modern physics would be layered on top of the underlying mind or consciousness.
If these ideas interest you, I suggest reading "Why Materialism is Baloney" by physicist and computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup.
All this said, I think "real AIs" are inevitable (even if far in the future) but I think they will seem very alien to us.
May I humbly ask you one question?
How do you define the term, "consciousness"? i.e. what object, range of objects, function, process, etc., do you indicate when you use that term?
May I be frank with you? After I read what you said, I became concerned for you. Although, you probably don't feel like you're in any level of danger at this late stage. However, my sole expression of concern for you might even raise the impetus within you to reject what I'm saying now. I just want to prepare you to notice such thing, if it is happening to you. There's a reason that it would happen, which I'll explain. However, I have some things to say which might sound odd at first or second listen. But I can promise you that they are true, and that the more you try to listen and understand, the more sense it will make.
Everything in the world is controlled by what is inside of itself. It's impossible for anything in the world to exist, to come into existence, or to change after having come into existence without this law. What and how things act are determined by the problem made when what a thing keeps in itself contacts what exists in the world, whatever the case may be.
That's why to suggest that one's consciousness exists by default outside one's body is like suggesting that the driver of a car stays outside of the car.
(Even if a hypothetical external driver gives orders to the car, those orders must be transmitted into some form of controller which exists within the system of the car, by way of direct connection.)
If the real owner of the car is outside of the car, then it's quite convenient for any third parties to get into the driver's seat and to drive on their own. How much more convenient for those third parties if the real owner believes that he is currently still the real driver? S/he wouldn't feel a need to lock his/her car door, nor prevent any entrants.
Additionally, it's actually quite detrimental to the health of the consciousness of a living person if it stays outside of their body, because it gets weaker very quickly that way.
While I don't know you well, I can tell you not only from my continuous verifications, as well as additional research, but from my sufficient understanding of theory (i.e. law of operation) that any practices of meditation taught today make practitioners go in the exact opposite direction from awakening their consciousness and saving themselves, that is, enlightening themselves. In fact, meditation of today is the best way to (i) abandon and lose yourself, and (ii) to invite others' consciousnesses to drive you.
After having lost yourself, you won't notice that it is the case because your consciousness exists in a state of dormancy, and what's more, the other consciousnesses who have been able to enter and drive your body intentionally keep your own, original consciousness in that state of dormancy. The others inform you of things instead of allowing you to use your own consciousness to receive (see) things of the world.
There are many secrets in the world, and some of them are very profound. But because of the above, meditation is not the way for you to open your eyes to those secrets and to understand them. Meanwhile, it's very convenient for roaming consciousnesses who do not have a body (because they have died already) to use the opportunity provided by your practice of meditation in order to show you things, and to subsequently trick you into believing that what they show you are indeed those secrets that you want to know. Those who are in this state are kept from realizing it. The dead consciousnesses who have to enter humans' bodies have to do so because of their attachment to life, and the problems they couldn't solve while they were alive. After we die, we no longer have a physical body, so it's quite a bit more difficult to change things in ourselves. That's why they look for living people who they can deceive, enter, control, and use in order to express themselves.
Indeed, due to your practice of meditation, you probably feel more peaceful. However, if you don't find any way break from their control, you will also encounter extremely difficult phenomena after you pass away, and will have a very hard time finding the way to come back to life as a human being again. Additionally, during your present life, as mentioned, you won't be able to enlighten yourself through your meditation.
I'm telling you this in public at the risk of being ridiculed because it is all true (everything in reality is the proof of what I'm saying), and because it's quite possible that no one else has informed you of these truths.
In order to confirm or disprove what I've said you've only got to look into facts and check. However, without checking, it will be extremely difficult for you to receive what I say. So, I hope you have an interest in saving yourself!
