AI sentience

[iNow]

9 hours ago, FreeWill said:

The Internet of Things can give sentience and the right programming ( social norms based information structure and evaluation) the right reactions

Interesting idea, though quite lacking. I know scores of actual humans who can’t even give the right reactions to social norms and yet they’re still sentient. 

[FreeWill]

5 hours ago, iNow said:

Interesting idea, though quite lacking. I know scores of actual humans who can’t even give the right reactions to social norms and yet they’re still sentient. 

What is indicating the part of Free Will and Awareness in the decision making process resulting in sentience. 

Edited April 20, 2019 by FreeWill

[StringJunky]

2 hours ago, FreeWill said:

What is indicating the part of Free Will and Awareness in the decision making process resulting in sentience. 

Free will is not a necessary component of sentience. I remember an article that argued that worms are sentient. They were chosen as the minimum at which sentience exists.

[iNow]

7 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Free will is not a necessary component of sentience. I remember an article that argued that worms are sentient. They were chosen as the minimum at which sentience exists.

Great idea, but I bet it goes back even farther. Some plants and definitely spore based organisms likely fit the same criteria used to classify the worms as sentient in their study. 

2 hours ago, FreeWill said:

What is indicating the part of Free Will and Awareness in the decision making process resulting in sentience. 

Is this a question or an assertion? Your meaning is unclear. 

[StringJunky]

10 minutes ago, iNow said:

Great idea, but I bet it goes back even farther. Some plants and definitely spore based organisms likely fit the same criteria used to classify the worms as sentient in their study. 

Yes, on reflection,  probably, there's a continuum of diminishing sentience rather than a distinct cut off point. 

Edited April 20, 2019 by StringJunky

[iNow]

44 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Yes, on reflection,  probably, there's a continuum of diminishing sentience rather than a distinct cut off point. 

The classical quantum debate’s head rears once more. 

[StringJunky]

54 minutes ago, iNow said:

The classical quantum debate’s head rears once more. 

Yeah.  

[iNow]

3 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Yeah.  

[peterwlocke]

On 4/12/2019 at 8:40 PM, Theoretical said:

I think Eva would beg to differ.

then have it beg muhahahaha. also if it is so good where can I find it.

[wtf]

On 4/20/2019 at 1:07 AM, Hrvoje1 said:

Hey wtf, here are some attempts to answer the question:

Mathematical Foundations of Consciousness

AXIOMS AND TESTS FOR MINIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS

What do you think about them?

Hi, thanks for the links. I will take a look at those. I clicked on your first link expecting to see something about Tononi's idea of integrated information theory but evidently this is something else. I don't think there's a mathematical theory of consciousness. And even if there were, it wouldn't necessarily be true or false; just as there's a mathematical theory of Euclidean geometry whose truth or falsity is a matter for physicists and not mathematicians. Mathematics is no longer a path to truth. Between the 1840's and the 1930's Riemann, Einstein, and Gödel busted up that idea pretty well. But I'll take a look at the article.

The second looks interesting too. Axioms for consciousness. Well why not. Again they wouldn't be true or false, but they might be interesting. 

I think when it comes to consciousness perhaps we're hoping for a "WHY" as well as a "WHAT." An explanatory theory as opposed to merely a descriptive one. But science doesn't do metaphysics. It only describes the outcome of experiments. Science is very limited that way.

 

On 4/18/2019 at 10:24 PM, iNow said:

How basic do you need me to go? What level is your current understanding of neuroscience?

Perhaps you missed it. It was my very first response to your very first question. 

 

This was in response to "But with consciousness, you have told me no such thing. You do NOT have ANY theory of the mechanism by which consciousness "emerges" from .... actually you didn't tell me what it emerges from! The brain, the body, a bunch of circuits ... you have not told me. "

Well you go ahead and take a run at it please. I'm sure you can explicate a lot of contemporary neuroscience, some of which I'm familiar with. But none of it explains consciousness. If you think it does, do feel free to explain it to me.

