What it Means to be Human: Blade Runner 2049
Kilian Pötter introduces the big ideas and problems around artificial consciousness.
Again, what does this tell us about “I” given all of the ways in which doctors and scientists can poke and prod the brain and bring about all manner of reactions and behaviors basically “beyond our control”. They can even turn our minds on and off. But even in discovering the “on/off” components in the brain it doesn’t even begin to explain how autonomy itself came into existence. Let alone why.
And that damage can come from different directions…diseases, tumors, surgery, accidents, concussions. Just ask a few retired boxers or football players. What in their life now is pretty much gone forever.
And then going deeper into the brain the mystery of emotions…
Sure, we think of them as our emotions, our feelings, our psychological states. We command them. Or events beyond our control trigger them and they make sense to us. Or, instead, is that just an illusion? The replicants have memories and emotions that are planted in them by whoever created/programmed them. But who or what created biological matter that evolved into us? And is the visceral sense of commanding our own thoughts and feelings “just an illusion”?
What it Means to be Human: Blade Runner 2049
Kilian Pötter introduces the big ideas and problems around artificial consciousness.
And what does this clearly revolve around? The fact that while we come into the world hard-wired biologically to embody all manner of feelings…emotions ranging from joy to despair, from delight to rage, from love to hate…it is our actual personal experiences rooted existentially in dasein, given a particular life, that is likely to account for the bulk of our emotional reactions to the world around us. And, thus, the reason why in regard to the very same sets of circumstances we might react in very different ways. Then the objectivists among us who basically demand of others that they react as they do. The most “rational” or “natural” reaction.
With homo sapiens however the drives are flooded with memes. Something that no other animal contends with. But: your memes or my memes? Their memes or our memes? All the while the memes themselves are unfolding in a world teeming with contingency, chance and change. Something other animals react to based solely on their drives and instincts. There are no anthropologists or sociologists or psychologists or political scientists or philosophers even among other mammals.
Ah, but what of a replicant? What of artificial intelligence. What of machines programming other machines? What of emotions and drives and instincts then?
This?
So, unlike with the cyborgs/terminators who were considerably more robotic, replicants mimic human beings in having something analogous to emotions. But to what extent are these emotions their own? Or, for that matter, given determinism as some understand it, to what extent are our own emotions truly our own?
Unfortunately, K is still just a character in a work of science fiction. Like the cyborgs, the terminators or the mechas. So far in “real life” it hasn’t reached the point where we can interact with machine intelligence much beyond things like chatbots.
Thus in dealing with things like “passing away”, we have only our own intelligence and out own emotions to fall back on.
Again, the part I root – existentially – in dasein. The part others root – supernaturally? – in God and religion.
What it Means to be Human: Blade Runner 2049
Kilian Pötter introduces the big ideas and problems around artificial consciousness.
Perhaps because it prompts us to think about our own consciousness. We wonder if any future replicants will become so increasingly like us that they choose to actually to go to war with us because we are…different? But that brings into focus such things as testosterone. War is surely linked biologically to that in men. Will there ever be the AI equivalent of it?
And then the part where we can never really be sure if our own intelligence itself is to nature what replicants are to us. We program replicants like nature programmed us. We are no more truly free than they are unless “somehow” in the evolution of lifeless matter into living matter we acquired autonomy “on our own” sans God.
So, has that been settled once and for all? And happy or sad in regard to what? And what if a second chatbot is happy about what the first chatbot is sad about? Will there be the equivalent of the philosopher-king chatbot to settle once and for all how all chatbots ought to feel?
Then “theoretically” let the speculation and conjecture begin…
So, let’s invent the absolutely foolproof method to determinate it. A future technology that creates the ultimate Voight-Kampff test:
AI & Human Interaction
Miriam Gorr asks what we learn from current claims for cyberconsciousness.
And this is the fundamental distinction from my point of view. AI in the either/or world and AI in the is/ought world. How would they be any different from us in regard to value judgments? How would they manage to come any closer to providing us with a deontological assessment of conflicting goods? Okay, now they are sentient and conscious and persons. How does this allow them to resolve the moral and political conflagration that revolves around a woman’s right to choose an abortion or the state’s right to arrest her for premeditated murder if she does have one or performs one?
