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Science fiction: Could computers become sentient beings?
cvalue
Veteran
During a discussion that His Holiness Dalai Lama had with scientists, he was asked whether computers could become sentient beings: Could computers one day have minds? He answered in an interesting way, saying that if a computer or a robot reaches the point at which it was sophisticated enough to serve as the basis for a mental continuum, there is no reason why a mind-stream could not connect with a purely inorganic machine as the physical basis for one of its lives. This is even more far-out than Darwin!Extract from "Basic Questions on Karma and Rebirth"
This is not saying that a computer is a mind. It is not saying that we can create a mind artificially in a computer. However, if a computer is sophisticated enough, a mind-stream could connect with it and take it as its physical basis.
Such far-reaching thought makes modern-age people excited and interested in Buddhism. Buddhists are brave and willing to enter into these discussions with scientists and to face the various popular issues in the modern world. Buddhism is alive and vibrant in this way. Not only does Buddhism have the ancient wisdom from unbroken lineages going back to Buddha, but also it is alive and deals with issues of the present and future.
Revised excerpt from
Berzin, Alexander and Chodron, Thubten.
Glimpse of Reality.
His Holiness Dalai Lama is GREAT!
2
Comments
In any case, it's not an issue that we will need to solve soon, to digitize 1 cubic CM of a human brain (just it's connections) is a computational project that humans can just barely do and even if we could digitized the connections of a whole we don't have the means to execute the application. And we don't know how to create a similarly complex conscious machine from scratch.
Really capture's the moral question that comes with these idea's. If we can design a machine to feel love, how can a human love a machine? What responsibility do we hold to that machine in return?
How do you recognise sentient beings?
For all you know I could be an experimental computer algorithm like @robot (sorry, couldn't resist having a bit of fun with your avatar), who is programmed to respond to certain words in a certain way based on the detection of certain other words in the sentence? You may think I'm talking gibberish, and sometimes I do, but where do your thought processes and mine diverge to the point where you can identify that there is just a complex algorithm underlying the seemingly conscious being beyond the keyboard.
Mettha
What's interesting is that what scientists are trying to do so far is use language tricks to mimic human conversation. But being able to fool our unsuspecting minds is not the same thing as creating something that understands what we're saying.
I guess my own opinion is that we have a very long way to go and would need another breakthrough in engineering.
The tech advances to this day are progressing at an exponential rate. I can make my dog sit for a reward or roll over, or sense she wants to be comforted or stroked. However, I can talk to my phone and get it to google the nearest restaurant. The phone and the dog cost about the same to buy and maintain btw.
We are giving computers all our knowledge to store, at what point if they do become sentient will they utilise the poet that comes with it against us - futurists have already written books and made films about it about it, e.g. Terminator etc. What will tread the middle path in such circumstances? Just a thought.
mettha
Cows and chickens have mindstreams of their own, which is why we choose not to kill and eat them, they value their lives and want to live.
Back to the OP: I am a sci-fi FAN, I am nuts in love with ideas like this and many others.
The quality of samsara would be different from our own human version, I would think. How would the quality of samsara be different for an inorganic being?
The two are not the same thing, but don't ask me how they are different
Somebody seeing sentience where I do not, just points out somebody who probably has a more flexible mindset than me.
AI is hard, comprehending human speech is hard. Ask Siri or Google or talk to jabberwacky or similar bots. Here two 'talk' to each other. Their form is emptiness, just a set of programmed responses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterbot
The robot was given the rules to save lives if possible and to not kill if possible. It found itself in a quandary when it faced a situation where there was a man killing people and getting away with it. The robot killed the man to remove the possibility that more folks would be killed by the man if he were allowed to live.
Just as courts can order the death penalty in some cases now, so the robot became judge and executioner and jury of one. There were no more unsolvable (to man) murders after that.
So, long story short, Volition is part of true AI (sentience subtype). The robot eventually commited suicide, the underlying rules vs situation conflict drove it to kill itself.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/neurologist-markam-human-brain/all/
Theodore is a lonely man in the final stages of his divorce. When he's not working as a letter writer, his down time is spent playing video games and occasionally hanging out with friends. He decides to purchase the new OS1, which is advertised as the world's first artificially intelligent operating system, "It's not just an operating system, it's a consciousness," the ad states. Theodore quickly finds himself drawn in with Samantha, the voice behind his OS1. As they start spending time together they grow closer and closer and eventually find themselves in love. Having fallen in love with his OS, Theodore finds himself dealing with feelings of both great joy and doubt. As an OS, Samantha has powerful intelligence that she uses to help Theodore in ways others hadn't, but how does she help him deal with his inner conflict of being in love with an OS?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)
Perspective: I have an uncle who worked for a NASA contractor as a space habitat designer/specifier/brainstormer. In the 60's-80's. He is now a sci-fi writer and when I see him from time to time we talk about the present and future of computing.
