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from the who-is-the-father?-test-the-oil dept.
In contemporary science fiction, we often see robots passing themselves off as humans. According to a [University of Stavanger] researcher, the genre problematises what it takes to be accepted as a human being and provides a useful contribution to the debate about who should have the right to reproduce.
Science fiction culture has prospered and gone from being for nerds only in the 1970s and 1980s to becoming part of popular culture in the last two decades. This particularly applies to the TV series genre, which has become mainstream with Battlestar Galactica (2004), Heroes (2006) and Fringe (2008).
"The genre has evolved from depicting technology as a threat, to dealing with more intimate relations between humans and machines", says Ingvil Hellstrand. In her doctoral thesis, she points out that science fiction today is often about humanoid androids that are trying to become "one of us". According to Hellstrand, this is not incidental.
What is SN take on this issue??
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 01 2015, @04:05PM
No Turing computer will ever think. The danger of AI isn't sentience, but false sentience. I wrote a program way back in 1984 that did a pretty good job of faking humanity, and it was on a 4 mHz Z-80 computer with sixteen KB of memory and no disk. With a computer like Watson, fooling people is trivial. We humans have anthropomorphism and animism going against us.
How many beads do I have to string on my abacus before it becomes sentient?
Now, if you're talking not about humaniform robots but Blade Runner replicants, that's a different matter, but it's going to be a LONG time before that happens.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @08:49PM
How many beads do I have to string on my abacus before it becomes sentient?
17, unless they are anal beds. Then you can never have enough.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday August 02 2015, @04:57AM
Hmm, where to start?
No Turing computer will ever think.
A Turing computer can theoretically simulate a physical object, including a brain. Are you claiming there is a non-physical co, and mponent?
While we do have a name for that mythical thing - a soul - there is absolutely no evidence of its existence.
The danger of AI isn't sentience, but false sentience.
If there is such a thing as false sentience, then it would probably be much easier to control or block than a true intelligence, hence less dangerous.
I wrote a program way back in 1984 that did a pretty good job of faking humanity, and it was on a 4 mHz Z-80 computer
with sixteen KB of memory and no disk.
I know quite a few people who fake sentience. They seem reasonably smart, but pretty much everything they do and say is from a script.
I don't think this is unusual, we all operate off canned scripts most of the time, just because its easier, but some of them show truly abysmal performance when forced to actually try to think.
How many beads do I have to string on my abacus before it becomes sentient?
It doesn't matter. Sentience is in the program that moves the beads, not the beads and strings.
Now, if you're talking not about humaniform robots but Blade Runner replicants, that's a different matter, but it's going to be a LONG time before that happens.
Been a long while since I saw that movie, but weren't replicants basically just genetically engineered people? Designed to be faster, stronger and more precise but with a limited lifetime.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday August 02 2015, @03:14PM
A simulation is not reality. When you simulate an atom blast in a computer, nobody has to worry about radiation. Margarine is not butter. See Chinese Room. [wikipedia.org] Soul plays no part in it; as I said, when you have a chemical computer rather than an electronic computer (particularly one with Turing architecture) then you might truly have a thinking machine.
Sentience is in the program that moves the beads
Yes, and the programmer that wrote the program that moves the beads is the sentient entity, not the beads or programs themselves.
My take on the replicants is that they weren't just genetically engineered from human tissue, but that the tissue itself was artificial, but that's beside the point.
Before we create create sentience we're going to have to understand what it is and how it works. We don't yet and are a long way off.
Your mention of people who fake sentience was covered in Theodore Sturgeon's story The Martian and the Moron. It's a story in the book I just released this morning, although I don't have the HTML posted (or written) yet, but there are e'book versions posted. [mcgrewbooks.com]
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 03 2015, @12:00AM
A simulation is not reality.
Unless reality happens to be a simulation. We may be starting at the bottom of the rabbit hole here.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday August 03 2015, @05:10AM
A simulation may not be reality. But information computed in a simulation is real information.
If someone was to scan your brain at the atomic level, and program that into an accurate molecular simulation, it would have the same responses you would.
(It would take a huge amount of computing power to do this, but that is beside the point. You said "No Turing computer will ever think.")
Would you argue that it was sentient and thinking, or that you are not?
My personal answer to the Chinese Room argument is that the man in the room does not understand chinese, but that whoever set up the room does. I think this is pretty much the same as your position on the abacus beads.
Also, thanks for the book. :)
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:14PM
Indeed, as I said, the intelligence is the programmer's. And thanks for reading!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org