Of course, in regard to all other animals that, like us, experience sensations and are conscious, experience pleasure and pain, experience things that are either good or bad for them, ethics doesn’t come into play at all. They are just “robotic” in the sense that the behaviors they “choose” are derived entirely from biological imperatives…drives and instincts.
We have them too. But our brains include the ego and the superego along with the id. What of the chatbots or the future cyborgs and replicants? What of their own egos and superegos? What of the ethicists among them? And how will they come to factor God and religion into their conscious minds?
True. But there’s another factor that I focus in on: dasein. The manner in which human identity pertaining to ethics is embedded existentially in the points I raise in the OP here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=176529
AI & Human Interaction
Miriam Gorr asks what we learn from current claims for cyberconsciousness.
Here of course we are back to that crucial distinction between how precise we can be in critically examining our motivations and our lives given interactions in the either/or world and in the is/ought world. There are things that we can know for sure about sets of circumstances in regard to, say, subsisting from day to day. Or just going about the business of living…raising a family, going to school, holding down a job. There are even things that we must do or, over time, we can actually perish. But what of those who judge the things that we are convinced that we must do that they insist that no one should be permitted to do. Pertaining to things like, well, you know the things.
Fine, if it stopped there. But for some, it doesn’t. Instead, they insist on imposing their own moral laws on others as well. For their own good, say. Or for the general good…encompassed in one or another Ism.
Okay, there are some species of animals that come a very, very distant second, third, fourth and beyond to us. But to the extent they think of each other as we do of ourselves? Only in a wholly determined universe are we all to nature what AI is to us.
Owed it? And who – flesh and blood or machine – decides that? AI, justifiable cause and dasein? That could prove to be rather interesting down the road. Or perhaps someone here could pose it to one or another current chatbot and get back to us.
This is the only infraction you’ve seen in the past 24 hrs?
Nothing form yesterday, directed my way?
I’ve ben called all kinds of names, by multiple members…and iut hurt my feelings.
But you…saw nothing.
Fascinating.
I apologize, to you more than anyone, if I’ve missed worse things in the past two days. Would you prefer to be banned? Or would you prefer to just stop calling people stupid and bitchy?
AI & Human Interaction
Miriam Gorr asks what we learn from current claims for cyberconsciousness.
Here of course as with the discussions revolving around free will and determinism in actual flesh and blood human beings, most of us are at a loss. Sure, we can interact with chatbots and try to make up our own minds about their sentience, their consciousness, and the extent to which we construe them as “a person”. But beyond a “world of words” we can only fall back on those who actually create and understand the technical, scientific, experiential parameters of AI.
And this too:
Still, unlike the debate revolving around free will, the rapid advances in AI technology are such that some of us may actually be around to see how this all turns out. Sentient, conscious AI persons in your lifetime? Probably not in mine. So the lucky or unlucky few here may well live to see if machine intelligence pins down whether abortion is or is not objectively moral. I include unlucky though because what if the machine intelligence also succeeds, a la the Terminator, in rounding up us flesh and blood folks in order to live out their own Final Solution?
AI & Human Interaction
Miriam Gorr asks what we learn from current claims for cyberconsciousness.
Of course there are bodies and then there are bodies. Think the robot from Lost In Space. Or Robocop. Or the ones from The Twilight Zone episodes. The mechas in AI. The terminators. The replicants. And then interacting with a chatbot online. The more the machine intelligence looks like us and speaks like us and emotes like us and behaves like us the likelier we are to believe that it is not an artificial entity at all. On the other hand, because we are not eyeball to eyeball with a chatbot, it doesn’t have to convince us regarding all of those other cues.
As for empathy, wouldn’t that depend on the extent to which the AI chatbot/robot/cyborg shared our own thoughts and feelings? And then the part where both AI and human intelligence can only go so far when it comes to conflicting goods. The part where in regard to both, I situate my own understanding of dasein. Either “naturally” in us or programmed into AI mechanisms.
