Artificial Intelligence:When does it stop being artificial and start being real?

Question

With increasing advances in computers there may come a time when they are so advanced we cannot differentiate between one of them and a real person in conversation.

In the film Short Circuit the 'final' test for the robot to be alive is said to be humor.

Or there is the Turing test in real life for those who know what that is.

But what would your personal criteria be for deciding that an artifical intelligence was actually alive.

Hmm, hello Mr Turing. I was under the impression that the Turing test was nothing to do with recursive functions but involved conversations between a man/tester and other contacts who might or might not be a computers via a blind link. If the tester cannot tell which of the recipients are human then the computers have passed the test.

What test were you refering to?

Answer 1

There are varying degrees of intelligence. (That is what an IQ test determines in people, though in my experience they are not that effective.) Artificial intelligence, in very limited form has been around for decades. (If you drive a car manufactured after 1990, then you use it on a regular basis, more than likely.)

As to what kind of test that would be necessary to determine if a computer has achieved intelligence, that depends on what your own criteria are, and believe me, the criteria vary GREATLY on who is running the show.

Can a computer have emotions? Why not? Emotions are an internal, rather than external, feedback system. The affects of the emotion on the behavior can vary depending on the programming. Generally speaking, however, such a system would likely be limited in its efficiency, as someone already pointed out above.

So a practical artificially intelligent computer would probably one without the emotional element. It would follow, then, that such a system could not effectively mimic a person in conversation, at least not for any longer period of time.

As far as computers being alive, that is a much more gray of an area. How do you kill a mind that can be copied, perfectly because of its digital nature? Does turning it off kill it? Not hardly. With non-volitile memory systems as reliable as they are today, all you need to do is turn it back on and it should be able to pick up where it left off.

So for artificial minds terms need to have different meanings than those terms have for biological minds.

Answer 2

An artifice is just a product of creation -- any theist should ackowledge that God made us, and we too are thus artificial.

An artificial mind is no less real.

It is a challenge to imagine a machine that could have consciousness, because, for one, they are not biological entities that seek nutrition, satisfaction, to minimize pain, etc. To create a machine with the capacity to desire will require nothing short of the complexity inherent in a human brain, in each neuron, dendrite, cell and chemical compound.

Searle rigged his argument to show it was a conceptual impossibility that a computer could think. But the simplicity of the translation operations involved in the Chinese room belie the complex actuality that answering virtually any natural language question would require so many parameters, the human subject inside the Chinese room would die before he performed even one. There is no conceiveable way Searle can respond to the homunculus fallacy, which defers consciousness to agency inside the apparatus, because there is no way a human could internalize all the computational 'rules' to satisfy a Turing test question.

If a machine could satisfy a group of experts' questions, we should acknowledge that being as conscious. Judging behavior is our best indication -- we don't know for certain, to be sure, that even anyone other than our immediate self has a mind-- it would be ludicrous to withold attribution of consciousness to beings solely because we cannot prove it has what we presently cannot define.

I wonder if the possibility that a being as complex as a human being in every respect could nonetheless have ZERO phenomenal experience, whether this 'unknown' should have any effect. What is so great about consciousness if it is unnecessary to propitious behavior?

Short of deliberating with us in English, a machine that showed ability to learn in and cope with their environment, to satisfy desires and avoid pain, that expresses will and immediacy, would be enough to convince me it had a higher-order phenomenal capacity supervening on the computational structure. Short of a sophistcated android, a mechanical animal functionally realized in agility, adaptation, vision, and reaction should pass the test before we even hear the words "I think, I am" pass the lips of an artificial being with intentionality.

Answer 3

The Turing test is a bit of a hoax.

The problem is that computers can only solve recursive functions.

All you have to do to make a computer fail the "Turing test" is to give it a non-recursive function to solve.

So, there will always be a way to determine if the "intelligence" is artificial, if it is computer based.

Answer 4

I think you are confusing the word 'alive' for 'conscious'. The answer is never. The premise is based on a complex twisted wish that inanimate mechanics could have emotions. There is no theory of efficiency that requires a computer to have emotions that would increase its utility value. Certainly the machines could be programmed to simulate emotions to successfully deceive people, but there is no positive ethical value for that. I am reasonably certain that there are programs which are able to learn beyond their genesis functional set.

Answer 5

I think thats when its not created! lol Seriously... I tink it stops being artificial... when....it can create itself? I look at it this way.. Arificial...Intelegence. Artificial means not real right? so for something to be real it has to be an original! I also thought that humans make plastic... and plastic is real and originals, but plastic can't make itself, someone had to make it! Do u get what I'm trying to say?

Answer 6

It will start being real intelligence when the machines can themselves start assembling human bodies (from stem cells & like) & program us with artificial intelligence so that we can function in their world.

Answer 7

when it is aware of its being in a way that has the ability to be self-centered. that is why i think that befor we invent teck that has that ability we should find a way to install morals as well. btw if humor is the standard were screwed cuz the computers are vary comical. have you ever noticed that they chose the day befor a due termpaper to break?

Answer 8

When its not made by organic beings, but made and sustained by itself ( I assume).

Editing:

I read a Crighton novel a couple years back with nanobots that were self sustaining and looking at the horrors they did and how they thought and such, they sure seemed alive to me.

Answer 9

Artificial intelligence cannot become alive.At any stage it is mathematical and not logical. It will always work on permutations and combinations and not based on feelings.Machines cannot have feeling.

Answer 10

Look for logistical line here...God cannot create anything else but Himself in different form..would you be agree with it? Now all spices on earth procreate themselves. Right? Human as only conscious spices also procreate humans, but there is more than body. Human is a consciousness. As long humanity exist human attempted procreate itself in form of consciousness...there is idols which in a minds of people was alive entities. When science start to be developing, mid centuries,alchemists was attempting to create in retort creature called "homunculus" , mystical entity conscious of itself .As His Image and likeness we cannot create anything but ourselves.and we do. Now another attempt to create artificial intelligence, or image and likeness of ourselves in form of biological computer. For now experiments with that lined up to create forms which is not conscious of it selves and can function when human consciousness near by. For example pc will not work if there is no one around, at least it needs to be turned on...We desperately trying to replicate something which no science really knows, Consciousness.....and one day we will succeed...nightmare...We going to put in there that which we think we know.and as more we know we know that we do not know...All of it going to be within a creation called artificial intelligence...We are all know imperfection of human which leads to wars, destructions,separations calamities, evil if you will....For perfection stands for Peace, Love, Goodness,Unity....we do not know that states of existence Knowledge without experience is not valid....Now we procreate ourselves in different forms...Thanks God it is not going to be soon..with a little hope that we will become perfect first.