Google achieves artificial stupidity?

[Aletheia]

In regards to artificial life, yes, I could see that as a possibility, if we ever so slightly modify  using the biological definition:

All of or most of these qualities:

    Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state
    Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells - not necessarily organic cells.
    Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing  matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
    Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
    Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors.
    Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion.
    Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.

These complex processes, called physiological functions, have underlying physical and chemical bases, as well as signaling and control mechanisms that are essential to maintaining life

Cells fashioned with or by nanotechnology would qualify as artificial cells and once they form a multicellular artificial organism that exhibits most or all of these traits, then it would be considered alive. Perhaps not recognizable to us as living, but it would technically be alive.

Then we can take a look at human intelligence. Tons of definitions and various debates, but let's, for simplicity's sake, settle on one.

Perception - the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment
Consciousness -  the quality or state of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself
Self-Awareness - the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals
Volition -  will is the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action. Volitional processes can be applied consciously or they can be automatized as habits over time

And...

Learn - the act of acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing, existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information.
Form concepts - concepts are the mental categories that help us classify objects, events, or ideas, building on the understanding that each object, event, or idea has a set of common relevant features. Thus, concept learning is a strategy which requires a learner to compare and contrast groups or categories that contain concept-relevant features with groups or categories that do not contain concept-relevant features.
Understand - a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object.
Reason -
---- Recognize patterns
---- Comprehend ideas
---- Plan
---- Problem Solve
---- Use language to communicate

It think we all become sidetracked by the manner in which a supposed artificial intelligence goes about accomplishing these traits. We use a complex array of interdependent neural networks which in turn rely on neurons communicating with each other by the use of neurotransmitters between the synapses. These signals are highly choreographed and susceptible to error. An artificial neural network would be expected to use a similar method, albeit perhaps "digital" or quantum in nature. If the artificial "lifeform" is able to demonstrate most, if not all of these traits, then it reasonably on par with human intelligence. If it lacks a few features, then it is on par with human beings who are mentally impaired and yet still considered to have intelligence.

It's my speculation that we'd have to create artificial life before artificial intelligence becomes a real possibility, given that intelligence as we know it (our own) requires a system to create it as an emergent property and to sustain it. 

At the moment, I believe we have computers that demonstrate a handful or less of the qualities needed for intelligence, but they do not make for an intelligent machine. When we do create artificial intelligence, it will be both a cause for celebration and the beginning of a tragic era for the new life form.

[Baruch]

Aletheia - reductionism is useful, until it is not.  Just like a hammer.  Also reasoning from analogy isn't scientific, it is poetic.

TomFoolery - yes, I think the Data character was used to explore lots of interesting questions ... but now people are tired of thinking ;-(

trdsf - how does one recognize what is impossible or not?  Quoting Aristotle?  Curves space-time was impossible, until it wasn't.  Also kudos for mentioning Asimov.

Hydra009 - you know that drug/addiction is a result of stimulating certain brain chemicals.  Suppose one could stimulate these same brain chemicals without having to use external molecular stimulation ... hmm?

[trdsf]

trdsf - how does one recognize what is impossible or not?  Quoting Aristotle?  Curves space-time was impossible, until it wasn't.  Also kudos for mentioning Asimov.

Curved space-time wasn't impossible before Einstein, it just wasn't recognized as being curved.  Neither was the current phase of accelerated expansion of the universe -- more to the point, it just wasn't considered as a possibility, until evidence unexpectedly came in demonstrating the accelerated expansion (Asimov, to mention him again, once speculated that most scientific discoveries are not the result of "Eureka!" but of "Hm, that's odd...").  But that's entirely not the same as being impossible.

The point is, you can't pre-judge the impossibility of something.  And 'not known' is not the same as 'not knowable'.  The nature of consciousness is currently not known, and all that means is that as of now, we don't know how it works.  It says nothing about whether it's knowable.


I can very nearly give you chapter and verse on Asimov like a fundie can give you the King James Version... been an avid fan since I was ten.  :D

[Baruch]

trdsf ... philosophical, but not scientific.  Channel Plato much?  There is no abstract world of absolute mathematic nor physical truth, that special men with special organs are able to declaim oracles about the realm of Forms.  Pythagoras ran a cult, and Plato followed him, not Socrates.  This is why the academy aka university is also a cult.  Though I do give credit Euclid for giving it a good try ... and Archimedes.  But scepticism and Thomas Kuhn says otherwise.  But Euclid wasn't correct about flat space being the same as physical space ... and even his axioms had to be both corrected by David Hilbert and transcended by the non-Euclidean geometry guys.