But the original point I believe is the concept of emergence. If you have a specific technical path from X to Y, then Y isn't emergent. In other words molecules aren't emergent from atoms. Emergence implies something BEYOND a mere component relation. And that beyondness is what I'm highly doubtful of.

On 4/19/2019 at 6:30 AM, FreeWill said:

Recognizable information about Reality.

The recognition and the reaction on a scenario which is aligned with the recognition and reaction of the general population (i.e killing another human being is bad) 

This was in response to my asking: "What can "objectively sentient" mean? Is your next door neighbor objectively sentient? How do you know?"

I can't agree with what you wrote. 

I can write a program that accesses a database of yes/no questions and their answers by a large number of people  (Is killing bad? Is apple pie good? Are fish mammals? etc.) and then my program would simply output the majority answer to whatever question is asked of me. I wouldn't need any special AI programming techniques. It's a simply database lookup. Just a few lines of code once you have a database of common questions and the average answer by a large sample of people. I hope you can do better than that for a definition of "objective sentience." 

If sentience is simply spouting conventional wisdom, a news bot that reads you today's New York Times in a mechanical voice would be sentient.

I'll be charitable and say that I understand you to be trying to express the idea of empathy. We all know that in general, killing is bad. (Then again there's war, there's capital punishment, there's the defense of your own life or that of your loved ones, etc.) You think if a machine says killing is bad it's because the machine has empathy or sentience. But you can just as well program a machine to output "Killing is bad" in response to the question, "Is killing generally bad?" and that is not sentience. That's just a lookup table. 

Edited April 24, 2019 by wtf

[iNow]

40 minutes ago, wtf said:

the original point I believe is the concept of emergence. If you have a specific technical path from X to Y, then Y isn't emergent. In other words molecules aren't emergent from atoms. Emergence implies something BEYOND a mere component relation. And that beyondness is what I'm highly doubtful of.

I’ve been using the idea of aurora borealis. It’s too is an emergent phenomenon and there’s nothing implied about it being beyond anything. Consciousness could very well fit that same criteria. 

Also, to be clear, I’m not claiming to have a clear definition of consciousness nor a description of how precisely it manifests. I’m simply defending myself against your seeming rage that I would dare call it an emergent phenomenon. 

[StringJunky]

27 minutes ago, iNow said:

I’ve been using the idea of aurora borealis. It’s too is an emergent phenomenon and there’s nothing implied about it being beyond anything. Consciousness could very well fit that same criteria. 

Also, to be clear, I’m not claiming to have a clear definition of consciousness nor a description of how precisely it manifests. I’m simply defending myself against your seeming rage that I would dare call it an emergent phenomenon. 

I wonder if emergence is not an objective phenomenon and is actually an observer-dependent property in that it requires an observer to interpret a phenomenon as meaningful or useful.

[wtf]

47 minutes ago, iNow said:

I’ve been using the idea of aurora borealis. It’s too is an emergent phenomenon and there’s nothing implied about it being beyond anything. Consciousness could very well fit that same criteria. 

Also, to be clear, I’m not claiming to have a clear definition of consciousness nor a description of how precisely it manifests. I’m simply defending myself against your seeming rage that I would dare call it an emergent phenomenon. 

My seeming rage? Is there a language issue? I'm poking on the concept of emergence. I think it's quite murky. There are philosophers who agree with me. I guess I can't engage in further discussion till I get clarity here. If I'm upsetting you somehow I'll stop replying to you.

I don't care if you call consciousness emergent. I'm trying to get you to explain to me what that adds to anyone's understanding of consciousness. If you can't tell me that, then perhaps emergence isn't a useful concept.

Do you think molecules are an emergent property of atoms? I'm trying to get at your definition here. Do you see emergence as a component relationship? Or something else?

Well that's enough rage for now I guess. 

Edited April 24, 2019 by wtf

[StringJunky]

15 minutes ago, wtf said:

 I'm poking on the concept of emergence. I think it's quite murky. There are philosophers who agree with me. I guess I can't engage in further discussion till I get clarity here.

