Greetings again, hanes, and to whoever, I’m debating with myself over whether or not humans are just more advanced chatbots, taking in input and outputting answers and events.
Bd & Shaney -
I think an interesting notion to explore is what it means to “understand” something. As near as I can figure, to “understand” something is simply to connect a concept or event with other concepts or events in particular ways. For example, think about the understanding an average person has of a computer. He really truly does understand that, in Microsoft Word, pressing the “A” key will result in the character “a” being displayed where the cursor used to be. Connecting the action with the result is an understanding. But of course there are degrees of understanding - the engineer who knows some or all of the physics connecting the pressing of the button with the actual event surely understands the whole menagerie better than the average person.
This is why a chatbot - at least, a basic chatbot - cannot be said to have a mind - it literally has no understanding. It repeats or even generates symbols, but does not CONNECT words to concepts to any degree.
Animals would then have minds - they can connect concepts, although not as abstractly as we can. And some humans have better minds than others, more capable of abstract and multifaceted connections.
I’ve studied a lot of math, and I’ve noticed that some mathematical concepts I understand better and better as I learn more and more. Complex numbers is a great example - you learn what they are in early high school, but the more math you take, the more about them you learn. You can understand them in terms of solving equations, in terms of extending the real numbers, in terms of finding “optimal fields”, and a BUNCH of other things!
Stuff like that definitely suggests that there are “levels” of understanding, and that understanding comes from the interconnectedness of concepts.
Thoughts?
However, this really doesn’t satisfy the “where to draw the line” problem. Between a crappy chatbot and an advanced chatbot it might be helpful, but where do we draw the line between the book (almost definitely not a mind) and the android (probably a mind)? It seems like there’s a missing factor. Maybe the ability to adapt? The book can’t change itself, but the android can.
What an awesome question! It feels like we’re getting closer.
I don’t think that the line starts in the chatbot category. Chatbots have no understanding of what they are saying. We do have an understanding of what we’re saying (hopefully, at least). Maybe the line of AI starts at self-awareness.
Thoughts?
Ive been following this forum for a while and I couldnt help but join in… now, this being but a mere thought, we’ve been approaching AI from a purely mechanical perspective. Who is to say that cloning is not AI, an unnatural man made process that was not meant to be, ultimately creates a thinking being. Yet again, just a thought…oh look its Shane…
A clone of a human being is a human being. It’s a human mind. I wouldn’t consider a clone human AI any more than a child born of parents that practiced birth control and planned pregnancy. Would this child born of birth control parents be “unnatural” and “not meant to be” because they planned it!? I cringe when people begin to speak of “playing God”.
I agree. I’ll think more about strong and weak AI and “understanding” and “consciouness” more today and post tonight.
I agree. Weak AI. I’ll post later.
Maybe the line of AI starts at self-awareness.
I think it is one of the lines that separates weak AI and strong AI.
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Self Awareness.
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Ability to adapt.
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Acting originally.
Thoughts? Any others?
I am here.
I am no longer a “philosophy board” hound. I like to take my time with things. I have no need for instant gratification here.
Let me just say that I’ve just put up a website at http://geocities.com/ai_project_1/ for more information on the program that I’ve written, and for information on the next version of it. From there, is a link to a message board so we can talk about more technical issues, such as getting the program running and what kinds of algorithms I’m using.
I’m not really worried about labels. You can call my program whatever you want to call it… “Artificial Intelligence” or “Snoopy” or whatever. Just don’t call it “late for dinner”.
I think the correct label would be: “an English language parsing, registering, and question-answering computer program written in perl”. To me, that qualifies as “Artificial Intelligence”. It’s just a computer program, nothing more and nothing less.
I have only one test - can it create a new joke?
If it can’t do that, then it’s either unintelligent, or thick. Of course, ‘Artificial Thickness’ doesn’t get research funding.
An unintelligent biological process somehow produces intelligent lifeforms, so we’re told. Never understood that myself.
The main reason why I created this thread was so that we could use this awesome forum ( thank you ben 
) for productive uses, rather than for the usual time-killing uses.
From my perspective, there is absolutely no reason why there should not be many examples of computer programs that are capable of parsing human logic, and are therefore, capable of something approaching what we call “intelligence”.
