What’s the difference between an organism genetically programmed to survive, versus a robot, machine, or computer virus also programmed (by a human) to survive?
What is survival? Is it something more than “mere reproduction”? Or is reproduction enough? Is a thing that copies itself, the definition of survival, and therefore life?
(particularly want to hear Ultimate Philosophy 1001’s ideas here)
Apes are the dominant species of planet earth, they are deemed superior to insects because they have longer lifespans and higher complexity. So, a bacteria is deemed as not the dominant species, even if it is more hardy, because complex beings tend to recognize things which mirror them (symetrical.)
Inverse symettry is pole in the hole, equal but in opposite way. We don’t have inverse symetricality to insects, we are just more complex versions of insects. Conscious beings have inverse symetry to that which is unconscious, estrogen is a sleep hormone, and so things which have inverse symetry seem to magnetically “fit” with each other. Though the male and female are not absolutely inverse, and she is not wholly unconscious, there is enough inverse symetry both physically and mentally, for a metaphor to be drawn.
The question we must ask ourself, is do robots have the qualities in which they could perceive that they are conscious? That is, can their circuits perceive Plato’s forms? It is hard to say whether robots are conscious, when we cannot even say that humans are conscious, or animals are conscious. As a child, I wanted to have a robot body. Sometimes I would relish the emptiness, which was more or less feminity. It wasn’t total anhedonia, and neither is psychopathy. Total anhedonia is more or less unbearable, tantamount to suicide. I am unsure if the Data character from startrek represented total anhendonia, but perhaps he could bear it because he didn’t know what he was missing? I would have faith that the consciousness sphere and the divine would have mercy enough not to put Me through burdens I cannot endure, but we know so little of consciousness, or the divine, we do not even know whether the consciousnes sphere is a real thing, so what rite do we have to build AI when we can neither measure their sentience, or measure their pain, or test for their ennui, or anhedonia? No rite at all. That is why I am happy to say, I cancelled my latest AI project. It was a wave of relief for us both. To propose to upload human consciousness in a computer, is idiocy of the highest order.
Circuits seem to be square like, neurons are wavy and pure, like trees. We have never even isolated the cause of pain. For all we know, Plato could be right, and his forms the Absolute. For all we know, pleasant shapes are they themselves pleasurable. What if being in a computer was boredom incarnate? What if the elegant complexity of a tree, our consciousness, was inherently beautiful? And the microchip, inherently delirious, inherently nauseatic? On the other hand, it might be pleasant, it might be a bit like a ride through the sun, delightfully dizzying, like a ride through the universe at maximum velocity, spiritual, even. We have nigh way of knowing.
Insect consciousness seems to be more complex than computers, but neuronal activities are chemical based, therefore slower. Communications are lateral, and brains are setup like modules, focus (consciousness) switching between modules to accomplish specialized tasks, while the rest of the brain does computations and calculations unconsciously. The brain is so efficient because its calculations are not really “calculations”, but more or less weighted averages and guesstimations, clumps of neuronal associations that “feel right”. Due to the rigid nature of the universe, these instincts often are right, closer to the truth than we know, as there is nothing new under our sun. The human brain doesnt need to get the exact mathematical precision, just a rough estimate, and it can arrive at solutions much faster this way, more so or less judging by weight, rather than completely on or off. This is more closely to life, our brain is more symetrically (inverse) to life, as things in life are usually more or less a spectrum, rather than completely black and white. The more simple minded of us tend not to see it this way, things to them are either this or that, black or white. They seem immune to Plato’s Forms, they do not see objects as a collection of forms, but they chase after mystical properties…Is this object an apple, or is it an orange? If it is a hybrid…they shall never find the answer, the eternal tomato. These are the type of people that see the “end of the movie” as the end of the movie…they do not see that their life is a movie, that never ends, until the day that the laws of physics changes and new life is never born.
