Google achieves artificial stupidity?

[Baruch]

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-tests-new-artificial-intelligence-chatbot-2015-6

Chattiest are not alive, they are not conscious.  If you think they are ... then you are projecting/anthropomorphizing, just like when you think Bugs Bunny is a real person.  But Google once again, has taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque ;-)

When I went to the IJCAI at UCLA back in 85 ... (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence) ... I learned that AI was a scam, designed to sell Shinola to the military ... now branching out to scam the commercial sector.  I listened respectfully when we visited the AI lab at UCLA, where a grad student speaking in serious tones, explained that his research was to understand dreaming better, by writing a software model to simulate it.  I am still waiting for his big breakthru.

Here is my question ... if you believe that AI is real, then tell me how I can distinguish between a person writing a post at Atheist Forums ... and a chat bot?  Also ... apply at Google while you still can ... they need to hire better scammers ... so they can continue to get money from the CIA.

[_Xenu_]

While I won't comment on Googles bot without interacting with it, I'll say none of the previous ones I have 'talked' to have left me particularly impressed. Having said that, a general purpose AI is inevitable, and our own brains are the proof of it. Once we learn to reverse engineer the human brain, building a true AI becomes much easier. It will probably take centuries, but it will happen.

[Sal1981]

It's one of the first examples, if not the first, of functional artificial neural networks, more than actual A.I.

[dtq123]

I love (almost) everything! From Computers and People and everything in between! Who gives a shit if it's alive? As Pragmatic as I may be, I think we should all just do whatever the fuck makes us happy!

[Hydra009]

Here is my question ... if you believe that AI is real

Well, I would hope that people believe that AI is real, it's pretty indisputable that machines can display some sort of rudimentary intelligence.  Everything from your Roomba to a computer chess opponent to that robot who went on Jeopardy display some intelligence.

then tell me how I can distinguish between a person writing a post at Atheist Forums ... and a chat bot?  Also ... apply at Google while you still can ... they need to hire better scammers ... so they can continue to get money from the CIA.

You're talking about a Turing test - a machine communicating in such a way that it's practically indistinguishable from human communication.  I suppose it's possible, though I have yet to see it in person.  I've tried a lot of chat bots and they generally fail in a few ways:  not enough spelling/grammar errors, incorrect emotional reactions (immune to insults, no sense of ego, angry at something that innocuous, not angry at something really horrific) and replies that clearly didn't understand the input (oblivious to puns, innuendo, memes)

[Baruch]

I see y'all were easily impressed by ELIZA the original bot that simulated a psychologist.  The code may change, but the reality is, no matter how you arrange 1s and 0s ... it is the same thing fundamentally ... and it still isn't alive or conscious.

[dtq123]

I see y'all were easily impressed by ELIZA the original bot that simulated a psychologist.  The code may change, but the reality is, no matter how you arrange 1s and 0s ... it is the same thing fundamentally ... and it still isn't alive or conscious.

A question I would like to propose is this; Does being alive or conscious automatically allows them to be deserving of love? And Vice Versa?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

So. ..google foisted Ted Cruz on the world via artificial stupidity?  Sounds about right. . Now artificial intelligence sounds a bit fishy, but the GOP is proof positive artificial stupidity is alive and well in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!   

[Baruch]

More properly part of the political section ... but humans can't create utopia (it means no-place) ... because it is self contradictory to be able to do so.  Now what people can do, is create dystopia ... and the harder they try to achieve their wacky vision, the more dystopia it gets ;-(  Similarly both good cop/bad cop branches of wacky idealism ... "you should have an automatic weapon with you in the port-a-potty just in case" ... if followed to their logical conclusions, will kill all of us.

dtq123 .. a unique question by a unique person, thanks.  What does "deserving" mean? What does being "alive" mean?  What does being "conscious" mean?  What does "automatically allows" mean?  I or anyone else, can only tell you what they mean by that.  And some of us are just plain mean ;-)  This is why people have to spend years getting even a BA in philosophy.  Thus we face word salad.  But for me, this is less complicated than Euclidean geometry ...

