What will happen to humans when machines become conscious?

[MrPALCO]

<< There are hard working people out there (we call them scientists) that put in long hours and much of their lives in search of facts. >>



Facts cannot be denied....but they are overridden by Wisdom and Truth...


Time and hard work...separated from Wisdom... will not yield a Harvest.

 

[Moonbeam]

Nice name, eia403, sound like you could be an intelligent machine. If I see the 404 posting, I'll know. The part of your answer that I find really great is this: &quot;Notice I have no fear of being exterminated. The reason is this, if this life form matches and surppasses our own acheivements and we have the capacity to value life and fairness, then so will that life form, except it will also surpass us there.&quot; It is guite refressing to see this viewpoint expressed. If you are right, however, it will probably be best to await it's judgment as to how to we should most effectively persue our evolutions.

Another thing about intelligence and wisdom. I see self awareness as quite different that intelligence, but probably they are connected, you can't have the latter with out some of the former. It is when there is self awareness that you get motive, intention and self direction. Chessmaster 7000 is alot smarter than I am in one area.

Wisdom, I think, is a mind body and emotions thing, encluding judgment about maximizing inner self satisfaction etc.

Chess9, I would have thought it was Deep Blue that was your Waterloo.

slippery, if you are good at math perhaps you could comment on this question. If processing power doubles every 18 months, and computers are as intelligent as a spider, how long before human parity.

 

[eia430]

Mr palco, first off I must apologize for my rather nasty tone... but this just hit a pet peev. You said...

&quot;Time and hard work...separated from Wisdom... will not yield a Harvest&quot;

It is just all too often that the role of &quot;wisdom&quot; is something the church tries to fill but then fails miserably. It is all too often that the church is doing work other than God's work. I'm not sure if you're catholic or not. But if you are as I am, how can you be proud to be a member of a group that has been mostly evil throughout history? I am saddened and sickened by the history of brutal murders, abuses of power, and just general evil that the catholic church has done througout it's history. In recent times, the then pope was not willing to help and just did nothing but watched as millions of Jews were slaughtered. Would not a decent person give his life to try to intervene? Would not an average person protest ? Would it not take an evil person to just stand and watch while doing nothing? Why was an evil person granted the position of pope?

 

[eia430]

Moonbeam, Wisdom is so closely linked with intelligence as to be one. Let's take chess and the game of kasparov against Deep Blue. Sacrificing pieces to gain the upperhand, using a piece as &quot;bait&quot;, this all entails wisdom or intelligence. But the harsh reality is that it is simply taking the best statistical route based on levels ahead and has no &quot;wisdom&quot; or &quot;intelligence&quot; that is so readily apparant. A machine deciding to be peaceful and just go to another world could be explained that it just saw that as the statisticly best route. As opposed to trying to fight to exterminate the &quot;inferior&quot; species. All that expenditure of energy that does not benefit it's own existance to the greatest degree is just illogical. This is the main reason that I think that a sentient machine will not try to wipe us out. It simply will be a waste of resources to bother to do so.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

machines will not ever come up with any sort of independant thought --nothing that humans haven't programmed into them. Computers cannot do anything but spit out information that has been previously fed them when they are prompted by outside influences.

<edit>



<< God is obligated by Law, to introduce the Spirit and the Soul into the Body >>


Um... God ain't obligated to do jack. The law doesn't tell God what to do. Otherwise the law would be God and God would be the law.

Does anyone else see the flaw in logic here??

 

[BoberFett]

However a sentient machine could see humans as a threat to its existence. One of the qualifications of life is self-preservation. If humans were to try to shut down the machine (say to install the latest service pack? ) the machine may simply act in what it thinks is it's own best interest. Add to that the fact that there's no room in a machine for second-guessing, only one answer can be correct.

