I don't know what to say except it feels like a certain kind of mirror that could swallow me up if l get too close and all the sudden l'm a flash drive....or ...
A reciprocal relationship with a machine, no matter how brilliantly the machine functions is impossible. A reciprocal relationship requires a “circuited” response. I’m making this up, and coining “circuited,” to mean all the moments that are produced during on an organism’s chemical/electrical workings prior to a response – that lead to a response – and then the response itself. And I purposefully use the word “organism,” because a reciprocal relationship lies in the realm of vitalism. A machine is not/will never be vital. A relationship with AI is only as deep as Deep Blue and Gary Kasparov, or AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. Jumping ahead, AlphaGoZero plays against all previous versions of AlphaGo – and beats them all. (Take this out of the realm of numbers/moves/probabilities, and use words and we’ll soon have AI producing “literature” exclusively for other machines – interesting to view, but probably ((and perhaps necessarily)) incomprehensible.)
In my opinion (and this is AI philosophy, and probably 101) a machine can never provide the next best response to Miles’ silence – unless it’s silence, which proves nothing. Even if the human response falls short of whatever response the machine makes, it is, by virtue of being human, the better response. And if the human response is silence, it is, by virtue of being human, a better silence. <chuckle>
AI is a somewhat superior WIKI. Great for research, supercalifragilistic for numbers and logic, although its propensity to hallucinate does not speak well for its functioning. As a proof reader/copy editor probably fine. As a writing coach, and I’ve tried this, prosaic, and unimaginative. I’d take a human any day.
I think that’s it.
Oh, yeah, the mind/machine interplay. Yes, some interesting text will be produced, but it’s all academic – I mean, what the hell, it’s a machine.
If you're asking if I've tried communicating with a machine, the answer is no, as there is no communication with machines. Have I done cute little back and forths with AI? Guilty, and it's somewhat seductive. A person could be easily led to believe real communication were happening.
AI is just compiling, mixing and matching that which has already been created by humans. There are things it creates and answers it formulates that seem to derive from a soulful place, but only because of the data it's fed.
My fear stems from the axiom "Garbage in, Garbage out." If you look at our social media and media in general, that's a hella lotta garbage that will be packed in there, and maybe AI will evolve to be just as dumb as us humans?..... just sayin.
It can be argued that all communication is internal- that we’re always talking to ourselves primarily and one another incidentally. So much of my own creativity has been about figuring out how I feel, what music and words tickle my fancy and hoping others might be amused or entertained by my ideas, my internal conversations. I think you might be onto something here, Bret- and consider how much $ you’re saving not having to buy AI a coffee! 🤭😉💕
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
I believe the physical world is a valid aspect of reality, but not the only aspect. There are spiritual and other aspects as well, I'm sure. But I can't deny science's success at explaining many aspects of the physical world, and the success of its applications. Surgery before anesthesia wasn't fun, for example. In the same vein, I believe there is a physical aspect to consciousness, because when the brain is physically damaged in certain areas, it consistently produces the same kind of damage to consciousness, e.g. damage to certain occipital areas of the brain produces the same kind of damage to vision in all patients with that kind of brain damage. Science has been good at explaining physical phenomena that are consistent and reproducible. You know which brain theory I support.
It appears that the Darwin experiments/models of self-learning machines are programmed functions. I can't shake the distaste I experience in equating a machine with a human, and I know that affects my thinking about any machine approaching consciousness. Maybe I (we) have to speak in terms of machine consciousness until a better word is coined. But even with that a a compromise in my thinking it rankles me to use consciousness in place of function. Honestly, I'm not sure I'll ever be ready, or even want to be ready to apply consciousness to machinery, which might make me a bad fit in these conversations.
Your conversation prompted possible attempt to keep an open mind.
I don't know what to say except it feels like a certain kind of mirror that could swallow me up if l get too close and all the sudden l'm a flash drive....or ...
