robots achieve self-awareness, may develop 'mental problems'

[bcbm]

Artificial intelligence has taken a big leap forward: two roboticists (Lipson and Zagal), working at the University of Chile, Santiago, have created what they claim is the first robot to possess “metacognition” — a form of self-awareness which involves the ability to observe ones’ own thought processes and thus alter one’s behavior accordingly.

The starfish-like robot (which has but four legs) accomplished this mind-like feat by first possessing two brains, similar to how humans possess two brain hemispheres (left and right*). This provided the key to the automaton’s adaptability within a dynamic, and unpredictable, environment.

The double bot brain was engineered such that one ‘controller’ (i.e., one brain) was “rewarded” for pursuing blue dots of light moving in random circular patterns, and avoiding running into moving red dots. The second brain, meanwhile, modeled how well the first brain did in achieving its goal.

But then, to determine if the bot had adaptive self-awareness, the researchers reversed the rules (red dots pursued, blue dots avoided) of the first brain’s mission. The second brain was able to adapt to this change by filtering sensory data to make red dots seem blue and blue dots seem red; the robot, in effect, reflected on its own “thoughts” about the world and modified its behavior (in the second brain), fairly rapidly, to reflect the new reality.

continued:
http://planetsave.com/2011/03/06/robots-achieve-self-awareness-may-also-develop-mental-problems/

[Dimentio]

Chisel-based life-forms are still on the same level as primitive carbon-based life-forms.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

The robot seems to be more a demonstration of a functional analogue of neuroplasticity rather than self-awareness.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I agree, for once (!), with Noxion.

A robot cannot be self-aware, since it's not a self to begin with.

[Tablo]

Could any of you direct me to literature about this? I've been quite interested in the development of AI lately.

[Paulappaul]

I agree, for once (!), with Noxion.

A robot cannot be self-aware, since it's not a self to begin with.

Isn't "self" kinda Metaphysical in the first place?

[Kuppo Shakur]

A neat, but small advancement.
Once again scientific journalists take things way out of proportion.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Paulappaul:


Isn't "self" kinda Metaphysical in the first place?

Not when it's used in ordinary langauge -- as in: "With you, it's self, self, self...", or "I enrolled on that course to engage in intensive self examination", or "Suit yourself", or "I went by myself so that I did not have to rely on anyone else.", and so on.

[Jose Gracchus]

What if a robot could walk around and talk about itself? Does your dogma simply exclude this technological possibility for the forever future? (Keeping in mind you said we should not speak of black holes since crude induction suggests they will fade away like caloric theory and everything else?)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TIC:


What if a robot could walk around and talk about itself?

You mean, what if it were programmed to do so.


Does your dogma simply exclude this technological possibility for the forever future?

What 'dogma'? I am using perfectly familiar ordinary words, ones even you use every day.


(Keeping in mind you said we should not speak of black holes since crude induction suggests they will fade away like caloric theory and everything else?)

And where did I say "we should not speak of black holes"?


since crude induction suggests they will fade away like caloric theory and everything else?

Well, the evidence (Remember evidence? It's what science is supposed to be built upon...), the evidence tells us that of any randomly chosen theory, there is a very high probability it is wrong.

So, pick a fight with the history of science, not me.

[Jose Gracchus]

So you're saying it is fundamentally and forever impossible to imagine an artificial creation exhibiting functionally identical qualities to human beings? How can you justify that claim?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TIC:


So you're saying it is fundamentally and forever impossible to imagine an artificial creation exhibiting functionally identical qualities to human beings? How can you justify that claim?

They certainly could if we changed the meaning of words like "aware" and "self", but then that would be no more philosophically (or scientifically) significant than if we changed the meaning of, say, "your brain" to mean "your foot".


How can you justify that claim?

Because I know how to use the English language -- and so do you.

[ar734]

Paulappaul:



Not when it's used in ordinary langauge -- as in: "With you, it's self, self, self...", or "I enrolled on that course to engage in intensive self examination", or "Suit yourself", or "I went by myself so that I did not have to rely on anyone else.", and so on.

To thine own self be true
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in our selves

[ar734]

So you're saying it is fundamentally and forever impossible to imagine an artificial creation exhibiting functionally identical qualities to human beings? How can you justify that claim?

it depends on what qualities you are talking about. robots are used every day to put cars together; and, in the process, put human beings out of work.

now, the quality of self awareness, first you have to define it; then you have to distinguish human and non-human, probably starting with the primates, self awareness.

You could probably create a robot which mimics the human brain, but the human mind?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^LL you are assuming that there is such a thing as 'the human mind'.

[Tablo]

I think it is well established that there is a human mind in the field of psychology. How do you define 'human mind'?