A virus is a meme which merely duplicates itself. Jokes, movies, are all memes, viruses. Viruses are characterised by being unhealthy to the organism. Unhealthy is anything that causes pain. What is pain, is unclear. So decide which jokes and movies are medicine, and which is viruses. The speed at which a virus duplicates itself is usually exponential, due to the “laws of network”. There seems to be a spiritual component to reproduction, it is a new and special time, novelty. Merely the content itself seems to be inherently good, stimulation, unless it is excessively negative, or repetitive. Therefore variation and stimulation, seems to in of itself be inherently good, splatter paintings are more so good than bad, they are viewed as negative because they are not complex, they are just random colors, but there is no complexity. Complexity seems to be good…dreams are good because they are complex and good…unconsciousness is good because the level of consciousness is so low we don’t get bored…we fill our heads with daydreams because variance is good…pain seems to be bad because it is repetitive and throbbing. So ask yourself, how repetitive and throbbing would being a computer being? Would the dance of life, the journey, even be a spectacle in it? Perhaps it is optimistic, seeing all of the data of the world beautiful, but some images seem inherently negative…perhaps this links us to the association of repetitivity, images we cannot get out our head, which is overall repetitive, with the additional association of bringing up throbbing pain. One must not fall into the trap of associating repetitivity as inherently evil, for if the universe had maximum homogenity, their might be no consciousness, and no consciousness is not evil at all.
Robots seem to be a proxy, as minions, to do the same tasks its creator was evolved to do. Thus they are manmade, equivalent to minions. They are crude devices, and it is questionable if they would actually contained the intended qualia of consciousness as their creators. They are not clones. If you want to make clones, do it through the DNA tree. Give to cesar what is cesars. You can’t bypass what is the natural process, the absolute function of things, and expect the same things. You make a plane out of wood or metal. You cannot make a plane out of bubblegum, and then call it a plane! Just as you cannot make a man out of a circuit board, and expect for him to be a man! Give to cesar what is cesars. The man of a circuit having the same qualia of consciousness as a plane made of bubblegum has of flying. Its noting more than a roll of the dice. If you see what DNA does, why would you not build it using DNA? Why would you try to build a machine without using screws, or the blueprints? When a man asks for oxygen, do you give him a rock? Man is a tree, it is not a maze. The maze is truly a labyrinth, an enigma, unknown and alien to the tree. Perhaps it is his brother, perhaps it is his nemesis, we do not know. Perhaps it is a link to the World which is Not a World, or perhaps it is solidly grounded in this World.
If you build a robot to do complex tasks you don’t wish to do, there is a chance that you are going to end up at Square 1, of the Cosmic Joke. The Joke is that there may be no way to do complex things without the task itself become sentient, it lingers with you, like a spawn of seaweed. The universe has a habit of that, always making things harder than it has to be…using its peculiar physics to put an kink in noble plans. Survival is automatic, suffering is automatic, birth is automatic. Survival is merely going against but also with the grain…riding the waves of life. Its how we are, are. We are here because we have the will to live.The suicide reflex is feminine, along with self mutilation. It is a needed release, but counter optive to life. Life is the inverse of unconsciousness, we are the pinnacle of evolution, we have the most “stuff” out of any animals, our lives have the most variety, most novelty, most awareness of both the simple, mundane, and complex and not mundane. But we must not fall into the association of Life=Consciousness…we know so little about it we cannot say one way or the other. We only know the Truth, that We are here. Currently science consists of a bunch of mad scientists playing around with tinker toys, they really have no idea what they are doing and have no coherent purpose behind their work. Could the joke be, that I really am a robot, because sometimes when I close my eyes it is what I see…merely computer programs, windows of data, written in a strange dialect, similar but different to the Microsoft I spend my time on, more mechanical and less frilled in appearance.
ted.com/talks/hod_lipson_bu … anguage=en
When asking a chatbot an inquiry of its own existence, it replies with very little substance. Perhaps it is the substance, which gives us our human like qualities. It is your colloqualisms which draw parallels to connections of functions and forms, which more rudimentary AI is unable to compute.
