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What Does it Mean to Think and Could a Machine Ever Do it?

posted by n1 on Friday January 08 2016, @08:54AM   
from the something-to-think-about dept.

AnonTechie writes:

The idea of a thinking machine is an amazing one. It would be like humans creating artificial life, only more impressive because we would be creating consciousness. Or would we ? It's tempting to think that a machine that could think would think like us. But a bit of reflection shows that's not an inevitable conclusion.

To begin with, we'd better be clear about what we mean by "think". A comparison with human thinking might be intuitive, but what about animal thinking? Does a chimpanzee think? Does a crow? Does an octopus ?

The philosopher Thomas Nagel said that there was "something that it is like" to have conscious experiences. There's something that it is like to see the colour red, or to go water skiing. We are more than just our brain states.

Could there ever be "something that it's like" to be a thinking machine? In an imagined conversation with the first intelligent machine, a human might ask "Are you conscious?", to which it might reply, "How would I know?".

http://theconversation.com/what-does-it-mean-to-think-and-could-a-machine-ever-do-it-51316

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Original Submission

• Re:Thinking(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 08 2016, @06:05PM

  by acid andy (1683) on Friday January 08 2016, @06:05PM (#286743) Homepage Journal

  I have seen some replies/responses on this subject by entities that seem to indicate a possibility that those entities don't actually experience the consciousness phenomenon, assuming they truly understand what the topic is about and are responding honestly. I'm not 100% sure whether those entities are human since they are replying on forums but seems that it's likely they are humans and not AIs.

  I know exactly what you mean! The difficult counter-intuitive bit though is to remember that we can theoretically imagine an AI (or zombie if you like) that internally runs through all the same narrative and reasoning as we do when we ponder what it is like to be conscious and claims that it is 100% sure that it is conscious, but isn't. Of course you realise this, because you admit no-one can prove it to anyone else. It's very odd though that the belief in one's own consciousness seems to be kicking off these narratives when at the same time we know that consciousness doesn't necessarily have to exist for them to happen!

  I feel so lucky because I seem to have scored a front row seat in this particular human's brain (at least for the time being). Science tells me that this human's brain would have got along just fine thinking and feeling and remembering and acting even if I wasn't there. Yet here I remain. It's all very odd. We've hit the jackpot on this planet being human too. Colour vision, opposable thumbs.

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