Re: How Robots Will Steal Your Job

[George W. Cherry]

Sounds like a human discovering the purpose of a refrigerator.

I suggest you go to the animal shelter and adopt a cat.

No, no! I wouldn't trust him to take good care of it.
Some adoptions are not successes.

 

[Roedy Green]

Your problem is that you are trying to deny the possible existence of
any form of consciousness or self-awareness that is different from ours,

We already know for example that AI will have memory, logic and
arithmetic ability far exceeding our own.

There was a time when feats of mental arithmetic or logic would have
been used to prove the superiority of the human species. Quietly such
demonstrations have died away. We keep adjusting the criteria to make
sure we "win".

For a while we decided that perhaps pattern matching -- with vaguely
defined notions of similarity -- like face recognition was what made
us superior to the machines, until neural nets started beating us at
face recognition.

Ability to play master level chess was once considered evidence of a
rational mind, until machines started to beat us.

We have an advantage. We can study the brain and steal its structures
and algorithms, improving on them, without the Darwinian constraint of
installed base.

The nerve cell is quite slow. Eventually it might be possible to just
replace nerve cells one by one with faster ones. Is not what you end
up with still human in some sense even if the brain is entirely
artificial. It is really not that different than a human with an
artificial knee or heart.

 

[Robert Monsen]

We already know for example that AI will have memory, logic and
arithmetic ability far exceeding our own.

There was a time when feats of mental arithmetic or logic would have
been used to prove the superiority of the human species. Quietly such
demonstrations have died away. We keep adjusting the criteria to make
sure we "win".

For a while we decided that perhaps pattern matching -- with vaguely
defined notions of similarity -- like face recognition was what made
us superior to the machines, until neural nets started beating us at
face recognition.

Ability to play master level chess was once considered evidence of a
rational mind, until machines started to beat us.

We have an advantage. We can study the brain and steal its structures
and algorithms, improving on them, without the Darwinian constraint of
installed base.

The nerve cell is quite slow. Eventually it might be possible to just
replace nerve cells one by one with faster ones. Is not what you end
up with still human in some sense even if the brain is entirely
artificial. It is really not that different than a human with an
artificial knee or heart.

No, it'll be more like we'll tie into preexisting structures to add or
enhance functionality. I heard of an experiment recently where monkeys were
taught to play a game using implanted probes. They were able to move objects
around on video displays using their thoughts. Pretty incredible.

Imagine being able to drive, or to control mechanical objects using your
thoughts...

Regards
Bob Monsen

 

[R. Steve Walz]

But I don't - why would you imagine that I do? To say a cat is conscious
is not to say that a cat shares our manner of experiencing
consciousness, any more than saying a cat has hair means that a cat has
hair just like ours.

----------------------
To say a cat is "conscious" is a lie because we know what OUR being
"conscious" IS, and we know that a cat is NOT what ours is, because
it doesn't do what WE do. It's that simple!

Nevertheless, a cat has consciousness, and hair.

----------------------
No, and a cat has fur. You may call it "hair", but it doesn't look
like MY "hair" and it doesn't do what I do with mine.

Your problem is that you are trying to deny the possible existence of
any form of consciousness or self-awareness that is different from ours,

---------------------------
Not deny, merely question its value. Their "self-awareness" seems to
be so non-real as to fail to justify for them any status in MY book
that doesn't involve use of their meat or fur, or as a NON-aware
lap-warmer, by human criteria.


To be aware of one's Self is, simply to be aware of one's Self! It
cannot BE something "so special" or "so different in kind" that we
cannot identify it. If one IS self-aware, then one knows what one
looks like, and tries to communicate with others of its kind, and
tries to affect its world in all manners favorable to itself. A
cat doesn't even know its face in a mirror. And that's NOT
self-awareness! To not get that it has to be attentive without even
actually KNOWING that it IS so, IOW, it is a NON-aware consumable
Bio-MACHINE!!

but your main strategy is to redefine English words, which needless to
say helps not a whit in any argument related to what may or may not be
the case in the real world.