Honestly, the progress of AI research is largely dependent on personal definitions of what it means to be intelligent and what it means to actually think.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Tsukae:


I think it is well established that there is a human mind in the field of psychology.

I beg to differ. In fact, this idea is a left-over from the Platonic/Christian/Cartesian view of the soul. So, this is not a scientific fact, it is a philosophical/quasi-theological doctrine. As one historian of science noted:


"Western conceptions of mind began in religion before moving first to philosophy, and then to science. However, for two reasons psychologists have underestimated the influence of religious ideas of the soul -- the ψυχή (psychē) of our science -- on conceptions of mind and self. First, psychology is an aggressively secular enterprise and psychologists like to think that they put religion behind them when they assume their role as scientists. A more subtle reason concerns the dominance of historical scholarship by Christian belief. When we as psychologists read about past thinkers such as Plato and Descartes, not only do we look at them as protopsychologists, we see them through the eyes of historians and classicists who until recently worked within a quietly but unequivocally held Christian framework. That framework rarely intrudes explicitly, but it filters out the rough splinters, odd conceptions, and obscure but vital disputes concerning mind and soul held from Greek times through to at least Descartes. Thus we psychologists inherit a conception of the mind subtly shaped by forces of which we know little, drain it of its specifically supernatural content (e.g., survival of bodily death), and fancy that what remains is somehow natural and therefore a proper object of science....

"Although there are differences in detail, religions around the world have a remarkably concordant picture of the mind, positing the existence of two immaterial souls for two distinct reasons.... The first, universal reason is to explain the difference between living and nonliving things. The second, less universal reason is to explain human personality....

"Greek religion and the concept of ψυχή underwent a profound change in the later fifth century BCE.... Traditional Greek religious thought had insisted on a great gulf between the human and divine worlds, downplaying the idea of personal immortality. However, in the wake of the Peloponnesian War, continuity between the human and divine worlds was the theme of various new cults, often imported from the non-Greek east. In their practices these new religions induced in worshippers ecstatic states through which they might for a time join the gods, perhaps even briefly becoming the god of their veneration. The ψυχή became a personal, immortal soul, taking after death its rightful place in the divine world of the gods. Plato was influenced by these new teachings, but steered them in a less ecstatic, more philosophical and cognitive direction.... For Plato, the proper object of the soul's attention was indeed something divine, but he taught that instead of seeking salvation through ecstatic communion with the gods, the soul should seek salvation through philosophical pursuit of eternal, transcendental Truth. In Plato's hands, the mind became identified with reason, the ability to formulate and know the universal Truths underwritten by the heavenly Forms." [Leahy (2005), pp.37-39.]

Leahy, T. (2005), 'Mind As A Scientific Object: A Historical-Philosophical Exploration', in Erneling and Johnson (2005), pp.35-78.

Erneling, C., and Johnson, D. (2005) (eds.), The Mind As A Scientific Object. Between Brain And Culture (Oxford University Press).

And as Anthony Kenny has also noted:


"Descartes view of the nature of mind endured much longer than his view of matter. Indeed among educated people in the West who were not professional philosophers it is still the most widespread view of the mind. Most contemporary philosophers would disown Cartesian dualism but even those who explicitly renounce it are often profoundly influenced by it.

"Many people, for instance, go along with Descartes in identifying the mental realm as the realm of consciousness. They think of consciousness as an object of introspection; as something we see when we look within ourselves. They think of it as an inessential, contingent matter that consciousness has an expression in speech and behaviour. Consciousness, as they conceive it, is something to which each of us has direct access in our own case. Others, by contrast, can only infer to our conscious states by accepting our testimony or making causal inferences from our physical behaviour." [Kenny (1992), p.2. Bold emphases added.]

Kenny, A. (1992), The Metaphysics Of Mind (Oxford University Press).


How do you define 'human mind'?

I wouldn't want to.


Honestly, the progress of AI research is largely dependent on personal definitions of what it means to be intelligent and what it means to actually think.

Then no two researchers will be studying the same (alleged) phenomenon, will they?

[Dimentio]

In before dialectics.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Eh?:confused:

[ar734]

Tsukae:



I beg to differ. In fact, this idea is a left-over from the Platonic/Christian/Cartesian view of the soul. So, this is not a scientific fact, it is a philosophical/quasi-theological doctrine. As one historian of science noted:






how do you explain thought? or the use of language? Wittgenstein said, "...It seems that there are certain definite (his emphasis) mental processes bound up with the working of language, processes through which alone language can function. I mean the processes of understanding and meaning."
The Blue Book. What is understanding and meaning other than the mind?

Isn't psychology, cognitive science, etc. all about a scientific study of the mind?