The philosophical lines often seem to boil down into something like, "but even if it was intelligent, it wouldn't know what it's like to think like a human, thus it isn't thinking like a human", but this seems like a really weak line of thought to me. I don't nor ever could know what it's like to be you or any other person, but I can certainly relate and be related to by others as a human.
There is over whelming evidence that the brain's operation(and thus it's resultant product: conscious and human though) is a physical process. There is no physics that suggests we can't replicate this process, but using a different substrate(ie electronic computing of some shape or another), and there is no physics that suggests we can't make such a system mimic the physical processes as a human. It seems more likely, in this case, that the differences and difficulty of relating to such a artificial system would be similar to that of just another different human being.
My Dad, who is a member of the National Academy of Science, does not agree with me re: Idealism vs. Materialism, but that just makes for more interesting conversations :-)
So why do you ignore all scientific evidence as to the mind being the brain and how cognition works? How can you be a "paid practitioner of AI" if you completely ignore the science of real minds?
At least for my work projects (DARPA, Disney, SAIC, Google, etc.) "AI" has been engineering for good results, not mimicking the human brain.
I did write up some experiments in training recurrent neural nets using genetic algorithms in a book I wrote for McGraw Hill in the early 1990s, and that is quite frankly just about the only time I have ever thought to model something even remotely like human brain activity.
Thermodynamically optimal (aka: bounded-rational) causal modeling in a Turing-complete language of models, used to minimize the free energy of the environment/surprise of the organism.
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/469/2153/2012...
Many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
On the face of it, the options are these. (1) Maybe minds are what brains do, and ultimately physical in origin. (2) Maybe minds are immaterial spirits of some kind, and brains are just a distraction. (3) Maybe minds are immaterial spirits of some kind, and brains are how they interface to the material world.
The clearest evidence distinguishing these -- which heavily favours #1 over #2 and #3, as it turns out -- comes from seeing what happens when a brain is permanently or temporarily impaired by physical damage, drugs, oxygen shortage, electric shock, etc.
If #2 were right, those things shouldn't affect your mind at all; but of course they do, so #2 is out. So dualists generally prefer some version of #3: the mind is no more created by the brain than a concert is created by the radio you hear it with, even though destroying the radio stops you hearing the concert.
But now imagine that you have an electronic box that plays music, and it turns out that if you damage it in one way then the violins all start playing out of tune, and if you damage it in another way then the music is all OK except that the singers go la-la-la instead of singing the right words, and if you damage it another way then every time you play sad music it stops working for a while. And another kind of damage leaves all the music kinda correct, but it's performed mechanically and boringly and emotionlessly. And another kind means that whatever you do to it it only performs sad 19th-century German songs about love and death. You'd quickly come to the conclusion that it isn't just a radio; it's somehow generating the music itself.
The effects on the mind of messing physically with the brain are rather like that. Injuries in particular places can cause very specific kinds of disability -- a patient who's mostly OK but can't remember the names of any vegetables, or another who has lost the use of one arm but also lost the ability to recognize that that arm doesn't work, etc., etc., etc. It's all exactly what you'd expect if mental functions are implemented by the brain and damaging particular bits of brain damage particular mental functions.
It's not a theorem; none of this is quite proof. It could be, e.g., that your mind is operated by an angel who watches for damage to your brain and interferes with the mind in just the way that the brain damage would produce if the mind were just a product of the brain. But it's that kind of hypothesis you end up needing, if you seriously attempt to reconcile the observable facts with a belief that minds are separate from brains.
Dirty Materialists Get Out.
edit: Godless materialists currently consider certain "quantum shenanigans" to be "completely random", while the evidence merely indicates that they are predictably distributed, like everything else.
However would you say that, if an actual human level intelect is created artificially, and can be shown to operate purely on the physical principles used in it's design, that your religious views will be proved to be incorrect? If so, that's a bold and courageous position to take.
but nothing can change the fact that the _first_ chicken always came from an egg
PS: I never got the paradox on that one.
I know this sounds complicated, but the idea is actually pretty simple.