Artificial intelligence: will we be aware when we’ve made a breakthrough?
The solution to many industrial, scientific and governmental problems will continue to defy human abilities, argues Professor Peter Cochrane
Written by Peter Cochrane
Computing, 08 Jul 2010
When chess champion Gary Kasparov was defeated by the Deep Blue computer in 1997, he and the chess world were outraged.
Sound bites included: “Something strange is going on”, “It didn’t play a regular game of chess”, “It didn’t play like a human” and “It didn’t play fair”.
But no one asked the most important question – how did it win?
The key here was a new intelligence had entered the game: a powerful computer that didn’t think like us. And nor should it, because it was bringing a new dimension and a new way of solving the problem.
Between the years 1975 and 1995 all the technologies of visualisation that we enjoy today were in their infancy. Electronic displays, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AVR) and 3D all existed, but all were basic, big, power hungry, expensive and the preserve of large laboratories.
Since 1995 technology advances have seen huge improvements in resolution, fidelity, sensitivity, power consumption, size, weight, and dramatic reductions in cost.
Here is the full article.
Did he really say all that?
No. I did.
Click on may name.
The problem is not artificial intelligence that is already here, being that intelligence could be said to be ‘problem solving’.
The problem is artificial consciousness, the misunderstanding started with Descartes when he stated ‘I think therefore I am’ Personally speaking ‘I do not think therefore I am’ I *feel* therefore I am. I do not think alive I *feel* alive.
This causes the biggest problem with artificial consciousness *context* the mind gets in a mess trying to separate context from concept, until you realise context itself, is a concept, context is a concept that wraps another concept.
From when we are born we evolve our sense of context in terms of what things feel like expressed as the ratios between different neurotransmitters like the notes in a chord or discord, which is why music gets closer to consciousness than logic.
Thousands of years ago Plato stated, we must separate passion from reason, what we now know of neurology tells us he was very prescient. The neuron either fires or it does not in a yes no fashion, it would not surprise me if Boolean processes were discovered operating within the neuron. This could said to be the logical side of consciousness. The emotional side of consciousness could be the ratio’s between neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins etc.
All this leads me to think that logic is to the left of the decimal point and emotion is to the right of the decimal point.
Well that is enough mad musing for one morning.
Thank you for the hard work you put into this blog Susan, I’ve been coming here every day, for years.