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

[David Lochrin]

On 2016-07-28 13:10 Karl Auer wrote:

>> But on the other, physics has no scope for perception to arise.
> 
> What?!? Either you are saying there as no such thing as perception, or you are saying perception exists outside physics. Both of those seem pretty insupportable.
> 
> Perception has already arisen, and you and I are living proof of it.
> Well, I am. Can't speak for you. :-)

I'm simply saying we have no idea how perception arises.  Until quite recently people would have commonly said it arises from your immortal soul, and animals are mere machines because they don't have one.  But I'm not going there.

The thought experiment I described invites us to build a machine (presumably a neural network) which is the logical analogue of the brain so there can be no doubt as to the applicable rules, they're the rules of physics.  Now how would that device acquire (a) consciousness and (b) conscious perceptions, given they have no direct physical existence per se?

The light which causes our perception of (say) red physically exists, but both consciousness and perception is entirely internal.  I'm not saying they're completely beyond physics (which is my subject), but it does currently seem physics hasn't enough in-principle scope to explain them.  And until we have a better idea, I think robot vehicle computers should be treated as adaptive systems.

All the rhetoric & scorn of the flag carriers for strong AI doesn't make up for the fact that nobody knows the answer.


>> Yes, it wasn't intended to be deconstructed too much!  But I'm afraid I don't have time to go there just at the moment.
> 
> I have an excellent proof of machine intelligence, but this email is too small to contain it.

Yes, well all the above is a bit of a tangent in relation to Searle's argument and I do have other stuff to do!

David L.