A reciprocal relationship with a machine, no matter how brilliantly the machine functions is impossible. A reciprocal relationship requires a “circuited” response. I’m making this up, and coining “circuited,” to mean all the moments that are produced during on an organism’s chemical/electrical workings prior to a response – that lead to a response – and then the response itself. And I purposefully use the word “organism,” because a reciprocal relationship lies in the realm of vitalism. A machine is not/will never be vital. A relationship with AI is only as deep as Deep Blue and Gary Kasparov, or AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. Jumping ahead, AlphaGoZero plays against all previous versions of AlphaGo – and beats them all. (Take this out of the realm of numbers/moves/probabilities, and use words and we’ll soon have AI producing “literature” exclusively for other machines – interesting to view, but probably ((and perhaps necessarily)) incomprehensible.)
In my opinion (and this is AI philosophy, and probably 101) a machine can never provide the next best response to Miles’ silence – unless it’s silence, which proves nothing. Even if the human response falls short of whatever response the machine makes, it is, by virtue of being human, the better response. And if the human response is silence, it is, by virtue of being human, a better silence. <chuckle>
AI is a somewhat superior WIKI. Great for research, supercalifragilistic for numbers and logic, although its propensity to hallucinate does not speak well for its functioning. As a proof reader/copy editor probably fine. As a writing coach, and I’ve tried this, prosaic, and unimaginative. I’d take a human any day.
I think that’s it.
Oh, yeah, the mind/machine interplay. Yes, some interesting text will be produced, but it’s all academic – I mean, what the hell, it’s a machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n9ESFJTnHs
Have you tried such communication?
If you're asking if I've tried communicating with a machine, the answer is no, as there is no communication with machines. Have I done cute little back and forths with AI? Guilty, and it's somewhat seductive. A person could be easily led to believe real communication were happening.
AI is just compiling, mixing and matching that which has already been created by humans. There are things it creates and answers it formulates that seem to derive from a soulful place, but only because of the data it's fed.
My fear stems from the axiom "Garbage in, Garbage out." If you look at our social media and media in general, that's a hella lotta garbage that will be packed in there, and maybe AI will evolve to be just as dumb as us humans?..... just sayin.
It can be argued that all communication is internal- that we’re always talking to ourselves primarily and one another incidentally. So much of my own creativity has been about figuring out how I feel, what music and words tickle my fancy and hoping others might be amused or entertained by my ideas, my internal conversations. I think you might be onto something here, Bret- and consider how much $ you’re saving not having to buy AI a coffee! 🤭😉💕
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
Without the spark of "vitalism," there will never be a conscious machine. IMHO
I believe the physical world is a valid aspect of reality, but not the only aspect. There are spiritual and other aspects as well, I'm sure. But I can't deny science's success at explaining many aspects of the physical world, and the success of its applications. Surgery before anesthesia wasn't fun, for example. In the same vein, I believe there is a physical aspect to consciousness, because when the brain is physically damaged in certain areas, it consistently produces the same kind of damage to consciousness, e.g. damage to certain occipital areas of the brain produces the same kind of damage to vision in all patients with that kind of brain damage. Science has been good at explaining physical phenomena that are consistent and reproducible. You know which brain theory I support.
It appears that the Darwin experiments/models of self-learning machines are programmed functions. I can't shake the distaste I experience in equating a machine with a human, and I know that affects my thinking about any machine approaching consciousness. Maybe I (we) have to speak in terms of machine consciousness until a better word is coined. But even with that a a compromise in my thinking it rankles me to use consciousness in place of function. Honestly, I'm not sure I'll ever be ready, or even want to be ready to apply consciousness to machinery, which might make me a bad fit in these conversations.
I'll have more to say once I get my chores done (would love to have a machine to take care of those.) In the meantime, this showed up in my inbox: https://www.versopolis.com/multimedia/classes/1807/writing-with-the-machine-ai-and-poetic-creation
Don't worry, in a few years there will be a robot who does the chores. And probably a lot more. Mine will be called Murray.