tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post646031295813835632..comments2024-03-17T11:54:10.124+11:00Comments on Journeyman Philosopher: Sentience, free will and AIPaul P. Mealinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-8900860286103201922017-06-10T10:48:23.608+10:002017-06-10T10:48:23.608+10:00It's seems many scientists who claim conscious...It's seems many scientists who claim conscious A.I. is right around the corner never address the sentience issue which can be very misleading. So many people have nightmarish visions of intelligent robots exterminating humans, but I've never heard a single talk on A.I. point out the correlation between sentience and motives. In order for an A.I. to have motives that deviate from the programmer who designed it, it would have to be sentient. Sentience is the basis for motive, and to me, motive and the free will to make choices which alter your course is what's required to achieve a truly conscious A.I that is no longer a computer, but a being. I'm very skeptical on whether this is possible to achieve ever, let alone in the near future. We understand very little about sentience in human beings. You have to ask yourself what we would even stand to gain by creating such a being if we had the capability to do so. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10110644469189278916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-82507030489904584882011-08-10T18:45:11.693+10:002011-08-10T18:45:11.693+10:00Hi Anonymous,
Appreciate your comment. I guess my...Hi Anonymous,<br /><br />Appreciate your comment. I guess my point is that I don't believe AI will ever be sentient the way we are, but I may be proven wrong.<br /><br />I don't think that giving AI simulated emotions makes them sentient either, because I don't believe they 'feel'. Programming a computer to respond in a certain way to inputs from a human doesn't mean that it actually feels anything in the way we and other animals do. <br /><br />Plants are not sentient even though they are alive and organic and respond to their environment.<br /><br />Certainly, I think we could treat other sentient creatures better than we currently do, so I don't think sentience is unique to humans by any means.<br /><br />Regards, Paul.Paul P. Mealinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-45410766919980972892011-08-10T08:10:12.732+10:002011-08-10T08:10:12.732+10:00I'm Austisic and I have feelings! -_- for thos...I'm Austisic and I have feelings! -_- for those who don't know ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) affects in different ways, we do have feelings, we are just to socially awkward to express them properly. Anyway humans are willing to fight for freedom (and have shown this countless times) because we believe in it, if an AI has feelings enough to want freedom then is it not probable that it will fight and, not to be to Sci-Fi nerdy, we could end up with a war? Regardless to this point, your whole argument is based on feelings = Sentience correct? So is it there for not logical (yes logic in a philosophical debate how ironic) that if we creat an AI with feelings it is sentient, and all sentient beings deserve to be free. Also ethically speeking, surely anything that is intelligent enough to say it deserves rights, wether it has emotion or not deserves rights, otherwise we will be creating a world of synthetic slavery, and maybe it is just me but I strongly believe that is wrong. We need to treat sentient Artifical intelligence, the same way we treat sentient Natural intelligence - equely! That is if our technology does ever delelope this far.<br />And now I have to type the letters of this security thing to prove I'm not an AI :')Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-87402781810466530432011-05-15T19:28:09.171+10:002011-05-15T19:28:09.171+10:00Hi yms,
Thanks for the clarification. I'm not...Hi yms,<br /><br />Thanks for the clarification. I'm not sure that there is a 'partial orthogonality of sentience and emotion in the Asberger's example', so I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion: 'that emotion isn't a necessary precondition for the development of sentience.'<br /><br />I'm not an expert on Asperger's, though I have met a couple of people who probably qualify, including one who was clinically diagnosed. Some people believe that Einstein had Asperger's but he was certainly passionate about a lot of things.<br /><br />Otherwise I think we probably are in agreement.<br /><br />Regards, Paul.Paul P. Mealinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-39796833949504595402011-05-15T18:43:27.420+10:002011-05-15T18:43:27.420+10:00My 'point,' meant innocuously, was just th...My 'point,' meant innocuously, was just that you'd said, 'the evidence...suggests that...consciousness evolved from emotions,' which may or may not be true, but on the other hand, given the apparent partial orthogonality of sentience and emotion in the Asberger's example, it seems at least possible that emotion isn't a necessary precondition for the development of sentience. Which is not to say that people with various forms of autism don't have plenty of emotions, but there does seem to be some difference in their outward manifestation, and I was just casting about for an example of orthogonality. I wouldn't ever argue that an artificial intelligence, unless it were one instantiated in living tissue, would be considered intuitively by most people to have 'life' in the same sense in which a human does.ymshttp://youmissedsomething.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-65334698172550709872011-05-14T12:17:52.057+10:002011-05-14T12:17:52.057+10:00HI yms,