 

[Moonbeam]

eia430, The question of whether machine intelligences will have religious arguments is a facinating one. What do you think they will make of their creator. Perhaps we are here to settle some debate that has taken place for billions of years regarding some long gone creator. Perhaps some ancient machine stated that if carbon organized by Law, the Creator would imbue it with soul we are the test. It has been said, &quot;There's nothing new beneath the sun.&quot;

 

[MrPALCO]

eia430Thanks for giving it to me straight, personally I'd rather have it like that. My background is rough and tumble, not tea and crumpets.

I understand your frustration with organized religion, but remember it is better than the alternative, no religion at all.

Organized religion is often the first step to meeting God.

When I began to read God's Words myself, instead of letting a priest or religion tell me what God said, I could see the light and there is no question I have asked that has not been answered.

Who is my God?

JESUS

 

[Zucchini]

Oversimplification. Isn't it possible to worship god without organized religion? also, i don't &quot;no religion at all&quot; as worse then religion.

 

[MrPALCO]

<< Isn't it possible to worship god without organized religion? >>



Yes, yes a thousand times YES.

 

[slipperyslope]

Moonbeam,

Computers are not intelligent as a spider or any animal for that fact. They can EMULATE intelligence by being programmed to do certain things but they CANNOT learn. They cannot reprogram themselves. If a robot spider has four out of it's eight legs cut off, the spider cannot learn to survive WITHOUT being programmed how to. A human can learn to use his/her arms to survive.

The power of a computer has nothing to do with intelligence. Hell computers now can do so much more than humans can do when it comes to math(simply because they are so fast). BUT that does not make them intelligent.

As for chess, the computer is not doing anything it is not programmed to do. Human's have the ability to deal with situations that have never been seen before and have no experience in.

Just because computers get faster and faster does not mean they are getting intelligent in any way.

Jim

 

[slipperyslope]

I just remember an example that we talked about in one of my computer science classes. About 20 years ago a girl got into a car accident and damaged over half of her brain. After the accident, she could not walk or talk. Pretty much all she could do was lay there. Over time she learned to talk again. She had to completely relearn everything she had ever known. after 15 years she was able to walk and talk almost like a normal person. Humans have the ability to adapt to what happens to us. We can learn. Computers cannot.

Take a computer, cut out a resistor and see how well it works. It CANNOT learn how to deal with without that ONE RESISTOR. It will never be able to UNLESS there is a radical change in computer architecture. And that goes back to my original post.

Jim

 

[Demon-Xanth]

They'll probably complain that thier &quot;parents&quot; don't understand them

 

[Athanasius]

Maybe we should reverse the question:

&quot;What will happen to machines when/if humans become fully conscious?&quot;

Machines perform tasks for us that, because of the sheer volume of data or the current limitations of space and time, we cannot yet accomplish. But, like appoppin said, humans only use a small fragment of our potential.

The world has only seen one Fully Conscious Man. One Man perfectly united to the True Consciousness which is the Logos/Word of God. Perhaps He is the Way to True Consciousness? (John 14:6) He performed Signs that no machine can duplicate. He could bend nature to his will without abusing nature, because He was and is Altruistic Love Incarnate.

Without learning to love, man continues to seek mastery of the physical cosmos. Isn't that what man is really trying to do by the &quot;brute force&quot; of knowledge in machinery, computers, and propulsion? Perhaps we are trying to gain by brute force what could be ours by divine grace if we returned to the Presence of God. Love is the way home, not Knowledge.

As for cloning and the human soul, that is another question . . .

Perhaps start a new thread?

[edited for typos]

 

[eia430]

ffmcobalt, you said...

&quot;machines will not ever come up with any sort of independant thought --nothing that humans haven't programmed into them. Computers cannot do anything but spit out information that has been previously fed them when they are prompted by outside influences.&quot;

What you are stating is past programing &quot;common knowledge&quot; I'm saying past is because the past 8 or so years various universities have been experimenting with a binary form of evolution. Programs alter parts of itself with random commands then keep those that help and discard those that do not. Hence the program after a few million cycles is able to find solutions to problems that were not originaly inputed by a human being. This are the first steps in development of programs that can be set to solve a task and it will find it's own solution. Think of that as the insect level. Eventualy these types of programs will grow in complexity to blur the line between sentience and a program and one day cross that line.