This subject is like asking "How did life begin?" and the answer will be 'Abiogenesis' but we don't know the precise constituents that lead to it. A similar issue occurs in that subject whereby inanimate objects become 'living'. .. life emerges from them. So far, they have both been resistant to a reductionist treatment. And that's the state of play.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, wtf said:

Do you think molecules are an emergent property of atoms?

No. They are atoms grouped together in specific ways. 

1 hour ago, wtf said:

Do you see emergence as a component relationship?

I’m unfamiliar with the term “component relationship.” What are you asking me here?

49 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

This subject is like asking "How did life begin?" and the answer will be 'Abiogenesis' but we don't know the precise constituents that lead to it. A similar issue occurs in that subject whereby inanimate objects become 'living'. .. life emerges from them. So far, they have both been resistant to a reductionist treatment. And that's the state of play.

Much like time, which is itself resistant to simple definition. 

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

I wonder if emergence is not an objective phenomenon and is actually an observer-dependent property in that it requires an observer to interpret a phenomenon as meaningful or useful.

I’m leaning this way, as well. The frame of reference matters here, and it strikes me that it’s always observer dependent... it’s relative. 

[StringJunky]

17 hours ago, iNow said:

No. They are atoms grouped together in specific ways. 

I’m unfamiliar with the term “component relationship.” What are you asking me here?

Much like time, which is itself resistant to simple definition. 

I’m leaning this way, as well. The frame of reference matters here, and it strikes me that it’s always observer dependent... it’s relative. 

It looks that way. Also, the fact is that the words 'abiogenesis' and 'emergentism'  have been assigned by the biological community to those concepts, even though we don't have  their respective mechanistic details yet... just like 'dark matter' in physics. They are analogous.

[FreeWill]

On 4/24/2019 at 2:57 AM, wtf said:

I can't agree with what you wrote. 

I can write a program that accesses a database of yes/no questions and their answers by a large number of people  (Is killing bad? Is apple pie good? Are fish mammals? etc.) and then my program would simply output the majority answer to whatever question is asked of me. I wouldn't need any special AI programming techniques. It's a simple database lookup. Just a few lines of code once you have a database of common questions and the average answer by a large sample of people. I hope you can do better than that for a definition of "objective sentience." 

I see why you are not agreeing with me, I think it is because you limit the ability of digital recognition to 0 and 1 (yes and no), while there are much more options to qualify something digitally or statistically. 

Let's suppose we have an advanced AI with an opened internet where every possible physical recognition can be maintained as data of the person recognized it, while the AI is aware of the exact physical structure and information of that physical entity in reality, in this case, an apple pie. 

We can make 1000 different type of apple pies by changing the amount of the ingredients used or changing the baking technics. We taste the cakes with 10 000 people. The results of their recognition extracted by the answers on questions like: How sweet the apple pie you think were on a 1-10 scale, and How much you liked the apple pie on a 1-10 scale). Our AI is aware of this information as statistical data, while aware of every apple pies making and baking information as well. From now on towards infinity, It can give the best-known apple pie receipt, if ever asked. It even can adjust the future information to this basic information (new apple kind is on the market which is even better like so and so...)

The AI sentience already exists yet controlled by HUmans. 

We do not have the right digital platform, which could maintain the information Advanced Sentience would require. That incapability of our in the present time does not exclude that AI can be partially sentient! (video, picture, voice recognition, etc...)

 

[dimreepr]

4 hours ago, FreeWill said:

I see why you are not agreeing with me, I think it is because you limit the ability of digital recognition to 0 and 1 (yes and no), while there are much more options to qualify something digitally or statistically. 

You do know what digital means, right.

 

 

 

1

4 hours ago, FreeWill said:

Let's suppose we have an advanced AI with an opened internet where every possible physical recognition can be maintained as data of the person recognized it, while the AI is aware of the exact physical structure and information of that physical entity in reality, in this case, an apple pie. 