---------------------------
No, I merely clarify english. You may WANT to CALL something "conscious"
by CLAIMING erroneously by analogy that surely everything with EYES
is and must be SOME kind of "aware" in order to direct its ATTENTION
to its senses, while ALTOGETHER failing to realize that you have
inadventantly included robotic toys, washing machines, light switches
and programmble timers IF ONLY they had fur and faces!

Your last statement may be true, i.e. that animals with human minds
would try hard to make the fact known to humans.

----------------------------
You're claiming that awareness can be less than aware. Disingenuous.

But that does not say
anything about whether animals have consciousness or self-awareness.

--------------------------
Of course it does. Whereas you don't KNOW, you SAY, whereas I see what
I DO know, and say simply "THEY DON'T"!!

Animals have animal minds, animal consciousness, and may well have
animal self-awareness.

---------------------------
Except cognitive researchers have tried to find the most basic
elements of "Awareness" in them by asking, "What are the outward
symptoms of such an Awareness?", and they have found NADA!! ALL
those processes they manifest show nothing but non-aware function.
They are NOT aware of existing. They do NOT conceive of themselves
with THOUGHTS! The *WORLD*, *LIFE*, in other words, the ONLY WAY
AND MEANS BY AND IN WHICH WE EXIST AS WE KNOW EXISTING, IS BY MEANS
OF A STORY TOLD BY US TO US ABOUT OURSELVES, A WORLD OF THOUGHTS,
and THEY don't HAVE one!! THEY AREN'T EVEN HERE EXCEPT AS FEATURES
INTERNAL TO *OUR* WORLD and LIFE!!!!! They are MACHINERY, FURNITURE!

In short, you can't prove that animals are like clockwork toys
just by proving they are not like humans. Simple enough for you?
- Gerry Quinn

---------------------
*IF* there WERE other Aware Animals who knew they existed and therefore
automatically understood what WE mean here, and who live and breathe
IN ADDITION to the complement of NON-aware animals on this planet,
then this would be obvious to you, but merely because you have
evolved on a planet where ALL OTHER species AT THIS TIME HAPPEN TO
BE only pre-conscious bio-machines, your desperate affinity for
hopefully believing in teddy bears and your reflex to crave some
company around here on this rock, is leading you astray.

If Dolphins really were aware, they would tell us so, and have
enough sense to MAKE SURE they had tried enough different ways to
make it obvious to us. And by now we'd have a common language we
had both agreed on!!
Steve

 

[R. Steve Walz]

Sounds like a human discovering the purpose of a refrigerator.

I suggest you go to the animal shelter and adopt a cat.

------------------------
Nope, done and done. Animals that are aware besides us on this rock
don't exist yet. That's why no matter the hyper-emotional crap you
spew here, most of us EAT them.

-Steve

 

[R. Steve Walz]

Or perhaps even one of Leslie Fish's culls...

URL:http://home.earthlink.net/~kayshapero/FishTale.htm

----------------------
Intelligence is NOT Awareness.

Awareness is internal self-modeling.

Your computer manifests mere intelligence.
And birds and cats who can talk and do math are simply calculators.

-Steve

 

[Lee Fesperman]

To be aware of one's Self is, simply to be aware of one's Self! It
cannot BE something "so special" or "so different in kind" that we
cannot identify it. If one IS self-aware, then one knows what one
looks like, and tries to communicate with others of its kind, and
tries to affect its world in all manners favorable to itself. A
cat doesn't even know its face in a mirror. And that's NOT
self-awareness! To not get that it has to be attentive without even
actually KNOWING that it IS so, IOW, it is a NON-aware consumable
Bio-MACHINE!!

Bad example. My cat does know his face in a mirror. Since he was born feral, perhaps he
was not dulled by human domestication ;^)

Also, your penchant for shouting (all caps) is just bluster.

If Dolphins really were aware, they would tell us so, and have
enough sense to MAKE SURE they had tried enough different ways to
make it obvious to us. And by now we'd have a common language we
had both agreed on!!

Ultimately, dolphins would not benefit from such interaction. They would simply be
exploited.

 

[Roedy Green]

Intelligence is NOT Awareness.

Awareness is internal self-modeling.