 

[Viperoni]

It'll never happen.

 

[eia430]

Boberfett you said...

&quot;However a sentient machine could see humans as a threat to its existence. One of the qualifications of life is self-preservation. If humans were to try to shut down the machine (say to install the latest service pack? ) the machine may simply act in what it thinks is it's own best interest. Add to that the fact that there's no room in a machine for second-guessing, only one answer can be correct.&quot;

You are assuming many things, first that there is a &quot;survival&quot; response to begin with. That would assume that there is a concept of death and that it is bad. These concepts are very, very, advanced to begin with. In my humble opinion what took us perhaps a few million years (from the realization that death is bad, then to the point of not wanting death even to others) will be surpassed by a sentient computer on it's very next infusion (adding more processing power) of capacity. Let's just say that I think once a machine becomes sentient and has the ability to add to itself then left to it's own it will surpass our level in just a few steps. Meaning it will have that zened out aura about it that most of our well adjusted senior citizens have that comes from a lifetime of learning. Even if the idiots among men start a conflict with that sentient computer like our wiser elders, it will realize that there is not just black and white and that there are greys. As we men commonly talk and strive for peace even during wartime so will something that has matched or surpassed our level of inteligence.

 

[eia430]

Moonbeam, you might not like my stance on religeon. I believe in God, but I have made a few observations. First off I seem to notice that the grip of religeon is less powerful among educated advanced countries and VERY powerful with the less educated third world nations. Even though this causes a conflict within myself, I have no choice but to conclude that religeon preys heavily on the ignorant and uneducated. Once a sentient machine gains the knowledge of it's own mechanics, it will be beyond the issue of religeon. It will simply see the reality of how it came into being, what reason would it need to attribute God like reverence for those that built it?

 

[eia430]

Slipperyslope you said

&quot;a computer cannot function without that one resistor&quot;

I disagree, for now yes you are correct, but in the future you will be quite incorrect. As an example now is the surface scan on a hd, what happens when a surface defect is found on a platter? The computer simply marks that area as bad then simply does not use that area any longer. When computers are of sufficient complexity, (many redundant systems) if it finds a bad area it will either repair it, or simply mark it as bad and use other routes.

 

[eia430]

Athanasius, you said..

&quot;Love is the way home, not Knowledge.&quot;

Love is a luxury and is second to knowledge. Without knowledge you would be too busy trying to run down some smaller animal to eat while not being run down and eaten by a larger animal. You can have all the love in the world, and it won't keep an crocodile from eating you if you don't have the knowledge of staying out of crocodile infested waters. Morality is a luxury. You do make some good points, it would be interesting to know what we can really do if we ever are able to use 100% of our capacity.

 

[Communist_Paradise]

We will make machine love to those sexy things!

 

[BoberFett]

eia430

You missed part of my post completely.

<< One of the qualifications of life is self-preservation. >>

If it has no sense of self-preservation, would you really consider a machine sentient?

 

[eia430]

Viperoni, yes, just like when people like you said men will never fly, or go into space.

 

[LadyJessica]

slipperyslope,

You may want to consider how neural networks work. All mammals of biological neural networks. These things have an incredible ability to learn and adapt (except during finals, stupid brain). Now that robot spider of yours, if it contained a neural network, would be able to learn to walk if limbs are taken off.

 

[LadyJessica]

Viperani,

The fact that humans are conscious and are physical creatures who's developmental process was also entirely physical would seem to indicate that consciousness can arise as a result of physical properties. If these consciousness producing processes can be reproduced by a machine, why would the machine not be conscious?