We can make 1000 different type of apple pies by changing the amount of the ingredients used or changing the baking technics. We taste the cakes with 10 000 people. The results of their recognition extracted by the answers on questions like: How sweet the apple pie you think were on a 1-10 scale, and How much you liked the apple pie on a 1-10 scale). Our AI is aware of this information as statistical data, while aware of every apple pies making and baking information as well. From now on towards infinity, It can give the best-known apple pie receipt, if ever asked. It even can adjust the future information to this basic information (new apple kind is on the market which is even better like so and so...)

The AI sentience already exists yet controlled by HUmans.

You're conflating sentience with intelligence (again), just because an ant hill solves problems (is intelligent) doesn't make it aware of those problems.

[FreeWill]

How can an anthill solve any problem if not by being aware of the problem at first hand?

Note that a species genetically can adapt to solve a problem!

Why do you suppose that an ant(colony) cannot be aware of a problem?

It can recognize if it needs to eat and know as well how to get that. It can adapt and actively solve the problem of nutrition. It is aware that an enemy is closed on the Ant Queen. It will react to it! It is on a level sentient and enough intelligent to respond.

Maybe that's why I use Sentience and Intelligence as an interconnected recognition. 

Edited April 25, 2019 by FreeWill

[iNow]

4 hours ago, FreeWill said:

How can an anthill solve any problem if not by being aware of the problem at first hand?

Probably in the same way that food solves the problem of hunger without being aware of it, or the way that blankets solve the problem of being cold without being aware of the temperature.

[wtf]

On 4/23/2019 at 7:49 PM, StringJunky said:

This subject is like asking "How did life begin?" and the answer will be 'Abiogenesis' but we don't know the precise constituents that lead to it. A similar issue occurs in that subject whereby inanimate objects become 'living'. .. life emerges from them. So far, they have both been resistant to a reductionist treatment. And that's the state of play.

What causes life? "Tunawaddles." Adds no information. What causes life? "Emergence." Adds no information. 

Take the earlier example of the aurora borealis. You could study physics to learn why charged particles give off light. You could study atmospheric science to understand everything we know about the aurora. Then if I tell you that the aurora is "emergent," you haven't got any more information or understanding than you did before. 

Feynman made this point in one of his books. He told the story about how he got roped into serving on a school textbook committee. The book said, what cause such-and-so? Energy. What causes this-and-that? Energy. And Feynman exploded. He said just using the word "energy" to explain things was meaningless. Same with emergence. What's the aurora? Emergence. What's life? Emergence. What's consciousness? Emergence. In every case you know nothing that you didn't already know before someone stuck a silly label on it.

I say emergence is a vacuous concept. It has no clear meaning. It explains nothing. It adds no clarity or insight.

ps Here is the Feynman story. 

Quote

 

It began with pictures of a mechanical wind-up dog, a real dog, and a motorcycle, and for each the same question: “What makes it move?” The proposed answer—“ Energy makes it move”— enraged him.

That was tautology, he argued—empty definition. Feynman, having made a career of understanding the deep abstractions of energy, said it would be better to begin a science course by taking apart a toy dog, revealing the cleverness of the gears and ratchets. To tell a first-grader that “energy makes it move” would be no more helpful, he said, than saying “God makes it move” or “moveability makes it move.”

 

Or, I'd add, "emergence" makes it move.

Feynman added:

Quote

“Shoe leather wears out because it rubs against the sidewalk and the little notches and bumps on the sidewalk grab pieces and pull them off.” That is knowledge. “To simply say, ‘It is because of friction,’ is sad, because it’s not science.”

https://fs.blog/2016/07/richard-feynman-teaching-math-kids/

Edited April 25, 2019 by wtf

[StringJunky]

17 minutes ago, wtf said:

What causes life? "Tunawaddles." Adds no information. What causes life? "Emergence." Adds no information. 

Take the earlier example of the aurora borealis. You could study physics to learn why charged particles give off light. You could study atmospheric science to understand everything we know about the aurora. Then if I tell you that the aurora is "emergent," you haven't got any more information or understanding than you did before. 

