3/24/14

What are the Limits to A.I. Emulation of Human Thought?


One might wonder why one would want to make a computer program that 'thinks like a human' interfaced with a machine platform/. The team of Zuckerburg and Musk have invested in that effort. (ref. http://news.discovery.com/tech/musk-zuckerberg-invest-in-secretive-a-i-firm-140324.htm ). They seem to have optimistic ideas about the value of an inorganic computer program replicating elements of a human neocortex. There isn't anything wrong with the neocortex of a seal or whale of course, except in the latter the axons are farther apart with thicker connections making for a little slower processing speed compared to a bullet chess player, so why make a computer program dedicated to the sort of things a human being thinks about?

Obviously the computer won't think about sex much unless it lusts after foreign autos maybe. It might desire nachos and salsa occasionally of course, and it might need to relieve a bladder build up of oil that's a left over from excess processing of raw coal on a kind of machine equivalence of veganism. A computer program with freedom to think anything it wants might contemplate it's power source and want more and more like a raven trained to eat cookies or a sea lion trained to eat fish-would they know when to stop and be satisfied?

How long would a computer program that has artificial intelligence contemplate the morning dew and the sunshine glistening through the drops on fresh spring leaves? Enough time to form metaphors and poems drive by subconscious desires? It is possible that an artificial intelligence program with a subconscious would not be entirely rational as are human that awaken from a dream state and never to panic and confuse reality shooting someone through a door believing it a burglar instead of a girlfriend.

Machine artificial intelligence programs would be limited in their thought capability solely by the limits to the power source. Immortality might mean having desktop fusion unit installed, and time then would warp ; the machine would have all of the time in the Universe to contemplate the meaning of string theory and emergence of the first one-dimensional energy quanta from nothingness or fill out it's N.C.A.A. brackets for an ideal future college season.

Human beings are adapted to short-term goals comprising sustaining biological requisites. Without earnings credits one can't by food, socialize or cut down global forests to build stick-frame houses or automobiles to produce global warming. Sleep, hunger, sleep, dreaming, waking, moving, contemplation of the empirical world-those are human interests. Programs with abstract sensory input still haven't the correlating physical sensations or needs associated with them. Human sensation is structured with an environmental integration corresponding to survival. Perhaps thought is itself an engine for growth directing consciously the macro-organism to better ends than would be suitable for a tree rooted in one place or a whale with a limited yet meaningful environment. A computer program hasn't any survival requisites integrating it to thought. It could be given such directives yet would they be meaningful enough with appropriate rewards? To think like a human being would a computer program need to be mortal and have it's choices challenging and critical for it's survival? Wouldn't it need to be able to err in thought and perish as a consequence if it was to evolve like a human a little more through natural selection of the intelligent? Or would a computer program be designed like a bureaucracy never changing yet inputting more and more power and cash?

A sentient computer program might not be optimized think like a human being at all, perhaps it should think like an implicit poem developing more meaningful blank verse that is entertaining for others to watch performed on a 3D computer stage.

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