i have been arguing for some time that The Entire Hard Artificial Intelligence & Conscious Argument can be unambiguously solved if you can simply reveal a clear method of providing a robot with a sense of consciousness,
So that The robot genuinely believes that it is self-aware & can state with personal authority; I Think, therefore I am.
Such a Robot would have a steady stream of Conscious Thoughts, Dream when Idyl, Be Able to Create & Imagine Projects for Itself to do, Ignore Logical Paradoxes And Disregard or Ignore Instructions given to it by its Masters.
It has long been known that each ‘Conscious’ Entity can never be sure that other beings like itself, in appearance, are also Conscious. They may seem conscious, but once The idea of Robots that can act like people becomes fully realized, It is easy to believe that all other people are mindless robots.
The Programming of such a Robot; To Replicate =Every= Human Activity, may be surprisingly simple to write. With The Added Feature of Emergent Complexity; A Very Few ‘Primary Directives’ would be allowed to Mix & Match themselves to Create more Complex Behaviours, Emotional Shortcuts, Conflict Behaviours, Nullification Loops, Simple Neurotic Confusion & Genuine Mad Scientist Genius &/or Psychotic Ravings.
It may seem ‘Unreasonable’ to An Unimaginative Person to believe that A Robot could ‘Pretend’ to do all The Things, Appearing to Perform Often Deeply Irrational, Suicidal, Murderously Stupid Ventures or Contrarily, Exhibit Creative Genius, Romantic Fantasies, Self Sacrifice or Introspective Musings; But Anyone that has a deep understanding of Emergent Complexity & has Seen Very Simple Robots, Starfish or Insects Exhibit seeming Ingenious Behaviour; May be more Acquiescent to The Idea of Robots pretending to be Humans with little or no supervision.
This Suspension of Disbelief may more easily be imagined if you consider only The humans with ‘Ordinary’ Abilities & Desires, And allow that The Stranger & more Wondrous Behaviours use another model to be considered next Thursday.
Let us then place our own Robot in a Land of Robots, where all The ‘Other’ NotPeople are Unambiguously Known to be Robots. And The only Caveat that you allow from preventing yourself from Knowing & Believing that you Yourself are ‘Merely’ An Unconscious, Purely Mechanical Appliance is your own ‘Sense’ of Self Awareness.
What if:
We consider Another Robot, Truly A Robot, A Gears & Wires Mechanoid whose every thought & Behaviour is fully accounted for within The Confines of its Schematical Designs.
And then we allow this Robot to be ‘Aware’; No more aware than it is Aware of what is going on around itself, The Awareness that it possesses of The Other Robots, The Awareness that it uses to Sense The Physical World, And Nothing More;
And it Uses that Awareness to be Aware of Itself.
This kind of Awareness may be a little different than The Kind of Awareness that A Fly Possesses, If indeed a Fly is Aware of Anything. If A Fly is Aware of Anything, & it was able to Expressively Articulate what it was Aware of; It may reveal that it Believes that The Entire Universe is An Extension of Itself, Such that There was no Me & Not Me or Inside Me & Outside Me. There was only The Experiences of The Universe, As I am Aware of them; Or— The Fly may see itself as A Pointillistic Dot with Itself & The Universe as Things That I Can See as I move through The Sea of Experiences.
The Robot’s Awareness of Itself though,
May be a little different. It is able to form an Internal Model of The Robot that it is, Along with An Environmental Model that Surrounds The Internal Model of Itself.
This Model of Itself would be Qualitatively Equivalent to The Model that it already has of The Other Robots & Their Environment, Its only difference is that it Now Extends inward to Include Itself, which it Recognizes as Separated from The Outside, by An Arbitrary Boundary of ‘Inside’.
Once it has accomplished this; The Robot begins thinking of Actions that It Takes, or may take, or why might it take those actions, What The desirability of any actions may be, What The Cost of those actions may be, What Alternative Actions it may take, & Then developing Criteria to Choose Which Potential Actions are most Cost Effective.
Is This Consciousness?
Such A Robot would be filled with a Never Ending Continuous Stream of Potential Decisions, just like The thoughts of Ordinary ‘Living’ People.
Would this Robot be Alive ?
Would it be able to Say with Authority & without Prompting;
I am Thinking; Therefore I Am.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
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