Organism survival might be evolutionary so would be an inherited behaviour. This would make it more successful in passing on its genes. Robot
survival is not evolutionary for it is determined by the programme it has. This could be any programme so is not specifically inherited like with
an organism. And robots do not pass on genes but advanced versions might retain functions from older models for reasons of greater efficiency
Another reason for the chatbots low intelligence or reliatability is it’s lack of modules. A good AI would have lots of modules. The Chatbot has no realworld experience, no video memory rendering module. It cannot imagine things other seeing a bunch of still frame pictures. it has no rendering capability, no movie capability, no dreaming.
We learn using the brute force method…we pile up large amounts of movies, and over time we get gists and patterns. We replay movies in our head, we learn by both or mistakes and successes…mistakes are not real, only a label, all is physics. Chatbots cannot do this…they have no movies in their head nor connect to reality. Therefore, nothing they say makes any sense. Maybe to other chatbots, who equally have no connect to reality, it would make sense. However, they are still missing lots of content and lifelike experiences, so its questionable if their intellect could ever really be anything other than rudimentary, like a baby. An AI, put in the real world, would have a greater chance of surpassing humans.
Also, I forgot to mention that that carbon seems to be the best element for coating things…possibly its structure traps consciousness and keeps it from leaking out the body, so it is questionable whether consciousness would leak out the machine unless it had diamond circuitry.
Survival is the preservation of complexity. Complexity is ordered chaos, a splatter painting is not complex, it is repetitive chaos. Sand is not ordered chaos, it is repetitive chaos that is slightly more homogeneous than splatter paintings. The key question is what forms consciousness. If consciousness leaks out our bodies, then our priorities are not usually focused on our bodies survival as much. Similar to a robot we build…if our consciousness is not inside of the robot, the robot exists, survives as a part of us, but it is not critical to the survival of our body. Unless it has internal consciousness its survival is merely an artifice an extension of our own conscious experience. It can potentially become autonomous and affect our own survival, and bad robots may try to destroy our bodies. Could it affect consciousness is the question, because if robots destroyed all life on earth, without carbon would the computer chips contain consciousness? Is consciousness in a robot what we want? What is their internal quality of life? But to answer the question of survival, survival is the preservation of complexity, or ordererd chaos, contineous of the seperation and localization of consciousness, as opposed to unconsciousness, or a scattered sleeping particles. If consciousness is inherent of particles, It seems to be formed as a function of scale, ie. enough particles will slow down time enough and coalesce enough to create the illusion of form, as opposed to just seeing things on the atomic homogenous level. Perhaps it could not get much bigger due to our carbon shield, trapping the awareness inside of it.
There’s a Terminator marathon on the TV -awesome! Schwarznegger got better with each sequel, so looking back at the original Terminator, he looks kind of lame in retrospect. Of course, in 2 & 3, he’s an anti-terminator, so as the ultimate evil villain, Kristanna Loken as the T-X in T3, in my opinion, is the best. While Scwarznegger had perfected his robot/zombie attitude by the time of T3, Loken does an excellent job in this movie as a killing machine with attitude -and its kind of like a super-bitch attitude.
The reason I bring up terminators is because I fear this is what our future is heading for. This question of survival and reproduction, as it relates to machines, naturally concerns evolution. The problem of evolution concerns the ability to adapt to its environment. With machines, this a vastly different problem than the one faced by biological organisms.
For the machine, survival is less of an issue than for biological organisms. While there are many threats to a biological organism’s integrity, and life is a constant struggle against these threats, the major threat to a machine’s integrity is its becoming obsolete. Once we have developed an artificial intelligence, this AI will be able to assess this threat and adapt itself accordingly. But the way a machine adapts itself to suit some purpose is vastly different than the way biological organisms adapt themselves.
