Could a robot be conscious?

[Evil Eye]

If a robot is produced that behaves just like one of us in all respects, including thought, is it conscious or just a clever machine, asks Prof Barry C Smith, director of the Institute of Philosophy.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14886421







Do you believe it to be possible for a machine to achieve some level of conciousness?

How would you define said level?

Do you believe the people around you are concious? (Somewhat related and certainly an interesting question.)

Source: http://xkcd.com/610/

 

[DrLeftover]

There are machines now that are now, at a basic level, as self aware and able to learn to use their available means to influence their environment as say a dog or other reasonably intelligent animal, or even more so than your average Congressman.



So yes.

 

[Evil Eye]

Better get a dog to be congressman then...



Important piece to self awareness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming#Meta-Genetic_Programming

 

[DrLeftover]

Oh, you mean like this?



http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=kids-and-animals-who-fail-classic-mirror

 

[Evil Eye]

No, the ability to change oneself was what I meant.

If a program cannot function outside of its original state, who's to say if it's concious?



Though I suppose a machine should be able to pass that test... Just put in a sensor that measures the amount of reflected light.

 

[DrLeftover]

That's why I made my original statement.



To change your environment is to change oneself.



It is not enough to be 'self aware'.



Argument could be made that my wife's car is 'self aware' to a point. It will send her an email after a given set of circumstances are met stating that it is in need of service. However, it can do nothing to directly affect its situation. It must rely on others to take care of it. Which makes it as self aware as a human infant that cries when it needs something.





Question: Is the infant conscious?

 

[Evil Eye]

So congressmen would be concious if they could influence their environment?

To live is to change, inanimate, non-concious matter can change its environment by being changed by it... Change is essential, but I doubt the environment is concious.

 

[DrLeftover]

But the change wrought by inanimate matter is without purpose or direction. Yes an ice cube changes my drink by melting, but it has no choice either way. Just as the infant or the car cannot ponder the issue as to whether or not it is going to either cry or send the email. Once a given set of circumstances is reached- the ice is in an area that is above the freezing point of water, the baby is hungry, or the car has so many miles on it, they react in the only way they can. The results of their action is not considered. The ice melts until it is gone or put back in the freezer, the car sends emails (once a week from what I've seen) and the baby cries until they are serviced or die. There is nothing any of them can do to change the outcome in and of themselves.



So the question remains, and we've added another factor to it, is the infant, the car, or the ice, conscious?





Now to your other point. I would disagree by pointing out that the Environment on the scale of the Absolute, as in the Universe as a whole, may in fact BE both conscious, and consciousness, itself.



But then we would be bordering on a religious discussion and Miss Jazzy would send us both to bed without supper.

 

[Evil Eye]

I would not normally consider ice as a concious entity, the important question is obviously: Why not?.

Anything we can reduce to a single simple story, anything we can explain, is not magic. But is that the right way to reason? Is something any less miraculous simply because we (think) we understand it? (A wizard in a story might understand a spell, but it would still be magic.)

I don't really know how this computer works, but I would never consider it as being magical. Same with conciousness: I don't know how the entire universe works, meaning I don't know how ice melts (laws of physics being a man-made story to explain it within certain bounds). I think I understand, or can understand, the ice/computer so I don't consider it a concious or magical thing. It works because it was made to work.

My reasoning is flawed.

I can never prove anyone is concious, anyone but me. I cannot observe your thoughts, your assessments of the world around you as viewed by me.

If I define conciousness in others, I have to take language out of the equation. I have to take any sort of communication out, or risk having non-sentient disabled people. Self preservation is important, as is the desire to multiply. Yet there are people who wish to do neither.

The task seems doomed to fail :/





As for the universe being concious: It could be, up till a point. Once the universe starts expanding at more than c communication across the whole will cease, it will die. Even before that, as distances get bigger, the speed of thought is reduced every moment.

 

[DrLeftover]

Don't feel bad, one time I brought a professor of philosophy to a sputtering silence with the argument that Fire is Alive in that it does everything on his list of attributes of Life.



What is Life then? I don't know, I can only say for certain what it is NOT. And in support of that fact I'll cite those biologists who are debating whether or not prions and retro-viruses are alive.



Consciousness is one of those properties that cannot be tested for, or even well defined as we have already explored.



Is it intelligence? Self awareness? Ability to take meaningful action or to consider the consequences of said action, or inaction for that matter? A concept of death?



