[LINK] Machine Learning Was: Re: Robot cars and the fear gap

[Frank O'Connor]

Mmmmm,

Well, without the richness of experience of the outside world we, and every other life-form on this planet, have hard wired into us, and which has evolved in us over 3 billion years, and realisations that both the outside world exists and that it is populated by self-motivated ‘others’, you can’t expect a software based AI 'life form' to have much in the way of empathy, a live-and-let-live philosophy, an appreciation of the need to ‘get along’ with others, or a predilection to ‘play nice’ with other sapient and sentient selves.

Of course this lack could be made worse by making the AI system paranoid (as in a defence system) or greedy and venal (as in a transaction/trading system), or by applying any number of (un-needed) human motivators to its instructions and data …. because then you’d have an AI as inherently flawed as its creators. That said, those same motivators (and senses) are what gives us our richness of experience and emotion -without which life and existence would be a pale experience.

You say … "We wouldn't equate our fingers or tongues or eyes to our brains. They are the receptors and the brain reacts to the sensation, which is pretty much what a computer does.”

I disagree. And we do have a name for this sentience … it’s called ‘body image’ which is a large part of our ’self'. At a base level, we don’t distinguish between our component parts and our beings. We have a sense of self built up by our physical interactions with the real world and our perceptions of them. My fingers and toes are as much a part of ‘me’ as my eyes and ears - possibly more so because I can see them. In our brains this provides an image of who and what we are and how we interact with the real world and others like us, a means of developing ever more sophisticated heuristics, philosophies and knowledge of our environment based on our sense of ’self’ and where we fit in the great scheme of things.

Personally I think AI’s are a long way from developing this ‘understanding’ - especially at the hard wired instinctive level that pretty well all fauna and Animalia on this planet do.

And that could be problematic for any truly sapient AI that we develop.

I don’t know if this is making any sense … but what the heck!

Just my 2 cents worth …
---
> On 28 Jul 2016, at 8:01 AM, JanW <jwhit at internode.on.net> wrote:
> 
> At 09:19 PM 27/07/2016, Frank O'Connor wrote:
> 
>> I think computers are likely to develop into sapience before sentience 
> which may be problematic - as this whole discussion so far  points to.
> 
> Hmm...I reckon in a rudimentary yet multiple way, computers already are sentient, as in sensors - light, sound at least. Touch could be considered in terms of we touch pads and they respond. Taste not so much unless you consider specialist systems that can measure acid/base levels that I don't know for sure exist, but wouldn't surprise me in some lab. Physical analysis is even more developed in some computer systems. Consider what they can do with DNA analysis that we can't do with our own senses. 
> 
> I think this works. We wouldn't equate our fingers or tongues or eyes to our brains. They are the receptors and the brain reacts to the sensation, which is pretty much what a computer does.
> 
> Or is the key word in your sentence "develop"? As in making themselves become sapient?
> 
> Frank, you should have been in our discussion. It extended into this topic from 'animal testing and experimentation'.
> 
> Jan
> 
> 
> I write books. http://janwhitaker.com/?page_id=8
> 
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