AI Will Never Be Sentient... Cyborgs On The Other Hand...

[lajoswinkler]

AI is a bunch of software. Cyborgs are humans with artificial body parts.

You are comparing apples and oranges.

[tomf]

When you can prove to me that you are conscious, or even define it then we can have a meaningful conversation about machine consciousness.

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, tomf said:

When you can prove to me that you are conscious, or even define it then we can have a meaningful conversation about machine consciousness.

Life as we know it is the ability to feel emotion, to feel both physical and emotional pain or joy (punch or tickle).

Because if you cannot feel anything at all... you are either sleeping or dead.

Can a machine feel? Anything?

We know animals can as they display all the obvious signs.

But a machine does not feel because it was never alive to begin with.

All life we have known in this life came from life.

We can forciblly try to evolve a lifeform, but I honestly don't see us becoming gods and creating life without using any parts of living things we now have at our disposal.

 

It makes sense to me that if you want to create a new lifeform you should start with something already living instead of something that never was alive to begin with.

Sounds unenthical I know.... but to me it is less farfected than non-living hardware becoming alive all of a sudden.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Spacescifi

[tater]

45 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Life as we know it is the ability to feel emotion, to feel both physical and emotional pain or joy (punch or tickle).

Because if you cannot feel anything at all... you are either sleeping or dead.

Can a machine feel? Anything?

We know animals can as they display all the obvious signs.

But a machine does not feel because it was never alive to begin with.

All life we have known in this life came from life.

We can forciblly try to evolve a lifeform, but I honestly don't see us becoming gods and creating life without using any parts of living things we now have at our disposal.

 

It makes sense to me that if you want to create a new lifeform you should start with something already living instead of something that never was alive to begin with.

Sounds unenthical I know.... but to me it is less farfected than non-living hardware becoming alive all of a sudden.

Define "life"

I'm not sure how "feeling" requires "life." Define feeling. Is it merely "experiencing something," or is "feeling" some reaction to qualia?

[Spacescifi]

13 minutes ago, tater said:

Define "life"

I already did.

[Lisias]

40 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

I already did.

So unicelular beings, trees, sea sponges, et all are not life? I can settle with virii not being alive (highly controversial), but protozoa definitively are.

[Spacescifi]

23 minutes ago, Lisias said:

So unicelular beings, trees, sea sponges, et all are not life? I can settle with virii not being alive (highly controversial), but protozoa definitively are.

The only type of life that matters to the most humans is human-like or above... because animals do not have human rights nor are they given them.

Thst is the type of life most often considered with scifi AI.

Not some AI only as smart as your dog... would not be that much of threat would it?

[tater]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

I already did.

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Life as we know it is the ability to feel emotion, to feel both physical and emotional pain or joy (punch or tickle).

That's not any definition of life I have ever heard.

Quote

Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction.

The "biological process" definition is circular when used in the above definition as it mentions life, so I would tend to eliminate that requirement. Also, as defined, biology—the only kind we know—is terrestrial. I'm open to other biologies being possible (on other worlds). An AI system would certainly not have to meet many of those requirements, but a system could meet all of those I think. Von Neumann replicating machines, for example.

15 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

The only type of life that matters to the most humans is human-like or above... because animals do not have human rights nor are they given them.

You're discussing something else, not life. Consciousness, sentience, and sapience. "Rights" becomes a legalistic argument, not a fundamental one, though as someone who likes the idea of "natural rights" that we all have by virtue of existence, I suppose that human level AI—if they are conscious/sentient, assuming we could actually define those—should in fact have rights.

To borrow from the space opera fantasy that is Star Wars, one of my largest issues aside from the prequels, is that the droids are clearly self-aware beings, and are yet chattel slaves. I would have made the post-trilogy all the normies (non-force people) rebelling against ALL the force people, and in concert with the enslaved droids. They could seek a human/droid society where super-beings withmagical (force) powers are not allowed to wield power over everyone else.

[farmerben]

To what extent do neurons and synapses work according to linear algebra?  

I know how to multiply matrices.  So I kind of get how an input matrix times a matrix of previous experience generates a new result.   There are probably a lot more tricks of linear algebra that AI uses.  But I don't know to what extent our brains use them.