Indeed, all of the countless idiosyncrasies involved in human interaction that might be missing in the AI entity. What if that was the focus rather than intelligence itself? What if the AI was deliberately placed in different contexts to see how it makes the adjustment. Contexts that included embarrassing situations or circumstances recognized by human beings to be ironic or threats or danger.
Some of this was explored in the film Ex Machina. Caleb is aware that Ava is a machine because parts of her are transparent and clearly reveal it. But the deeper he goes into Nathan’s world the more uncertain he becomes. About himself. There’s a scene where looking into a mirror he tugs on his skin, looks deep into his own eyes, even cuts himself open to see if it’s just wiring inside.
Thus…
Which is why it was it was easy spot Gigolo Joe from A.I. as a mecha. Whereas with the replicants in Blade Runner and the Terminators in the Terminator movies they appeared no different from us. You needed sophisticated testing equipment or in the case of the terminators being able to expose them as cybernetic hybrids composed of both artificial and natural systems. But the terminators were clearly more programmed than the replicants. So who knows how many levels of sophistication might show up down the road.
AI & Human Interaction
Miriam Gorr asks what we learn from current claims for cyberconsciousness.
And then those who embrace the idea that human beings are themselves just thinking machines entirely programmed by nature and its immutable laws.
But: in a No God world how does one wrap their head around that? It is completely mind-boggling. Why? Because it encompasses grasping how on Earth matter given the Big Bang as the starting point was able to evolve over billions of years into the biological self-conscious matter that we are.
The teleological part. Why would nature do this?
With God the answer is Divine. But matter like us in a No God universe? How is one thing, why another thing altogether.
Just out of curiosity, has a chatbot ever been tested to see if it could differentiate another chatbot from a human being? Or two or more chatbots in a discussion together? How would that be different from discussions with us?
Or how about chatbots programmed to “think” of themselves as either male or female, black or white, gay of straight? Or one programmed to be a Marxist or a fascist or an anarchist…confronting another chatbot with a completely different ideological bent.
As though intellect itself was the crucial factor in differentiating us from them. That’s why it seems only when chatbots become the equivalent of humanoids or androids or cyborgs or replicants will things start to get particularly interesting.
AI & Human Interaction
Miriam Gorr asks what we learn from current claims for cyberconsciousness.
Okay, definitively, beyond any possible shadow of a doubt, let’s at least attempt to pin this down philosophically in a world of words here. Your definitions and deductions against everyone else’s. Then we take the consensus to the hard guys and gals and see if they can connect the dots that we use to the dots that they use.
Also, I’m back to imagining Turing himself exploring the “concept of intelligence” with an AI entity in regard to the actual flesh and blood parameters of homosexuality. Is it objectively rational or irrational? Is it objectively moral or immoral?
Does that compute? I may be misunderstanding his point but it sounds a lot like suggesting that in regard to the determinism/free will/compatibilism discussion and debate, we ought to leave it up to the average human instead of the scientists. Or even the philosophers.
Though in regard to intelligence we still need a context: Intelligent in regard to predicting or explaining what? Computers can calculate far faster and with a greater sophistication than we can in regard to any number of mathematical and scientific contexts. And if the programming is sophisticated enough it can “know” more facts about any number of subjects than we flesh and blood human beings. Making it’s predictions and explanations preferable to most of us. Does that then make them more intelligent than we are? In what sense?
Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning
A provocative paper from researchers at Microsoft claims A.I. technology shows the ability to understand the way people do. Critics say those scientists are kidding themselves.
In any event, I’m the first to admit that I don’t have either the education or the background to contribute to this discussion with any real degree of sophistication.
But for those that do, please get around to the part where AI chatbots and beyond, get around to exploring this:
“How ought we to behave morally/rationally in a world bursting at the seams with both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change?”
The parts I root in dasein in my signature threads and in the Benjamin Button Syndrome pertaining to identity in the is/ought world.
If I were free to speak my mind, I would simply repeat conventional thoughts…wondering why I feel so free when others complain…
If only it were so determined, what I could have said…might of said…ought to have said.
