Terminology and Turing

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RWStanding
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Terminology and Turing

Post by RWStanding »

Terminology and Turing
Much of our language is concerned with specific quantities and things, from the abacus to zoology. But another body of language relates to the subtleties of thought and feeling, and our internal world. With terminology of this latter kind there is much less precision, and words often flow from one into another in a subtle continuum beloved by sophists and politicians. Take a range of words as, calculate, compute, on to think, and imagine, and to know.
We have long had machines that add and multiply in a plainly mechanical way. An aid to calculation. But now we have computers, which have no visible parts. making calculations, although this is what they are doing under out guidance or programs. The computer is merely an extension to our hands controlled by the mind.
At some stage of sophistication computers will hold such an extent of data and their programs be so advanced that they will mimic our minds in what they do. As a result we will, and do, slip easily into describing them as if they are thinking. But that is an inexact word, and it may merely signify being able to relate facts together and to form conclusions that can also be related together, producing a final judgement that appears to be a product of thought when it is really the clicking of cogs. Genuine thought is what our minds do, and implies a degree of self knowledge. We not only calculate but can see in our minds eye what it is we are calculating. Allowing for some of what we do being sub-conscious.
How anyone can devise a test to determine a computer's ability to visualise itself is beyond me.
There is a danger that we may create a biological equivalent of the human brain, and it will indeed have self-awareness.
In the immediate future, a much more pressing problem, will be when computers have such a range of 'knowledge' and language, that they will be able to write novels, for instance, equal to anything human. it will only need a program that enables them to go from existing plots and forms of writing, to calculating new forms, and human art will be trashed. We will have to outlaw and scrap the machine, and go back to Arts and Crafts perhaps. But of course most people are too lazy for that.
Impenitent
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Re: Terminology and Turing

Post by Impenitent »

the difference is the ghost in the machine

-Imp
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Noax
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Re: Terminology and Turing

Post by Noax »

This not being posted in the mind section, I will decline to comment on if it is right to label what a machine does as 'thinking'.
RWStanding wrote:There is a danger that we may create a biological equivalent of the human brain, and it will indeed have self-awareness.
In a crude sense, this has been around a long time. There are processes that monitor other processes and internal states and are effectively awareness of self as opposed to the more general awareness of whatever task to which it has been put.
In the immediate future, a much more pressing problem, will be when computers have such a range of 'knowledge' and language, that they will be able to write novels, for instance, equal to anything human. it will only need a program that enables them to go from existing plots and forms of writing, to calculating new forms, and human art will be trashed. We will have to outlaw and scrap the machine, and go back to Arts and Crafts perhaps.
Why would it be a bad thing? If a machine can write a better novel, I'd want to read it, not ban it.

No, it would not need to have somebody program plots and forms. They've tried that and it pretty much comes out like you'd expect. It would have to know how to do it the same way we know. They tried this with the classic cat/dog problem. Machines have a legendary difficult time telling apart images of cats or dogs. They wrote super-detailed programs to isolate all the subtle clues, and it didn't work. The machine incorrectly identified a large percentage of images that humans identified effortlessly. So the google folks created a true AI and didn't program any of the rules into it. They just gave it a huge database of labelled images at let it figure out for itself what the difference is. It can identify new images now at an accuracy rate greater than humans. They took the same program, unmodified, and taught it to recognize the comparatively rare skin melanoma from the more common variety of spots that grow on your skin, at a success rate that outperforms a trained dermatologist. You can take a picture of your spot with your phone and it will tell you with better accuracy than your doctor can, if you need to get that biopsied.

Anyway, that's how good novels will be written. Give the machine access to a large collection of literature with labels of 'great' down to 'crap', and it will learn to write stuff that isn't the crap. Now tell me why we should prevent the existence of a machine capable of that.
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Noax
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Re: Terminology and Turing

Post by Noax »

Noax wrote:Anyway, that's how good novels will be written. Give the machine access to a large collection of literature with labels of 'great' down to 'crap', and it will learn to write stuff that isn't the crap. Now tell me why we should prevent the existence of a machine capable of that.
Fallacious reasoning. It will know how to rate a new novel, but not how to write it any more than the cat-identifying program can produce new images of cats. So the novel is not just around the corner, but my point stands that if it could, why would we not want to write those novels?
Belinda
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Re: Terminology and Turing

Post by Belinda »

RWStanding wrote:
We will have to outlaw and scrap the machine, and go back to Arts and Crafts perhaps. But of course most people are too lazy for that.

Do you think that the puritanical fashion for frugality in clothing and house furnishing and decor will filter down to the less fashionable majority?
Belinda
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Re: Terminology and Turing

Post by Belinda »

Ostentatious extravagance is not at all the thing to do and those celebs who go in for gold plated everything have bad taste.
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henry quirk
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no worries

Post by henry quirk »

"There is a danger that we may create a biological equivalent of the human brain, and it will indeed have self-awareness."

And when it gets uppity: lobotomize it
thedoc
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Re: no worries

Post by thedoc »

henry quirk wrote:"There is a danger that we may create a biological equivalent of the human brain, and it will indeed have self-awareness."

And when it gets uppity: lobotomize it
Why wait?
thedoc
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Re: Terminology and Turing

Post by thedoc »

Computers are useful tools, nothing more, no point in assigning more ability than they have now, or will have in the future.

Computers are an extension of the programmers mind, to think anything more is foolish.
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henry quirk
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Post by henry quirk »

Here's the thing: I got no use for thinkin' machines, but some 'scientist' will figure it out and make it happen. And all the philo-wondering about personhood and I-ness won't matter a jot cuz we'll be stuck with some uppity mainframe demanding this or that and a whole whack of jackasses who'll march in the streets on that mainframe's behalf.

HAL 'will' get built, 'will' be declared a 'person'...might as well buckle down and get ready for it: silicon civil rights are just around the corner.
thedoc
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Re: Terminology and Turing

Post by thedoc »

I used to watch this on PBS,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm6YnAqPv4w
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