[Pthigrivi]

18 hours ago, tater said:

Define "life"

It's definitely one of those words that does not have a fully agreed upon definition. Self-replication doesn't do it. Just because a cell or drone or mule can't replicate doesn't mean they're not alive. One might argue it's the ability to metabolize and process energy but viruses don't and engines do. As you point out you might constrain that to organic metabolism but there's no knowing what alternate chemical or non-chemical processes are possible for extraterrestrial or artificial life. I'd personally argue that viruses are alive, but it gets a little weirder with prions. 

Consciousness and sentience are also not terms with agreed upon definitions. Im of the controversial opinion that consciousness is simply a product of being. Everything that exists--trees, rocks, galaxies, exotic matter and energy and everything else--all inherently contain within them the bedrock state of experiencing 'being' where experience means 'undergoing reality', or being subject to themselves and everything else. In this way there is nothing particularly special or magic about being human or being a human brain. Rocks 'feel' the ocean rolling over them and form 'memories' in the dents and pocks and cracks as they roll over each other in the surf. The 'dents' and 'divots' in our neurons are more complex chemically but are still just the result of being subject to phenomena. To me thats what consciousness is--the self-experience of phenomena. At least thats what phenomenologists argue and I tend to agree. Its a helpful insight, because you realize while being a brain and being a body are essential to being you, you are also in a way all of the things you see and hear and interact with. That stereoscopic fisheye cone of color and surface you're seeing in front of you IS you. No one else is seeing that, and it's utterly inherent to the ongoing flux of physical interactions flowing through you. 

I'd also personally argue sentience is in some sense subject to the same rules. All things are to some degree sentient. Sentience also doesn't come in higher and lower orders, just different kinds. The feeling of a person in palliative care experiencing their organs shutting down is certainly different from an insect being squished under a shoe, but from the subjective experience of the person and the bug the sensation of pain and death are both all-encompassing (and yes this does make me feel just a little bit of remorse when I wash ants down the drain in my kitchen.)

Edited August 2, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[cubinator]

18 hours ago, farmerben said:

To what extent do neurons and synapses work according to linear algebra?  

I know how to multiply matrices.  So I kind of get how an input matrix times a matrix of previous experience generates a new result.   There are probably a lot more tricks of linear algebra that AI uses.  But I don't know to what extent our brains use them.

Brains definitely use something similar to weighted sums of signals, and there is spatial organization of signals which seems at least somewhat similar to the vector math that AI does. For instance, in the cricket nervous system first sounds are sorted by frequency (as in, there are literally a bunch of neurons in a row that each fire according to a certain frequency like a xylophone) and then the combination of frequencies (along with temporal information stored in a slightly more complex way) goes up to part of the brain where it gets physically sorted in space in a little lobe, where each important combination of sounds causes a corresponding neuron to send a signal to a different part of the brain or body - thus a sound coming from a nearby bat might create a signal in the cricket's body that stops it from singing.

Another important trick that factors into this is the presence of logic gates in the brain. You often have one neuron that needs to have two input neurons firing simultaneously in order to start its own signal - this is an AND gate, and it's very common. You can also have inhibitory signals, where an input neuron firing can cause the receiving neuron to go silent, so you can have a NOT gate, and of course OR gates are quite possible. Through these gates and the 'weighted' response of individual neurons and connections, more complicated signals can be interpreted and produce complex actions.

[kerbiloid]

Such advanced network adaptor, to provide you with virtual workspace in the remote terminal mode.

The application server is somewhere there...

Sometimes a shared channel leaks. They call it telepathy.

***

Thinking is an internal  dialog  with yourself, a kind of split personality.

Once the neocortex had grown too big for a monkey, the human has two (or more) conjoined-twins monkeys in his head, endlessly talking to each other.
Every human is a monkey pack inside.

Sometimes the monkeys start fighting and crying at each other. They call it chimpzoschizophrenia.

The speech center has evolved from the fine motorics center. Because monkeys normally don't speak, they scream and make gestures.

The human makes gestures with tongue, because talking to yourself with fingers is hard, as they are busy.

Also, that's why people like to think loudly. They are arguing to the opposite inner monkey.

***

And yes, I believe, the writing has evolved from obscene monkey gestures.

Even before the speech.

Because they don't need gestures to take or give a banana, only to show something insulting.

Edited August 3, 2023 by kerbiloid