Will machines become conscious someday?

Discussion in 'Intelligence & Machines' started by Magical Realist, Sep 19, 2012.

  1. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    So the great feeling it gives you to catch and release a fly is more important than the mindless death you caused a newborn baby and her mommy when you ran the red light? Did you flip a coin or just leave it up to the ghost in charge of your actions? Whose fault is it when you run a red light and kill an innocent baby and her mommy, yours or the ghost in charge?
     
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  3. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    We have a law for car accidents in Quebec, its called the no-fault law.
     
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  5. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    Why is that, so people that run red lights and kill mom and baby don't have to feel guilty and pay for their actions? So again you confirm that catching and releasing a fly is more important to you than killing a newborn and mom. Amazing. You can do no wrong. You've cleared the path to Heaven!!
     
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  7. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    That law has probably been voted because people here consider that accidents happen by chance, and that its better if the responsibility is attributed equally to both sides. If you have an accident, and if you are considered responsible, you cannot be sued because of this law. Fundamentally, this means that many people here consider that chance exists, and that it can be useful for society to equalize it. With god, we are always looking for a culprit, with chance, people are responsible only if they did not obey the law, not if they made a mistake or if they had a distraction.

    To get back to the subject, I still think that consciousness is due to the perception of change, and I add that if an artificial intelligence could have sensory perceptions, then it could be conscious of the changes that happen outside or inside of its brain.Why only changes? Because our automatisms are subconscious and they can take care of us subconsciously if no change happens.
     
  8. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    That's like saying a man alone with nothing but a typewriter could never do anything. History is full of examples how mere words have changed the world.
     
  9. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    To me, consciousness is a relativist phenomenon. When Galileo established that, inside a boat, he could not perceive its motion if no change occurred in the direction or the speed of the boat, he also established that he would if a change occurred. When a change occurs that forces our molecules to accelerate, it has an immediate effect on them, they resist to the change, but since the effect is immediate, its not necessarily because they have a mass that they do so, it could be the inverse, it could be because they resist to a change that they have a mass. If it was so, and I explain here of how it could be so, when we perceive a change, since we also immediately react, it could be because we resist to that change that we perceive it, thus that we get conscious of it.

    If, like us, machines had senses that could register changes, then I think that they would immediately resist to it, because like us, they would not immediately know how to adapt to it, and it would take time for them to do so. Conscience is about focusing on one changing thing at a time in order to try to adapt to it, and it is so because, anyway, we cannot look or walk in two different directions at a time.
     
  10. Anew Life isn't a question. Banned

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    to gander that conscious is a ""relativist phenomena' is wise. it is the human that creates the machine if the machine has sensor capacity, his of her realative conscious platform of discernment, in whatever practical decree intended for the machine created to operate. yet then a being whom insists that his or her createdmachine ?purpose of ? viewing is infallible related to organicmatter he or she is actually wrong, basically because of the equation; o=a

    ?
     
  11. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I already am!
     
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  12. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    31,323 messages! A machine indeed!

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    Last edited: Nov 28, 2014
  13. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    You are speaking of "awareness" not consciousness. Machines can certainly be aware - much more so than humans in well defined areas.

    One can be conscious with zero external changes, but if that condition last too long, for example in completely dark, silent, sensory depravation flotation tank body and hands immobilized , etc. they will begin to hallucinate an external reality that probably is not static. Before that happens you will be conscious of boredom, perhaps sad you agreed to to be the subject, worried that they will not remove the increasing CO2 fast enough, wonder it the water is too warm for you to transfer about 75W to it - or OMG, perhasps they will raise the water level and drown you - may want to steal your organs? etc., etc. - many conscious thoughts will be in your mind for at least 30 minutes before you beging to hear voices, think something is biting your toes, etc. etc.
     
  14. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    I've long wanted to try that but never had the chance.
     
  15. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    There is a guy posting about one he is building. I replied with some information* in part because it is in Brazil; see: http://www.sciforums.com/posts/3239998/
    As you have already quoted me, I'll add an additional observation to my post 350 here:

    The biting of your toes and all the other aspects of the hallucination you will experience are definitely conscious experiences but "false awareness." - That strongly shows that awareness not only is NOT required for consciousness as the OP suggests, but can be falsely created too, by the conscious mind.