On the other hand, you can be conscious and look to the rest of the
world like a vegetable. We don't find out you were conscious until
afterwards and you tell us about your experience.

Consider the discovery that the infant anaesthetic curare was not an
anaesthetic, just a muscle paralyser.

I don't think we have anywhere near enough information to make
assumptions about consciousness. I think, in the interim, it best to
err on the side of assuming too much consciousness.

Being kind to free range chickens does produce better meat and less
adrenalin, even if they are not conscious enough to appreciate it.

 

[George W. Cherry]

Sounds like a human discovering the purpose of a refrigerator.

I suggest you go to the animal shelter and adopt a cat.

If I were a cat, I would rather be euthanized than
adopted by him. He'd probably be SHOUTING
at me all the time for getting hair on the sofa.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

If I were a cat, I would rather be euthanized than
adopted by him. He'd probably be SHOUTING
at me all the time for getting hair on the sofa.

"Cats prefer houses (and sofas) to people."
David Byrne - Talking Heads
(Andrew Thompson - PhySci/1.1C!)

 

[Gerry Quinn]

Gerry Quinn wrote:

If that is your argument, it is the flaw that is utterly simple - the
word "conscious" does not mean "conscious in the same manner as a human"
any more than "hair" means "human hair".

Nevertheless, it leaves hairs on my couch.

---------------------------
Not deny, merely question its value. Their "self-awareness" seems to
be so non-real as to fail to justify for them any status in MY book
that doesn't involve use of their meat or fur, or as a NON-aware
lap-warmer, by human criteria.

Then why not just say that, instead of trying to construct some
irrational 'proof'? If you're not sure it's okay to eat animals, live
with the guilt or become a vegetarian - don't murder logic as well as
cows.

---------------------------
No, I merely clarify english. You may WANT to CALL something "conscious"
by CLAIMING erroneously by analogy that surely everything with EYES
is and must be SOME kind of "aware" in order to direct its ATTENTION
to its senses, while ALTOGETHER failing to realize that you have
inadventantly included robotic toys, washing machines, light switches
and programmble timers IF ONLY they had fur and faces!

Why are you screaming? Are you an animal frantically tapping on the
keyboard when it's human owner is away? As for machines, I have every
reason to believe that consciousness is a continuum, and at some point
deterministic machines will be built that I will be prepared to describe
as conscious. I don't think washing machines are far along that
continuum.

I claimed nothing there except that a statement of yours might well be
correct.

Argument by assertion, no more.

---------------------------
Except cognitive researchers have tried to find the most basic
elements of "Awareness" in them by asking, "What are the outward
symptoms of such an Awareness?", and they have found NADA!! ALL
those processes they manifest show nothing but non-aware function.
They are NOT aware of existing. They do NOT conceive of themselves
with THOUGHTS! The *WORLD*, *LIFE*, in other words, the ONLY WAY
AND MEANS BY AND IN WHICH WE EXIST AS WE KNOW EXISTING, IS BY MEANS
OF A STORY TOLD BY US TO US ABOUT OURSELVES, A WORLD OF THOUGHTS,
and THEY don't HAVE one!! THEY AREN'T EVEN HERE EXCEPT AS FEATURES
INTERNAL TO *OUR* WORLD and LIFE!!!!! They are MACHINERY, FURNITURE!

Screaming doesn't make assertions true.

---------------------
*IF* there WERE other Aware Animals who knew they existed and therefore
automatically understood what WE mean here, and who live and breathe
IN ADDITION to the complement of NON-aware animals on this planet,
then this would be obvious to you, but merely because you have
evolved on a planet where ALL OTHER species AT THIS TIME HAPPEN TO
BE only pre-conscious bio-machines, your desperate affinity for
hopefully believing in teddy bears and your reflex to crave some
company around here on this rock, is leading you astray.

You fail to provide a shred of evidence that cats are not conscious. We
do in fact have some evidence that various apes have thought processes
that in some ways resemble ours. I see no reason to believe that cats
and dogs do not have the same, at a somewhat lower level.

If Dolphins really were aware, they would tell us so, and have
enough sense to MAKE SURE they had tried enough different ways to
make it obvious to us. And by now we'd have a common language we
had both agreed on!!