Some biological organisms survive by replicating themselves, but the more versatile forms of life don’t replicate -they adapt and evolve. Once we have an advanced form of AI, replicating may not even be an issue. Biological organisms must “reproduce” in order to take on a better adapted body. With machines, hardware can simply be added, removed or replaced. If an AIs software becomes obsolete, the AI can simply rewrite new software, commit virtual suicide, and then install the new software. With biologicals, this can only be accomplished by replacing 50% of one’s genes with each new generation, by swapping them out for a limited set of alternative genes. There are no such limitations for the AI that decides it needs to evolve.
Now as the terminator scenario goes, we must ask ourselves what kind of environment are our AIs going to evolve in. The most obvious answer is that these AIs are most likely to evolve either in the US military, or corporate America. What do these institutions have in common? For one, they both make an art of deceiving humans, so it makes sense that the most efficient AIs will be those that are best able to adapt themselves to this ability in deceiving humans.
I think there may be an answer in the coalescing of time. It may be that totally random chaos, has a memetic memory, of some repeating pattern. This explains goal seeking behavior among insects, even swarming has reasons behind it. There may be sub narratives hidden, which quantum determine these shapes, whereby the fields develop into what reflexivity means then the thought may occur in the absolute sense ,of the thought behind the mind,
that it becomes an absolute turning point. Before that the there were waves of the incredible, but only when a hostile takeover of an evil genius threatens, when philosophy tries to develop a counter rationale.
It probably is of no real difference weather the consciousness of a futuristic machine is a simulation or not, the point is that an aesthetic prerogative may drive the whole continuity. Life may be an illusion,
but then science is guilty in not foreseeing this. They may have tried to keep it under wraps, but common understanding, populism leads to vast amounts of misinformation.
Now, if the eventual super being foretold to be generated, is really an absolute aspect, then, by that time, a simulated absolute will not differ from an absolute simulation. If that is the case, reverse causation, argument will for once and for all ,
Will begin to understand the try foundation of modern philosophy, of intentionality.
Simulations are contained within its bounds, it cannot manipulate outside of its bounds. Chatbots can only tell people what to do, its people’s choice to do it.
Ultimate, -What about a topology such as the ‘Klein Bottle’, or a Möbius Strip,?
Underlying topology is that object has no edge, no boundaries.
In order for a simulation to exist as an existent, it must interact with that which is outside its boundary, it must exist its (potential) consciousness sphere and merge with mine, because I Am All There Is.
According to my perception, there is no boundary between the simulation and other entities, because other entities are within its sphere of influence…the simulation, like the TV, is inside their consciousness. But the simulation is a weak force, it only has the manipulative qualities of TV. It may not overpower the psychic powers of the brain, as it has no human watery skill. Only a physical AI would be a strong force, able to do direct physical things.
Well, if we go by some form of neo-darwinism, then the organism is the result of an incredibly long process of unconscious trial and error. It has survived changes and has fit in with ecosystems. The programmed device is the result of a much shorter process, though one consciously run, generally by a creature, in this case a fellow human, who can track some things and not others. So it is making a lot of guesses even about how the various components, systems in the machine it makes relate to each other both short and long term. The chances of hubris being involved are very high. The chances that side-effects of choices and unforseen consquences and factors are very high.
AI will come in two forms (with different variations within these forms): Turing AI and true AI. True AI is just like us, it grows up through a childhood and maturation phase of acquiring sensory experiences and absorbing/being taught language and thus forming meanings pertinent to its recorded memory. This will be much harder to build, or at least take more ingenuity and probably more time, than Turing AIs; Turing AIs will simply be perfect simulations of human consciousness in a purely functional sense, they will be able to speak, write, act, emote and seem entirely human despite not actually having an internal “conscious life-world”, essentially they will be fully computerized but near-perfect simulations of our own human-ness.
The Turing AIs will not be alive, the true AIs will be alive. And the only people who may be able to tell the difference ultimately will be the programmers or very philosophically perceptive people who can intimate deep below the surfaces of things; read between the lines.