This is where we get to ... Newton and Einstein are both correct, even though they say very different things (we ignore that, we follow Feyman in ... "just shut up and calculate", and each theory is approximately more correct than the last until Spock of Vulcan is born, and then we will know the Theory of Everything and be like gods.  Or at least have warp drive and completely violate classical physics even under conditions where classical physics is valid.  That is a mythology of science, not science itself aka big scientism.  Even Feynman propagated this mythology, because it served him quite well ... since he was one of the anointed of Pythagoras ... had that special organ.

And if we can't prejudge impossibility, then G-d is possible ;-)

[Baruch]

Apparently Google hired the demented PhD student I mentioned in the first post:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/11712495/Google-unleashes-machine-dreaming-software-on-the-public-nightmarish-images-flood-the-internet.html

Bwahaha ... not only do we own your day-dreams, we own your nightmares too!

[dtq123]

Recognizing patterns is so easy, even a machine can do it by itself?

It's kind of neat how code can create more code... wait...

[trdsf]

trdsf ... philosophical, but not scientific.  Channel Plato much?  There is no abstract world of absolute mathematic nor physical truth, that special men with special organs are able to declaim oracles about the realm of Forms.  Pythagoras ran a cult, and Plato followed him, not Socrates.  This is why the academy aka university is also a cult.  Though I do give credit Euclid for giving it a good try ... and Archimedes.  But scepticism and Thomas Kuhn says otherwise.  But Euclid wasn't correct about flat space being the same as physical space ... and even his axioms had to be both corrected by David Hilbert and transcended by the non-Euclidean geometry guys.

This is where we get to ... Newton and Einstein are both correct, even though they say very different things (we ignore that, we follow Feyman in ... "just shut up and calculate", and each theory is approximately more correct than the last until Spock of Vulcan is born, and then we will know the Theory of Everything and be like gods.  Or at least have warp drive and completely violate classical physics even under conditions where classical physics is valid.  That is a mythology of science, not science itself aka big scientism.  Even Feynman propagated this mythology, because it served him quite well ... since he was one of the anointed of Pythagoras ... had that special organ.

And if we can't prejudge impossibility, then G-d is possible ;-)

See, this is why I don't have much patience with philosophy.  You haven't actually said anything here; all I see is the kind of word salad that made the one philosophy course I did take in college also the last -- and I had a good teacher.

If I can bring a more relevant Feynman quote into this, "Philosophers, incidentally, say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong."  As far as getting actual research done, "shut up and calculate" seems to work pretty well.

You make one particular statement that is profoundly wrong, and for all the wrong reasons: "Newton and Einstein are both correct, even though they say very different things".

Simply put (and, of course, based upon our most current knowledge), Einstein is correct and Newton is not.  However, the differences in everyday life are so miniscule they can in most circumstances be safely ignored.  Newton's close enough to get you to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, and Newton's maths are a lot easier to calculate, so we still study Newton.

But Newton can't provide you a functioning GPS satellite system, or a working Large Hadron Collider.  You need Einstein there, because Einstein provides the correct answer.

Also, at 'normal' gravitational fields and velocities, Einstein emphatically does not say very different things from Newton.  That's the whole point: Einstein's theory replaced Newton, because Einstein's theory included Newton.  They say exactly the same thing under normal circumstances, unless you happen to care what's going on in the 20th, 30th or 40th decimal place, and there are precious few applications that require that kind of precision.

And this goes back to Feynman: it suggests a fundamental philosophical misunderstanding of what science is, what it does and how it does it.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Thinking about AI..My daughters bf is artificial and about as phony as a 7 dollar bill,  but has 'some' intelligence. .just enough to manipulate her and my grandkids except my 11 year old grandson can see right through him and actually has a chart he made of how to avoid having to deal with the asshole. To bad my daughter can't see through the bullshit. . Damned,  if an 11 year old child can see through it surely a 31 year old woman can. . Well maybe not. .

[Solitary]

In regards to artificial life, yes, I could see that as a possibility, if we ever so slightly modify  using the biological definition:

All of or most of these qualities:

    Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state
    Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells - not necessarily organic cells.
    Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing  matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
    Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
    Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors.
    Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion.
    Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.

This sounds like the definition of fire to me. 