No one would suggest that people with Asb...HI yms,<br /><br />No one would suggest that people with Asberger's aren't sentient, or even that they don't feel emotions, so I'm not sure what your point is there.<br /><br />We assume that a limbic system is required to feel emotions, but, as you point out, that's not a certainty.<br /><br />More significantly, I believe, is that we don't know of anything that experiences emotion that isn't alive. When we argue that AI will be conscious, therefore sentient, therefore alive, it seems to me we have the causal relationship back-to-front.<br /><br />Regards, Paul.Paul P. Mealinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-26560319493958380492011-05-11T06:07:40.222+10:002011-05-11T06:07:40.222+10:00It occurs to me that people in whom the outward ma...It occurs to me that people in whom the outward manifestation of emotions is seriously trammelled -- victims of Asperger's, for example -- would nevertheless indisputably have to be characterized as conscious and sentient. I'm not sure, in any case, that it makes sense a priori to assume that sentience cannot develop absent underlying emotional substructures and/or a limbic system. Still, your intuition is as good as mine, and YMMV.ymshttp://youmissedsomething.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-12150691370252592992011-05-08T11:58:25.288+10:002011-05-08T11:58:25.288+10:00Hi Davo,
Yes, that's the assumption - we will...Hi Davo,<br /><br />Yes, that's the assumption - we will recognise consciousness when we see it.<br /><br />But as long as AI is software-based, I expect there will always be a difference. For what it's worth, I've explored this in my own fiction.<br /><br />If we can't agree on what consciousness is then it may never be resolved. At the end of the day, consciousness is a subjective experience, and, if we didn't all have that experience, I'm sure science would tell us it doesn't exist. Objectively, consciousness is brain imaging created by neurons firing, but subjectively it's something entirely different.<br /><br />Thanks for taking an interest in my views.<br /><br />Regards, Paul.Paul P. Mealinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-60735429492179785022011-05-08T10:33:42.597+10:002011-05-08T10:33:42.597+10:00If AI advances enough to ever be considered to hav...If AI advances enough to ever be considered to have consciousness surely that conscious would make us aware of it, will it not? <br /><br />It'll happen man, you just wait.davohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09035078571939756532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-39462483607832631552011-04-27T18:46:20.368+10:002011-04-27T18:46:20.368+10:00You raise a valid point Phaedrus. You are talking ...You raise a valid point Phaedrus. You are talking about a stimulous-response or sensory-response type of behaviour that you might even find in plants, so no consciousness is required, even for an animal.<br /> <br />What I'm saying is that you only get consciousness when an animal starts to 'feel' something - without feeling, no consciousness is required. This is my contention.<br /> <br />I don't believe AI will ever feel anything, in the sense that we do, so I don't believe AI will ever be conscious.<br /><br />If you mean that feeling without response, or the ability to respond, is absurd, then I agree with you. <br /> <br />Regards, Paul.Paul P. Mealinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3427479692989285926.post-19186700136906051112011-04-27T02:54:21.534+10:002011-04-27T02:54:21.534+10:00On logic:
What is logic but binary calculation? ...On logic: <br /><br />What is logic but binary calculation? Pleasure and Pain. This causes me pain, and thus I will avoid it. This causes pleasure, and thus I tend to seek it. This causes pleasure, but if abused it will cause me pain, and thus I should seek it in moderation. Many animals reason this way with their feelings. <br /><br />So I would have to agree with Kant, that "feeling" alone, ungoverned by reason, is descriptive of something absurd that would never survive for very long.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10930279484815540663noreply@blogger.com