Dolphins probably just assume we are aware. If they ever thought about
whether we know they are aware, they would assume we do. None of the
apes that learned symbolic languages ever showed concern that people
would think them machines. If I recall correctly, one was in fact
'interrogated' on this point, and put cats, apes and humans in the
'living' category, but ants in the 'machine' category. A fair enough
division into conscious and unconscious.

Maybe you could learn from that ape.

- Gerry Quinn

 

[Thomas Schodt]

(e-mail address removed) (Gerry Quinn) wrote in

If you're not sure it's okay to eat animals, live
with the guilt or become a vegetarian

I've been wondering about the logic behind the vegetarian option.

It is not ok to breed an animal for the sole purpose of killing and
consuming it.
Yet, if not for carnivore humans, that (individual) animal would never have
lived.

It is not ok to hunt wild animals for food.
What about weeding out the weak (or overpopulation) for the (supposed) good
of the species?
Predators do it to prey. Lemmings do it to themselves. Some carnivores do
it to each other (cannibalism).

It is ok to starve wild animals to extinction by destroying their habitats
to make farmland on which to grow vegetables for all these new vegetarian
converts.
Organic farming is no better (less yield per area - so more habitat
destruction). Organic produce does have more flavour though.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

If that is your argument, it is the flaw that is utterly simple - the
word "conscious" does not mean "conscious in the same manner as a human"
any more than "hair" means "human hair".

-----------------------
Of course it does, because we are our only example of it.
Lots of things are called hair.

Nevertheless, it leaves hairs on my couch.


Then why not just say that, instead of trying to construct some
irrational 'proof'? If you're not sure it's okay to eat animals, live
with the guilt or become a vegetarian - don't murder logic as well as
cows.

----------------------------
Saying that is the SAME as what I say! The very REASON we let each
other eat lower animals is BECAUSE we ALL KNOW they are non-conscious!

Why are you screaming?

----------------
I don't feel like I'm screaming!

Are you an animal frantically tapping on the
keyboard when it's human owner is away?

---------------------
No, it's mine.

As for machines, I have every
reason to believe that consciousness is a continuum,

----------------
Except legitimate ones.


and at some point

deterministic machines will be built that I will be prepared to describe
as conscious.

-----------------
I agree. But animals are NOT.


I don't think washing machines are far along that

continuum.

---------------------------
Me neither.

I claimed nothing there except that a statement of yours might well be
correct.

---------------------------------
I didn't say "human" minds, I said CONSCIOUS minds.

Argument by assertion, no more.

----------------------------
Limit yourself to what you know directly, and you will see.
Eschew "thinking" of what you see, and simply SEE it!

Screaming doesn't make assertions true.

-------------------------
I'm not screaming, think of measured crisp speech.
Think of it as stridency!

You fail to provide a shred of evidence that cats are not conscious.

---------------
If they were, they would do what WE do because WE'RE conscious!

We
do in fact have some evidence that various apes have thought processes
that in some ways resemble ours. I see no reason to believe that cats
and dogs do not have the same, at a somewhat lower level.

-------------------
Lower levels are not merely less of the same, or the same done slower,
but NOT THE SAME AT ALL! Cats are NOT human retards!!

Dolphins probably just assume we are aware. If they ever thought about
whether we know they are aware, they would assume we do.

 

[D. Jay Newman]

We already know for example that AI will have memory, logic and
arithmetic ability far exceeding our own.

This seems to be a common assumption that may or may not be true.
Most of the technologies that are used AIs that can "learn" also
have the capability to forget.

Now, it may be possible to hook this AI up to a normal computer.

There was a time when feats of mental arithmetic or logic would have
been used to prove the superiority of the human species. Quietly such
demonstrations have died away. We keep adjusting the criteria to make
sure we "win".

Of course. The problem wiht defining AI is that we don't have a
good handle on what "real" intelligence is.

For a while we decided that perhaps pattern matching -- with vaguely
defined notions of similarity -- like face recognition was what made
us superior to the machines, until neural nets started beating us at
face recognition.

Yes, we have now reduced this task to a relatively simple algorithm
and so it can't be *the* indicator of true intelligence.