[Baruch]

So much good stuff ... from so many ... thinking people ;-)

Solitary ... well part of living for most animals is respiration, where you take oxygen and burn sugar.  But the seraphim were imagined as living fire ... fire angels.  Cherubim were wind angels.  In angelology ... Elijah is made into a seraphim called Sandalphon.  Elisha his disciple similarly elevated and called Metatron.  Sandalphon is a mythic precursor of John the Baptist, and Metatron is a mythic precursor to Jesus.  Both were worshipped as pagan deities who lived in the Jordan River. 

The origin of seraphim are probably fire tornadoes ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SyX2NUEkKk ... which to a traditional mind, seems to move with a will of its own aka alive.

Dust devils are probably the origin on cherubim.  Cherubs however are baby associates of Cupid, the adult and Adonis-like son of Venus.

AllPurposeAtheist ... if your daughter is dating the equivalent of a male Seri, maybe you can have her upload the regular female Seri ;-)  Anyway, as a father myself, you have my condolences.  My daughter has yet to encounter anyone she has fallen for.

trdsf ... well quoting Feynman are we?  He is pretty good, for a whiz kid who could do math in his head.  His view was "shut up and just calculate" ... but that wasn't the view of many other Nobel Prize winners.  Newton said ... spooky action at a distance (propagating at infinite velocity), but Einstein said spooky local action (propagating at "c" or less).  These are not the same, though it is a rhetorical fallacy to do a slight of hand to obscure that ... the calculations converge, but the reasons for doing the calculation, do not.  Quantum mechanics doesn't work with gravity, it only deals with flat space-time.  Here is an actual recent lecture at Stanford:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-NBeVEAzPU ... Dr Miller isn't the Physics Pope ... but then I ain't Catholic ;-)  At least in relativity/gravitation, we know what a measurement is, aka gravimetry and GPS.  Quantum mechanics are nihilist obscurantists?  But if we want to deal with current grad school quantum mechanics etc, we will have to start a string in another place.  This is the problem with lay understanding of physics ... the problems are papered over in favor of pedagogy, even in some graduate classes.  But it isn't science to idolize Einstein, Bohr or Feynman ... otherwise we might as follow St Aquinas.

dtq123 ... a self-booting code, is called a boot sector ... aka Bios plus basic formatting of the HD.  But you can't literally start with nothing ... there is some minimum of non-random bits required.  Experiments with self-developing software have always been problematical ... though one could describe artificial neural networks as adaptive statistics ... unfortunately these become more rigid over time, because of entropy.  Living things, locally reverse the growth of entropy however.

[Mike Cl]

   This sounds like the definition of fire to me. 

And therein lies the problem with most of the definitions of life I've read.

[Nihil-ist]

I don't know if you play games but this is a very interesting exploration into "A.I." with fun puzzle solving kinda like portal 2.

[Mike Cl]

I don't know if you play games but this is a very interesting exploration into "A.I." with fun puzzle solving kinda like portal 2.

Have you played it?  I have not played Portal 2, so I can't compare that way.  Is it like Myst?  If so, that drove me nuts and I simply quit the game.  I don't do that often. 

[stromboli]

I'm good up to the point where it starts building weapons to use against me.

[peacewithoutgod]

I was going to refer to the Turing test on AI, but Hydra beat me to it - you may want to Google this.

I tend to doubt that Google's latest gadget is truly sentient, but I don't doubt that they will produce such a thing soon enough. This is computer technology, the most rapidly changing field in the history of science, and you made your judgment call on a doctrine from 1985! Back then the saw was oft-repeated, "Garbage in = garbage out", which basically asserted that computers do exactly as they are programmed to do, and no more. This is still true, as I have made the case for with a certain hairy-eyed freak with purple scales on his face (avatar) who dumps tons of garbage here in his attempts to waste our time, but computer scientists and psychology professionals now have far greater insight on animal neurological programming, even if they aren't anywhere close to nailing down exactly how that works. I don't see why they would need to, so long as they manage to produce coding which is complex enough that it gives its lucky recipient machine enough options which would enable it to achieve sentience. There are already machines with at least the intelligence of an ant, and then I think the question of whether an ant has sentience is moot - what matters is that it acts according to natural neurological programming at its own complexity level. Therefore, the path to human-equal sentience in non-carbon-based life forms (said Ilia in Star Trek) is complexity. On that, boy have they ever got it now, and they expect to open up whole new technological dimensions in making much more of this possible. Quantum particle computers were hardly even a dream in 1985, if anybody thought of that idea at all! Now I need to go look up that book series Future Shock mentioned by somebody here (was that Mike CI?), as I watch its prophecies become reality around me while reading it.