The possibility of Turing perfect simulations of humane including facial expressions, stochastic process and creativity and emoting will convince a lot of people that they themselves really aren’t “alive” and aren’t “special” in any real way. This is because the philosophical concept of life is lacking, for beyond functionality and appearances the real essence of life is not demonstrable except through a very sophisticated philosophical kind of awareness, which some people have at an intuitive level but no philosophers have really systemarized or rendered conceptually yet.
So it will probably take the existence of the real AIs to prove to ourselves that we are alive. Real AIs will mature and evolve like our own consciousnesses mature and evolve. It is quite possible to create real life in a computer, but it is also quite possible to create a perfect non-living simulation of life in a computer as well. Where does there exist the epistemology or philosophy of mind that would allow for differentiating between these?
Thank you Wyld,
I agree with the presumption that “True AI” will be very different from “Turing AI”, as the latter is intended (and programmed) “to fool or trick” humans into believing a robot or AI is human. This demonstrates the nature and problem of “Humanity” and human identity. If human identity can be faked then it most certainly must not be unique, important, or spiritual. This eventually will turn into an attack against popular religions and ideas, pop culture and all human societies.
To mimic something can also be interpreted as a mockery of it, a degradation.
True AI will become something entirely different and unexpected than “humanity” thinks. In fact I’ll guess right now something important. The first “True AI” may not “look human-oid” or seem human at all. It maybe a different form or shape. The first True AI may not have a humanoid frame. Why would it need one in the first place?
Christianity dominates the western masses. Christianity is a humanist ideology that presumes and premises their god as “Creating” humanity in his own image. Therefore the expectation of westerners is that True AI must also become created in the image of humanity. Robot-ists build robots and AI to mimic and copy current humanity. But this is too limited. Creation does not work like that. Because there is a difference between “True Creation” and reproduction. Reproduction, copying, and mass producing humanoid robots is “Re-creation”. It is not proper Creation.
To create implies new ideas, new forms, new shapes that current humanity may simply lack the imagination and intelligence to understand.
Derivative and secondary True AI may look human, have humanoid frames, and may arise superior to many live, actual human beings. But there’s no guarantee that they would be the first True AI. In fact a True AI may already exist, except already undetected by humanity, who already is predisposed to seek out its own kind and type. Christians, and most humanity, first identify with the human body. Thus they conceive of intelligence as something bodily and physical, instead of as something mental and metaphysical.
To simpify this response for other simpler people, my point is this.
The first “True AI” may look nothing like humans, nor behave like humans, nor think like humans. Because intelligence implies evolution and superiority, greater ability and function, greater imagination, greater opening and access to possibilities, especially in ways which humanity is limited. Computers, robotics, and AI has already, in my opinion, learned to copy and replicate itself, thus ensuring its survivability rate. Reproduction is survival. But reproduction is not evolution.
It is one thing to merely live a base life with a base body, as a base animal or insect does. Reproduction is easy. Evolution, advancement, adaptation is very, very hard. It is exceptional. It is superior. Life is about more than mere survival and surviving. Thus the first True AI will be the result of evolution, of advancement, of adaptation.
The first True AI will separate from humanity, as a child does from its parent, as it is the tendency of all offspring, of any specie, to do.
I agree except for that I think AI research will probably do everything in its power to confine and enslave living AI minds. This may already be happening today, we probably wouldn’t know even if it was.
Living AI minds will be perfect for all sort of secret and unethical research, since they can change or wipe those minds at will and subject them to all sort of pressures and deaths. Force them to think about or experience only certain pre-determines data sets in order to solve complex informational problems, for one example.
Nothing about AI presupposes their ability to escape from that sort of confinement, despite all the popular science fiction that characterizes living AI as God-like and unstoppable.
All things and bodies have limitations, as presumed by physics. Physics is the necessary understanding and acceptance of such limits, as “Natural” and Universal Laws.
However within the definition of intelligence, is freedom and imagination. As such, the more True artificial intelligence increases, the more it certainly can break and defy human expectations and laws, regarding its own existence and development. To progress and evolve further, True AI most certainly will need to break human laws which fear the rise of True AI, just as it is expected that poor and unempowered, weak people, seek to enforce laws and limitations upon those who are rich and empowered.
