BeAfraid - 29 May 2008 02:25 PM burt - 29 May 2008 01:31 PM BeAfraid - 29 May 2008 05:29 AM As a student of AI/AL, I am working towards creating Artificial Intelligence, which will by definition also be Artificial Life. There is still the question of what is required for any AI to be conscious. There are good reasons for thinking that at the very least a conscious AI could not be based on algorithmic computation. Are you saying that consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain?

Exactly. The view I have is that consciousness has to be taken as a priori in the same way that space and time are in physics. Self-consciousness is something else again, and is dependent on the brain.

BeAfraid - 29 May 2008 02:25 PM Have you by chance seen the Blue Brain Project? This is but one avenue to AI. But, it shows that all the brain does is run algorithms on a massively parallel substrate. Nothing more.

That, I think, is an over-statement given the current state of our knowledge. As far as algorithmic computation is concerned, I agree with Searle, you can’t get semantics from syntax.

BeAfraid - 29 May 2008 02:25 PM author=“BeAfraid” date=“1212064188”]

In the journey from here to there, most of the technologies used to create AI will also allow for the radical augmentation of the human mind through either Chemical, Biological or Electronic means. My own personal desire is to destroy our current conceptions of humanity - or more bluntly, to destroy humanity as we now know it. Zizek makes an excellent point when he talks about a chemical solution to human inadequacies. If by taking a pill (a metaphor for some chemical or genetic augmentation) you can raise your intelligence, or strengthen your skeleton, or musculature, then this necessarily shows that there was some form of inadequacy in those structures to begin with.

No, this is a false conclusion. If I can give a child a chemical that allows him to grow to a height of 8 feet this does not mean that normal human height is inadequate (except for the NBA). The normal human body is as it is because of its history of evolutionary compromise in the Terrestrial environment. This doesn’t mean that improvement isn’t desirable, only that normality is not inadequate, only… normal.

You are assuming that there is a need for an 8 foot tall person. would there be a need, then yes, our current physiology would be inadequate.

It is also an oversimplification of the argument. I suppose it was remiss to not point out that the inadequacies arise from needs present that have, perhaps, not been present before.

Our bodies are still a massively flawed design from an engineering perspective. Evolution, unfortunately, does not optimize in the same manner as an engineer. It only seeks to find a solution that is workable, not optimal.

Matthew

From an evolutionary point of view, there is no need for augmented humans. We are producing conditions under which, from our point of view, various improvements would be useful. (Personally, I’d like to add a few centuries to life span) What I was reacting to was the term “inadequate” which I think is a particularly poor choice of language. Going on from this, it probably isn’t a good idea to take an engineering perspective on the human body—there are too many factors, you can’t optimize on all of them so trade-offs have to be made (which evolution is quite good at), and there is always the law of unintended consequences to deal with.