andrew@nsc.nsc.com (andrew) (04/02/89)
The distinction made between synthetic consciousness (or lack of) and organic
consciousness seems to be far greater than that between different organisms,
if I sense the recent CR-related postings correctly. It's a fact that people
in general are more liberal with their attribution of consciousness as they
take an increasingly holistic or religious or numenous or drug-induced or
allegorical view of their world. For many people, this may extend right down
to organisms as evolutionarily primitive as trees and plants. I don't think
it's helpful to dismiss this "superstition" as irrelevant, since it does
permeate a significant proportion of the world's current population. It's
useful to note because it reflects our ancient ingrained cultural biasses,
and shows that a hard fight is necessary to get an "artificial consciousness"
concept accepted. In some old way, "consciousness" and "nature/natural" are
intertwined concepts for most human beings.
I disagree with Sicherman's "computers have only one reality". Today's maybe,
but a perfect soldier could be similarly described.
Perhaps the way to go in creating "true AI" is to grow it.
I suggest the path to take is to create an ensemble of highly adaptive,
minimally-hardwired automatons with a high degree of interactivity in
a continuously challenging (but not too novel) environment. Only with
the emergence of machine culture will the sought-after properties
emerge in an unsupervised and spontaneous way. Multicellular Automata.
Then you can figure out what "consciousness" is by taking apart the watch!
Problem solved.
Since it's April 1st, I can't resist a tentative definition of human
consciousness:
That instinctive feeling of immediate revulsion of, and desire to distance
one's views from Gilbert Cockton, having just been informed It is an
automaton.
=====
Andrew Palfreyman USENET: ...{this biomass}!nsc!logic!andrew
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