Feynman made this point in one of his books. He told the story about how he got roped into serving on a school textbook committee. The book said, what cause such-and-so? Energy. What causes this-and-that? Energy. And Feynman exploded. He said just using the word "energy" to explain things was meaningless. Same with emergence. What's the aurora? Emergence. What's life? Emergence. What's consciousness? Emergence. In every case you know nothing that you didn't already know before someone stuck a silly label on it.

I say emergence is a vacuous concept. It has no clear meaning. It explains nothing. It adds no clarity or insight.

ps Here is the Feynman story. 

Or, I'd add, "emergence" makes it move.

Feynman added:

https://fs.blog/2016/07/richard-feynman-teaching-math-kids/

The fact is mate, neither iNow or I are experts. We are only passing on what we read by competent biological scientists.We are at the limit of what we can argue but you are coming across as confidently ignorant, being unreasonable and disregarding where science is at this point time on the subject. Get over it, we will just have to wait. 

[wtf]

10 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

The fact is mate, neither iNow or I are experts. We are only passing on what we read by competent biological scientists.We are at the limit of what we can argue but you are coming across as confidently ignorant, being unreasonable and disregarding where science is at this point time on the subject. Get over it, we will just have to wait. 

Then why can't anyone give a decent defense or explanation of the emergence? 

I've asked simple questions. Say you know everything there is to know about the aurora. If I tell you in addition that it's "emergent," what do you know now that you didn't know before?

I say emergence is a vacuous (but trendy) concept. That doesn't necessarily make me ignorant. Another interpretation would be that I've read quite a lot about emergence and it sounds like fashionable nonsense to me. Did you get anything from the Feynman story? I find emergence to be along the same lines. A word that is supposed to explain everything but explains nothing.

 

Edited April 25, 2019 by wtf

[StringJunky]

8 minutes ago, wtf said:

Then why can't anyone give a decent defense or explanation of the emergence? Perhaps you are the one who is confidently ignorant.

You have disregarded what we've already said because  it's not what you want to hear. I can't add any more to this conversation. I think the problem is you are used to mathematical treatments and associated lines of thought  and, thus far, this subject cannot be described in that way.

Edited April 25, 2019 by StringJunky

[wtf]

5 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

You have disregarded what we've already said because  it's not what you want to hear. I can't add any more to this conversation.

I've read all the replies to my posts ... that is, all the replies that generated a mention. I did not read replies that didn't generate a mention. If I missed a cogent explanation of emergence, I'd be grateful for the pointer to whatever i may have missed.

If I study everything known about a given scientific topic; then you tell me in addition that it's "emergent"; what do I know then that I didn't know before you told me that?

ps -- David Chalmers on emergence.

Quote

 

Emergence is a tricky concept. It's easy to slide it down a slippery slope, and turn it into something implausible and easily dismissable. But it's not easy to delineate the interesting middle ground in between. Two unsatisfactory definitions of emergence, at either end of the spectrum:

(1) Emergence as "inexplicable" and "magical". This would cover high-level properties of a system that are simply not deducible from its low-level properties, no matter how sophisticated the deduction. This view leads easily into mysticism, and there is not the slightest evidence for it (except, perhaps, in the difficult case of consciousness, but let's leave that aside for now). All material properties seem to follow from low-level physical properties. Very few sophisticated people since the 19th century have actually believed in this kind of "emergence", and it's rarely what is referred to by those who invoke the term favourably. But if you mention "emergence", someone inevitably interprets you as meaning this, causing no end of confusion.

(2) Emergence as the existence of properties of a system that are not possessed by any of its parts. This, of course, is so ubiquitous a phenomenon that it's not deeply interesting. Under this definition, file cabinets and decks of cards (not to mention XOR gates) have plenty of emergent properties - so this is surely not what we mean.

The challenge, then, is to delineate a concept of emergence that falls between the deeply implausible (1) and the overly general (2). After all, serious people do like do use the term, and they think they mean something interesting by it. It probably will help to focus on a few core examples of "emergence":

 

He then goes on to more detailed analysis. He seems in principle to have some of the same misgivings I do. Perhaps he's ignorant and raging.

http://consc.net/notes/emergence.html

Edited April 25, 2019 by wtf