'AI' another film which deals with in part evolution of humanity into a non meat civilisation. The creative story tellers are preparing us for our future. Part of which is the singularity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
Progress is being made and I accept that useful 'simulation of AI' is twenty or thirty years away.
http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/09/deep-blue-computer-bug/
Bugs in the machine? You got it. Meanwhile I am off to talk to a form about emptiness . . .
http://mybot.a-i.com
Revised excerpt from
Berzin, Alexander and Chodron, Thubten.
Glimpse of Reality.
His Holiness Dalai Lama is GREAT!
Wow! That's an interesting one. Just that, I thought, at the moment, humans seem like they have lost touch with their mind stream. Many of us have become computers! Pretty scary, don't you think?
But, it is within the realm of possibility. And if no one has the ambition to take shots in the dark on this, then no progress can be made, I believe. Fact of the matter is, current technology certainly has the potential to do this. It is just entirely up to the scientists, technicians, and engineers to make this a reality.
But even if he is entirely successful in building a computer that has the capabilities of a human brain, it will be no AI. The hardware will be there, but much like a human who has gone through brain death, there will be little to no activity, no sentience.
What is more of a nightmare is thinking about our current state of cloning has about reached the point where we can clone a brain or keep one alive in the lab. With the "wetware" available, what sort of experiments could immoral researchers perform on it that could be turned around and applied to a normal brain? And before you insist nobody would do that sort of thing in today's world, suppose the absolute ruler of North Korea decided to live forever and demanded his scientists use their vast prison camps to experiment on people? Think what the Nazi criminal doctors could have done with today's technology, unlimited resources, and a supply of victims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_computer
. . . coming not too soon but being postulated
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence
and now back to ye olde SF
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy
The ice is thick enough to do this sort of science. I'm heterodox in the sense that I don't believe I have a soul, nor an original face, nor a tathatata-garbha, nor original pure nature. Nor a mind-stream that exists before or after death. So you may not get the conversation you're looking for.
4 month, and as for robots, we don't have any that are self aware. At best we can write a chat-bot that can temporarily fool a human into thinking they are chatting with a human. Personally, I have confidence that science works and consciousness will eventually be explained. At the moment, consciousness appears to be a quality of humans, animals, things with fairly complex neural network type brains. We don't have a similar machine thing. When the brain comes online, which is like 4 months and trillions of brain cells and trillions of brain cell connections after the sperm and egg do their thing. The sperm, the egg, the dab of solder are all insentient. Not so long ago humans outside our tribe and animals were not routinely recognized as sentient. I know I'm sentient, for everyone else, I kind of have to make my best guess. It's a gray area with oysters, sponges, shellfish. Octopus seem sentient, but radically different from our mechanism for sentience. For everything else, it needs to have a large brain-- and if that creature has a common ancestor to me, it's more persuasive (so rabbits and I have a common ancestor, but my computer and I do not, so it's more persuasive that the rabbit is similar to me and conscious) If I were, I'd enter myself into the Turing test contests you can win money for that. At the moment, the best chat bots (some are online ... I like "cleverbot" the best) can fool you for a while, but eventually it is clear they are machines. Sorry, you pass the Turing Test. You'd have to show peculiar behaviors to pass as a machine.
I know I'm sentient. So I know sentience is possible.
I suspect others are sentient, especially those similar to me. I draw a big circle around me in that respect, I think the ability to solve problems, communicate, respond to novel situations, experience pain & suffering, to act in a motivated matter-- all these imply that the behavior I see in similar creatures (human and otherwise) are sentient.
I have no reason to believe I'm special, nor that my genetic germ line is special. So what can be done on meat can be implemented on metal-- it's a technical problem.
So am I.
But I've got a degree in it, what are your credentials. LOL
Mettha
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/apr/17/brain-implant-paralysis-movement
People can and are programmed by biology, socialisation and other factors. Put in the required secretion into the blood at the right time and we can fall in love with a cushion. 'Imprint hacking' for LOLZ of humans with implants, is gonna be an issue . . .
Again we have to be aware of the power, possibilities and dangers of technology . . . for now we are stuck with ye olde methods . . .
It's about a robot which not only becomes sentient, but also Enlightened.
I personally believe that when machines become sentient, it will be a unprogrammed random and spontaneous act. (We humans will not have a hand in it).
This movie also gives some interesting ideas about enlightenment.
(Assuming the Buddha was right when he said that we are all naturally enlightened beings).
That's even more unlikely haha.
Sometimes I think we have been going overboard with the "your body is a machine" metaphors we like to use to the point we forget that it's just a metaphor. We aren't actually machines, and consciousness won't be entering my xbox. Ever.
"Hasta la vista, granny!"