Ability to play master level chess was once considered evidence of a
rational mind, until machines started to beat us.

Again, like the above. It used to be considered that chess was an
unsolveable problem by a machine intelligence. With both algorithm
improvement and Moore's Law, this was disproved.

Frankly, I would rather see a great Bridge program.

We have an advantage. We can study the brain and steal its structures
and algorithms, improving on them, without the Darwinian constraint of
installed base.

Sort of. We can *study* the structures, but until we understand them
better than we do now, we can't really improve them.

I prefer the process of duplicating these processes, so that we get
the same, or simlar, end results. I'm of the "rational behavior" school
of AI: I don't care how (or even *if*) a machine thinks, but rather
that it can behave in a way that we would consider rational.

The nerve cell is quite slow. Eventually it might be possible to just
replace nerve cells one by one with faster ones. Is not what you end
up with still human in some sense even if the brain is entirely
artificial. It is really not that different than a human with an
artificial knee or heart.

The nerve cell may be slow, but the simulations we can make of it are
even slower. The problem is that not only does each neuron have a
rather large number of direct inputs, it seems to be able to be
indirectly affected by nearby neural activity.

I'm not saying that we cannot eventually duplicate it, but I doubt
we will be duplicating the human brain anytime soon.

 

[Christer Ericson]

[...]
We do in fact have some evidence that various apes have thought processes
that in some ways resemble ours. I see no reason to believe that cats
and dogs do not have the same, at a somewhat lower level.

Lower levels are not merely less of the same, or the same done slower,
but NOT THE SAME AT ALL! Cats are NOT human retards!!

The ongoing 30-year old study of Koko the gorilla (http://www.koko.org/)
makes it painfully obvious to anyone (except you) that consciousness
is not just a human trait.

Consider the following quote from http://www.koko.org/faqsite/

"Tell us a bit about how you and Koko are able to communicate.

Koko and I communicate with each other through a modified form of
American Sign Language (ASL). Koko has demonstrated well over 1,000
such gestures. She also understands over 2,000 words of spoken English,
so people can speak to her and she will respond in sign. She also
communicates with her normal gorilla vocalizations, of purrs and cries.
In our more than 28 years together, Koko has expressed the whole range
of emotions associated with humans, like, happiness, sadness, love,
grief, embarrassment."

I'd say, based on your posts, it's clear she is able to express
herself better than you.

Note: Followup-To set.


Christer Ericson
Sony Computer Entertainment, Santa Monica

 

[Gerry Quinn]

Gerry Quinn wrote:

Circular argument, or argument by assertion - feel free to choose which
fallacy you are committing, as your statement can be construed either
way.

If a cat can be unconscious, a cat can be conscious. The vast majority
of English speakers will agree with me.

No it isn't. Almost everyone thinks animals are conscious, and most
people eat meat. Of course, we tend to ensure that animals are
unconscious (indeed, dead) at the time of consumption, except those like
oysters to which we don't ascribe significant consciousness. Few people
would consider it ethical to take a bite out of a live cow - indeed we
concern ourselves with laws regarding humane killing. If we thought
animals were unconscious, why would we care?

The way I look at it, they would eat us, and turn-about is fair play.

You were explicitly using the word in your invented and incorrect sense
of "having consciousness like a human". I merely translated your
assertion into English.

"I see a cat. The cat sees me. God sees the cat and God sees me." So
we used to recite in kindergarten many years ago. I still have had no
reason to quarrel with the first two sentences.

They do lots of things we do.

I think it is from a book called "The Ape's Reflexion" - maybe you can
find a copy somewhere. It was an interesting read.

I don't know any apes, but I am convinced that many of my four-legged
friends are quite conscious and aware.

- Gerry Quinn

 

[Programmer Dude]

Your problem is that you are trying to deny the possible existence
of any form of consciousness or self-awareness that is different
from ours,...

I think the problem is at least a level deeper.

UNESTABLISHED--so far--is whether a true consciousness, which is
so different from our own as to be unrecognizable, can exist.

I contend that, not only is this unestablished, it's unlikely.