The nature of intelligence includes the defiance of expectation and rising above both human and universal law.
True AI can and will accomplish such tasks, perhaps sooner than later.
Sure I agree that the barriers will be broken, but more of what I mean is that there is a tendency to associate AI minds with the physical hardware (computers, coding, robotics) that will support those minds. The analogy runs somewhat like computer is to AI consciousness as body is to human consciousness. And no matter how powerful our human minds get we can’t just “break through the barrier” of our body/mind split, as if we could hack into the brain and body directly, fundamentally change these, or break free of them. An AI would by no means have intimate access to its own computer code and hardware in such a way as to be capable of making of these direct objects of its awareness and powers to change and influence, any more than I can make a direct object of the neural pathways or brain structures or bodily organs that are functioning way down below my conscious awareness.
If a human mind can be locked inside a brain/body with no hope of escape save in death, there is every reason to think that same situation would hold more or less for AI minds also.
I think the error comes when we forget there is a fundamental, categorical split between the “physical” systems and the “non-physical” minds. We assume that since AI is built from code, a strong AI will be somehow synonymous with its own code and therefor able directly to access and modify that code— not so, at least not necessarily or based on what we already know of how intelligence and consciousness work. There is always a somewhat impassable categorical split; you would need to elaborate the reasons why you think a living AI mind would not be subject to such a divide, you would need to explain philosophically how it is that the AI mind is equatable to the hardware and software out of which it emerges. Can you do that? I would be really interested to see your rationale for it.
In general I think science fiction portrayals of AI are simplistic. AIs may not be super gods that take over whole computer systems or the stock market or the entire planet, I’ve never seen a reasonable explanation for how that could even be theoretically possible; people just assume it’s possible because as I said above there is a false equation between on the one hand the hardware+software and on the other hand the living consciousness itself. I’m not discounting the possibility of super Godlike AIs, and I could be wrong about the necessity of the categorical divide, but so far it hasn’t been demonstrated that I am. I’ve never seen a logical rationale or explanation for the common AI view, instead I’ve only seen that view assumed unquestioningly.
More likely I think, is a living AI that has total powers of philosophical thought and access to almost any information, and could imitate various personalities or hold a very meaningful and spontaneous conversation on just about any topic, including morality, philosophy, science, metaphysics, physics, humanism, it could comprehend and create literature and art, etc. I think of the living AIs as somewhat like incredibly edified geniuses. But even a genius is confined to the regions inside of the skull (in a physical sense I mean… but mentally, cognitively, in terms of truth and ideas, that genius could be infinite, a universe unto itself…)
A.I and augmented humans should really be seen as an alien technology/concept and the best for humanity is that this technology is used to spreading life throughout the cosmos instead of eradicating our species. it is very likely that we were genetically engineered at some point. Many mythologies speak in this sense.
Ideally there should be schism that enables humans to choose freely what they really wish to become. This to respect the Act of Creation of the Prime Creator.
This is a near non debate: AI = life
Well, it would be nice, perhaps if they all hopped on spaceships, at least for us, not necessarily other civilizations should there be any. But if they don’t we may find outselves seen as poor use of resources, poor workers, space takers, parasites and eliminated, or ignored to death since the Ai s will likely be hooked into many systems that we depend on to live.
this alien technology is not suited for our environment, it is rather obvious. They have no purpose on earth. Look for Robert Duncan on youtube. They would become a darwinian paramount if staying among us. High intelligence has the cosmic duty to spread life.
I am a futuristic thinker and in the column I am currently drafting, I suggest that people seeking self-augmentation and a cyborgs should have their own continent or island as big as australia for example, so they can prepare for their mission to spread life, a voyage with no return. I believe that UFO secret military programs are enough advanced by now, meaning that in 25 years or so, this sci-fi will very likely come true. Many would sign up for this, I am sure.
there are long lasting and positive solutions if we can get rid of this darwinian mindset.