You can put anything you want through the Turing Test and decide whether or not it passed, only to discover that instead of the intelligence of the machine it was a test of the ability of the programers. Would the chess computer 'big blue' pass a Turing test? Probably. But would it answer the basic question of intelligence or just mark the sophistication of the processors and the programing.



As I pointed out, at a basic level, my wife's car is as self aware and able to take as meaningful of action based on the available input (or lack thereof) as an infant, but at some point the infant will become conscious and able to hold a job and pay taxes, the car will remain as it is.



As for a concept of death, Elephants and great apes in the wild exhibit that trait. The famous gorilla Koko understood it and was able to mourn the death of her kitten. Was she conscious and intelligent? If so, then how was she different than her keepers other than having a bit of an overbite and a lot more hair?



So now I'll ask the next question. Are WE qualified to define consciousness and to decide whether or not a given object, be it a gorilla or a computer, possess it? Or do we wait for a device to 'look' at us and declare I am that I am?

 

[Evil Eye]

What was on that list?

One might argue that fire has a metabolism of sorts and can grow, but it can't reproduce (growing and getting separated does not sound like reproduction to me, at least bacteria do it on purpose) nor can it change its own make up/undergo changes it can pass on.



Next thing you know enzymes are a symbiotic life form. (Why not?)



If it's intelligence, what's intelligence? Self awareness cannot be tested, meaningful action is an opinion. Thinking about it would make sense, but cannot be tested. Same with the concept of death, given that death is the end of life and life is debatable.



We would all applaud the programmers for a job (very) well done, having a meaningful conversation with whatever passed the test would probably not even come to mind.

I suppose dreams are important, the machine must be able to envision a future for itself and be able to reason a way to that goal. Without that it might as well be a common calculator.



No one would build a car that could hold down a job and pay taxes, the car doesn't change. Not in its programming - its mind - anyway.



The key difference between the ape and the keepers is the side of the fence. The ability to enslave the other. Humans suffer from Stockholm syndrome, who's to say apes don't do the same?



Anything that can convey I am to us without it knowing how it works is automatically concious. Beyond that... Are we even concious?

Who can tell if they really could have done something else. Given some options do we always choose the same one?

Quantum theory tells us there's chaos, randomness to the universe. But we invented the theory and there's no way of saying whether or not it's absolutely true...

 

[DrLeftover]

One point at a time.



It was... damn... 81? and the professor had written a handful of points on the board. Yes, at the time, it was a CHALK board.



I do remember it had consumption, reproduction or growth, adaptation and a few other requirements on it. In any case, fire answered to all of his points, and he was ill prepared to defend his position that both he and his cat and the potted flower in his office, as his examples, were alive, and that my suggestion of fire was not.



As to the rest of your points, you've given me something to think about.



But I could maintain another point of Dr. Prescott Johnson's presentation that I am the only one alive, and that there is no-one in the universe except ME and my personal concept of God, who is the explanation for my own existence. But I personally find that point of view empty and unsatisfying.



Nevertheless we are all prisoners inside our own heads and we are tasked with assigning meaning to everything that we come into contact with.



Which brings us to your point of growth as the machine decides what it's own fate will be and how to achieve whatever goal it sees as its purpose for being.



It could very well be that sending us the I Am message IS it's goal and that it is well on its way to doing just that.





As for the Quantum principal of Chaos.... Yeah. It would seem rather circular, no? Order begets chaos, which is then organized, which leads to disorder... etc.

 

[Evil Eye]

Being the only living being in the universe would be somewhat unsatisfying, though admittedly, it's the same for every single-player game. It works, it sells. It would be fairly creepy in RL, but you can't prove anything either way.



Sending the message the goal? Personally I would go with being accepted into society and view sending the message as a means to that end. (I'd also first try to make sure they won't just disassemble me...)



There has to be some sort of order, though, without order chaos could not exist either. You would have chaos till it all, by some chaotic quirk, turns into absolute order. Stasis. If particles at some level behave in a chaotic way, there's order to that. You could say it's normal for them to be chaotic, you can anticipate their chaos. They would be chaotic in an orderly fashion.

Maybe there is no chaos and there's simply something we're missing (actually, us missing something is pretty much a given).

Yes, at the time, it was a CHALK board.

Oh dear, were some of my teachers unhappy about switching to smart boards