For whatever reason, we humans are infatuated with all of the fancy graphics that computers are capable of producing. We are not too concerned with all of the infinite logical possibilities that computers represent.
My feeling is that typical computer programmers have the skills to deal with the low level processes that computers are currently asked to handle, but do not necessarily have the skills to deal with all of the subtlety and ambiguity of human language. In other words, a genius with the rigorously simple C/C++ language is not necessarily a genius with the wonderfully complex English language.
I think it takes a more philosophical mind, as it were, to see the forest for the trees when it comes to developing a computer program that can handle the ambiguities of human-on-human communication. You see, the computer language that I’m using (perl) is really simple to learn. I have no need for help from computer scientists. I do need all the help I can get, though, from people with the intelligence to ask serious questions about what the words that we use actually mean. In other words, which statements are truly meaningful, and can therefore be parsed by a computer program, and which statements are simply uttered by humans so they can hear themselves talk.
Let me give an example of what I am talking about.
The lone statement “That boy is crazy” cannot possibly have any meaning to a computer. A computer cannot sense the boy that the speaker is referring to. What you must do is explicitly announce the existence of the boy before you can start talking about him. You would have to say, “There is a boy and he is crazy.”
All of the so-called AI programmers of which I am aware do not ask these kinds of high level questions. They lack the “philosophical muscle” to differentiate between statements that it makes sense to ask a computer to handle.
In my opinion, it is up to the philosophes of the world to come together to develop a truly revolutionary invention that will shake the foundations of what society understands a “computer” to be. Only philosophers are able to “stand outside” of their own language so they may get a handle on it. When it comes to AI programming, it does no good to simply be able to use a human language: you need to be able to rip it apart and ask just what in the hell it is.
Thanks for creating such a fun post DKane!
I don’t know if we can ever escape language… 
What do you call a blonde who has dyed her hair brown?
Artificial intelligence.
I’m going full steam ahead on version 2 of my human logic processing and querying program. Let’s forget about the “Artificial Intelligence” label for now, as it comes loaded with too much baggage.
With this version, I am concentrating on being able to parse arbitrarily long and complex statements. For example, I have just gotten it to register this gem:
My last program can’t get past the “There is a…” part.
I am also trying to make my databasing techniques much more sensible.
Finally, I was reminded of the indirect object type sentences (such as “He bought the car from the salesman” or “Mike swam from the buoy to the shore”), and my new version is now able to handle those.
One of the worst aspects of the first version is that the response output is integrated in the main body of the program, which means that it is not feasible to change what the program “says” to you. Now, I am going to keep the logic processing section totally seperate from the response output section. This way, I will be able to concentrate on the “personality” aspects of the program when the time comes for that. It is this kind of logically correct, yet spontaneously random type of response that will really knock the socks off of people when they try out this next version.
When I’m not working on my program, I spend some time thinking about what I should do with this damn thing. That’s what gives me the most grief. I know that there could be commercial interest in what I’m doing, but I can’t stand the idea of trying to cater to the whims of the “ugly American consumer”. I would be much more interested in getting some kind of research post at some university somewhere so that I can work on this thing for a living. The only problem is that I’ve been out of the educational loop for so long that I don’t know if they’d let me back in.
I mean, most of the college courses I’ve taken have been in non-technical fields. I’m not about to go back and take undergraduate level courses in some stupid subject matter when I’m pretty much inventing a cool as hell subject matter as we speak. I don’t know why, but I just have a passion and an aptitude for getting my computer to “understand” what I tell it. It’s what I do for fun.
I’ve pretty much been a loser my entire adult life. I’ve just been extremely bored with everything that “is”. Only things that “aren’t” really get me going. Currently, there are only dumb computers that I see. I’m changing that, though.
Please, will someone from MIT or Caltech get in touch with me with an offer I can’t refuse?
ai_project_1 at yahoo dot you-know-what
Screw it. I’m putting my program online. This is the completed first version. It might suck, but it’s better than anything else you’ve seen!
Here, take it: http://geocities.com/ai_project_1/AI_dir.tar.gz
Go to http://geocities.com/ai_project_1 to figure out how to get it working.
I will be continuing this thread in the Natural Sciences section, here: http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=155321
I realize that is a much better fit for the nature of my discussion. I’m not interested in philosophical discussions about “what” Artificial Intelligence is.