    * See posts 15 & 17 there.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 29, 2014
  16. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    If by awareness you mean knowledge or cognizance, I agree that my computer has more than me, but this is not what I meant. I said that "consciousness was due to the perception of change, and that if an artificial intelligence could have sensory perceptions, then it could be conscious of the changes that happen outside or inside of its brain.Why only changes? Because our automatisms are subconscious and they can take care of us subconsciously if no change happens."

    With that kind of consciousness, the change can happen inside or outside of the brain. For those happening in the brain, I discussed with Motor Daddy the possibility that inside changes could occur randomly in it, changing randomly the direction or the importance of our thoughts without us having to control them. Isn't that what happens when we dream? Isn't that partly what happens also when we are turning thing over in our head to solve a problem? When we are thinking!
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2014
  17. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Again, equating consciousness with change is not useful - Change is continuous in every thing not at absolute zero.
     
  18. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    To me, the changes that we are conscious of carry simultaneously two convergent phenomenon: change and resisting to change, thus discontinuity and continuity. When we throw a ball, it changes its speed and its direction, but the ball simultaneously resists to that change. If it did not, it would not change, which means that both phenomenon are linked. Equating consciousness to change means equating subconsciousness to continuity. Again, when we throw a ball, it acquires a constant speed and a constant direction, which is similar to continuity. And when we learn something new, which serves to adapt to a change in our environment, we develop an automatism, which also resists to a change once it is launched, and which is thus also continuous.
     
  19. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Still nothing useful and some what wrong. Most of the brain's activity is parallel processing of several hundred simultaneous tasks (like changing* the pH of the stomach as you eat) a small fraction of these "unconscious tasks" can become part of your "stream of consciousness," but doing so, displace others as conscious brain is a "serial processor."

    * Note that for every "change" you are conscious of the there are several hundred you are not.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 29, 2014
  20. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    A particularity of our brain is that it can indeed process many subconscious movements at a time, but also that it can be conscious of only one at a time. To me, it means that it is useless to try to focus on two directions at a time because it is impossible to do so. Because of that physical principle, consciousness is about one thing at a time, whether it would be ideas or moves, discussions or motions. By the way, the subconscious tasks that I am talking about are the ones that we can learn, and we can learn them because we can pay attention to them while trying to learn them, which means that we learn them consciously, and one at a time. Nevertheless, once they are learned, they can be executed subconsciously and many at a time.
     
  21. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Most of sub conscious processing is not concered with movement, but other wise you are correct. Especially for complex movements like riding a bike, playing a piano, dribbling a basket ball, etc. The details of how to do those and hundreds of other motor tasks you once consciously learned are stored in the cerebellum. Consciously you just decide to do some learned motor skill and the cerebellum issues the multitude of precisely timed motor commands.

    Victims of Parkinson's disease lacks the cerebellar neurotransmitter dopamine in sufficient supply so they can no longer smoothly do those complex task; most of which require the contraction of one mussel to smoothly decrease while that of its opposing mussel contracts more. There are unusually large cells* in the cerebellum. Some of their axons extend to your big toe!

    * Perkinze cells, but that may not be spelled correctly. They are pyramidal in shape and have the largest cell bodies in the brain.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 30, 2014
  22. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    Can you describe a subconscious process that is not concerned with movement? To me, animal life differs from vegetative life in the way each one proceeds to feed itself: animal life being able to look for food by itself, and vegetative life waiting for food to pass by. So, I think that the different brains that animal life has developed only serve the purpose of moving and detecting motion, which means that the particularity of human brain would only be to postpone the moment where it will use what it has learned to move or to detect motion. When engineers plan to build a bridge, fundamentally, they are planning a way for us to move more efficiently. When astronomers study space, they are planning a way for us to navigate through it, and also a way to prevent bodies in motion to damage us. To me, what we have in mind is always about motion because existence is about motion.
     
  23. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No, strictly speaking. Every nerve discharge has thousands of Na+ ions moving thru the axon wall.
     
  24. Le Repteux Registered Senior Member

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    Exact! When we start looking for motion from a particular phenomenon that doesn't seem to be moving, we inevitably find that it is moving in the universe, and that it is composed of moving parts. Its the same for our ideas: they are composed of atoms moving in our brain, and they produce our movements in our environment.
     

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