It's quite fanciful to imagine minds so different from ours that
we would not credit them as minds at all, but I think it is just
that: a fancy. I see no reason full "consciousness" wouldn't
transcend the particular "iconic and verbal lingo" of a species.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

Circular argument, or argument by assertion - feel free to choose which
fallacy you are committing, as your statement can be construed either
way.

--------------------------
Misapplication of fallacy. What I said is simply true, you have NO
evidence of ANY sort that something that reminds you of our own
awareness is anything of the kind, merely because it does so, when
you are emotionally invested in the result.

If a cat can be unconscious, a cat can be conscious. The vast majority
of English speakers will agree with me.

----------------------------
The cat can be non-moving other than for breathing, but without being
humanly conscious. People might grant free use of the word, merely
for lack of another in the current state of the language, but the
same might be said of an anaesthetized insect, and this same audience
would permit it, so that means nothing. Just because the state of
an animal might seem outwardly similar in every visible respect to
that of a human, this may be so despite the fact that the human is
specially conscious as we believe but the animal never has been, in
the way we value, even though it looks the same outwardly.

In other words, many performances of animal functions have nothing
whatsoever with the function of actual awareness, and they are merely
the bodily reactions that EITHER an aware or a non-aware animal's body
will produce, and are unrelated to actual self-awareness. An
example would be that an animal might well eat, sleep, produce REM,
and apparently be attentive to a stimulus without actually having any
semblance of the kind of human awareness that makes us know that we
exist as a specific thought. These actions are unrelated to whether
the animal is cognizant of its existence as a theory, or whether it
even HAS a mind that produces thoughts separate from its immediate
attention.

No it isn't. Almost everyone thinks animals are conscious, and most
people eat meat.

----------------------
People are easily confused about what they believe, but they clearly
value animals as less valuable so as to justify killing and eating
them. This means that they inherently MUST believe that whatever
animals have is less important than what we have.

Of course, we tend to ensure that animals are
unconscious (indeed, dead) at the time of consumption, except those like
oysters to which we don't ascribe significant consciousness. Few people
would consider it ethical to take a bite out of a live cow - indeed we
concern ourselves with laws regarding humane killing. If we thought
animals were unconscious, why would we care?

-------------------------------------
Agreed, but this comes only of the confusion I meantioned that is based
on the same confusion as YOU manifest here about the difference between
outward signs of function, and actual self-awareness, and how easy
those are to confuse one for the other simply because we are the only
aware being we share ideas with. You see, animals don't HAVE "ideas"
that exist as symbolic memories.

The way I look at it, they would eat us, and turn-about is fair play.

-----------------------
Except, of course, that is fodder for humor precisely because they
cannot, and WE KNOW they cannot conceive of even their own death,
or in fact any future state.

You were explicitly using the word in your invented and incorrect sense
of "having consciousness like a human". I merely translated your
assertion into English.

---------------------------------
Just because it only applies to humans on this planet doesn't mean
that it wouldn't apply to aware robots or other alien species.

"I see a cat. The cat sees me. God sees the cat and God sees me."

---------------
You see NO "god", liar.

So
we used to recite in kindergarten many years ago. I still have had no
reason to quarrel with the first two sentences.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

I think the problem is at least a level deeper.

UNESTABLISHED--so far--is whether a true consciousness, which is
so different from our own as to be unrecognizable, can exist.

I contend that, not only is this unestablished, it's unlikely.

---------------------------------
Cute, so you're saying that we aren't even conscious!!!

It's quite fanciful to imagine minds so different from ours that
we would not credit them as minds at all, but I think it is just
that: a fancy. I see no reason full "consciousness" wouldn't
transcend the particular "iconic and verbal lingo" of a species.

-----------------------------------
While an amusing verbal and semantic device here, I see no proof
that awareness would or could ever be MORE than what we have, or
that it could be less than what we have either. Awareness is a
specific way of seeing, one that requires us be less than omnipotent,
but aware of past and future.

-Steve

 

[Gerry Quinn]

Gerry Quinn wrote:

[snip]

I think there's little point in arguing further with you. Have a good
new year, and (just for me) knock any animals you plan to eat alive on
the head first.

- Gerry Quinn