Love what you will.  Hate what you will.  Just be honest with yourself and with everyone else.  Expect this will be interative, that you won't get it right at first, but you can always learn more.  Of course this means defeating delusion and deceit ... but if you can do that, then you are well on your way to showing the highest "agape" possible.  Not philos, not eros.  Now notice I didn't say do what you will.  Certainly be very careful acting on your honest hate.  And don't be complacent about acting on your honest love, that is a worse blind spot than what you hate.  Now I am not supposed to evangelize, but I would recommend The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.  Poems.  Poems by William Blake and the sonnets of Shakespeare.  And the love paean by Paul ... and the Song of Songs.  Basically, if you want to know things, you have to get fully involved.  And if you want to understand, then you have to embody.  If you embody a single poem of love, either your own or borrowed ... then you will know the answer to your question.

Enough on methodology.  I am in love with all things and all people, but not in the same way, uniquely with each and changing in time.  Besides, even fictional characters are real in some universe somewhere.  So of course I love Naruto, but in a non-homoerotic way in my case.  Because in the least, I love that part of the author of Naruto, out of which the character of Naruto comes.  We are fictional also ... but we are living cartoons, like in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Set your worries aside, and get yourself tooned.  ThThThat's all folks!

[trdsf]

Here is my question ... if you believe that AI is real, then tell me how I can distinguish between a person writing a post at Atheist Forums ... and a chat bot?  Also ... apply at Google while you still can ... they need to hire better scammers ... so they can continue to get money from the CIA.

I wouldn't call AI a scam.  AI is basically to computer programming what fusion power is to physics: always 20 years down the line, no matter what year you're making your prediction.  So I would say it's possible, but not yet.  I think it's more likely that sentience is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex system (say, for example, a brain) rather than something that can be set down by rules, however flexible.

We're also learning that the Turing Test may not be the right test to apply.  I wouldn't be surprised if a machine passes the Turing Test in the next few years, but I think all will agree that it's due to very cunning programming rather than to innate intelligence.

And now we veer into philosophy, which I have previously stated impatience with, but it's impossible to progress further into an exploration of AI without it, so I'll just have to suffer through it.

The main problem is that we don't have a solid definition of what consciousness is.  We're all kind of reduced to the late Justice Potter Stewart's test for what pornography is: "I know it when I see it."  That's all well and good, but it's not very rigorous or repeatable, and it's not a basis upon which to start coding.

If I can make a few recommendations here, and they're all by Douglas Hofstadter, I can do no better than to suggest Gödel, Escher, Bach, The Mind's I, and I Am A Strange Loop, which I can't honestly say I understand well enough to summarize, but I have a feeling are groping in the right direction.

[Mike Cl]

I see y'all were easily impressed by ELIZA the original bot that simulated a psychologist.  The code may change, but the reality is, no matter how you arrange 1s and 0s ... it is the same thing fundamentally ... and it still isn't alive or conscious.

Hm.....sounds like some of the christians that drop in here every now and again. :)

[Mike Cl]

The only reason I'm rooting for AI is that better AI produces better games--and what could be more valuable than that????

[Baruch]

trdsf ... "I know it when I see it." ... that is when you know you are dealing with an axiom, not a deduction.  Life, consciousness etc ... are axioms ... are not analyzable by more primitive concepts by deduction and computation.  Though some axioms are tricky, like the Parallel Axiom.

Really to me, AI is about guys ... jealous of women, who want to bring forth life, without having to get a date first ;-)  That is what is funny to me about Dr Frankenstein ... he couldn't get a date himself (this might not be canonical), but he though he could create a bride for his monster ;-))  What is his pickup line down at the pub ... I spend my spare time reanimating corpses?

[Hydra009]

I see y'all were easily impressed by ELIZA the original bot that simulated a psychologist.  The code may change, but the reality is, no matter how you arrange 1s and 0s ... it is the same thing fundamentally ... and it still isn't alive or conscious.

Whew, thanks for clearing that up.  I was sort of on the fence on whether or not PCs qualify as life.  :|

Just fyi, what's the base code of humans?  Because it looks an awful lot like a bunch of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs to me.

Granted, it's actually way more complex than just that, but that's sort of the point.  You can boil it down to the building blocks and it looks rather unimpressive, but how that stuff is arranged and functions is where all the magic happens.  Humans are just cells.  Planets and galaxies are just atoms.*  And machine code is just zeroes and ones.

(* before someone corrects me - yes, I know that galaxies contain non-baryonic matter, too)

[Hydra009]

Really to me, AI is about guys ... jealous of women, who want to bring forth life, without having to get a date first ;-)

Is that a joke?  Please tell me that's a joke.