I suspect that the mind is an evolutionary development...in humans more highly developed because of the nature of their social interaction; that there is no such thing as an "individual" mind, but only a grouping of social minds with variations. a kind of social psychology.

i am entirely an amateur on this. no degree in anything. i read a lot of marx, but no publication in anything.

[piet11111]

Assuming that a fetus is an unthinking lump of cells that through growth and increasing complexity acquires a mind and intellect it seems reasonable to me that eventually when AI becomes advanced enough it would at one point be Self aware.
In a way comparable to our own development from fetus to adult.

Especially when you consider that we want to create AI that is self aware against evolution where our self awareness is accidental.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think its so obvious that Rosa has never interacted with scientific practice outside of reading Wittgenstein talking about it.

Are you denying it may be scientifically possible to create something that would be casually functionally indistinguishable from a normal human being?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I think its so obvious that Rosa has never interacted with scientific practice outside of reading Wittgenstein talking about it.

Are you denying it may be scientifically possible to create something that would be casually functionally indistinguishable from a normal human being?

I don't think you'll get a straight answer out of her. I tried to ask her pretty much the same question, but she doesn't seem to realise (or refuses to acknowledge) that the question is one of function, not one of definition or whatever other shitty wordgames she and other armchair philosophisers like her are fond of.

[Jose Gracchus]

Furthermore, there is such a thing in AI work called "dynamic" or "evolutionary" programming. In other words, certain parameters are set up and then programs are successfully challenged by selection criteria and killed off, and are capable of self-adaptation and modification. If a human-like artificial being came out of such a process, by what right would you have to dismiss it. It wasn't programmed in a top-down way. Certainly the criteria and parameters for its evolution and creation were artificially imposed, versus naturally for us, but why would that make a quintessential difference?

EDIT: I agree, Noxion. Its clear despite her windmill tilting at dialectics, Rosa is completed naked without mechanical reliance upon her all-encompassing philosophical schema, like any sophistic armchair dialectician. Apparently, computers could not ever exist if we were arguing in AD 100 since it would be impossible to adequately describe them with the existing lexicon.

[Impulse97]

EDIT: I agree, Noxion. Its clear despite her windmill tilting at dialectics, Rosa is completed naked without mechanical reliance upon her all-encompassing philosophical schema, like any sophistic armchair dialectician. Apparently, computers could not ever exist if we were arguing in AD 100 since it would be impossible to adequately describe them with the existing lexicon.


Can you say that one more time in English, please?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

piet:


Assuming that a fetus is an unthinking lump of cells that through growth and increasing complexity acquires a mind and intellect it seems reasonable to me that eventually when AI becomes advanced enough it would at one point be Self aware.
In a way comparable to our own development from fetus to adult.

Once again, you are assuming that there is such a thing as 'the mind'.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TIC:


I think its so obvious that Rosa has never interacted with scientific practice outside of reading Wittgenstein talking about it.

What I say would still be the case even if Wittgenstein had died in infancy. It is based on how you use certain words in everyday life, and how scientists use them when they are not doing 'science'.


Are you denying it may be scientifically possible to create something that would be casually functionally indistinguishable from a normal human being?

Only if you alter the phrase "human being".

But then, and once more, you might just as well substitute "your foot" for "your brain" for all the good it will do.

So, when you say this:


Are you denying it may be scientifically possible to create something that would be casually functionally indistinguishable from a normal human being?

You might just as well have posted this:


Are you denying it may be scientifically possible to create something that would be casually functionally indistinguishable from a normal set of cuff-links?

All the while using "cuff-links" in a new, and-as-yet unexplained sense.

In other words, you have failed to present us with a comprehensible possibility.

And, alas for you, there is no way round this.:(

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Noxion:


I don't think you'll get a straight answer out of her.

Well, you ask me questions using words I have never used, and would never use. So, perhaps you should learn to use English more carefully.


I tried to ask her pretty much the same question, but she doesn't seem to realise (or refuses to acknowledge) that the question is one of function, not one of definition or whatever other shitty wordgames she and other armchair philosophisers like her are fond of.

Ah, yet more scatological language.

Are you anally fixated by any chance?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TIC:


EDIT: I agree, Noxion. Its clear despite her windmill tilting at dialectics, Rosa is completed naked without mechanical reliance upon her all-encompassing philosophical schema, like any sophistic armchair dialectician. Apparently, computers could not ever exist if we were arguing in AD 100 since it would be impossible to adequately describe them with the existing lexicon.

Not so; it is based on how you use the English language.


Apparently, computers could not ever exist if we were arguing in AD 100 since it would be impossible to adequately describe them with the existing lexicon

Not so. The word 'computer' did not exist back then. There is no problem introducing new words into the language.

The problem is when you alter the meaning of words already in use all the while imagining you are still dealing with the old words meant in the old sense, when plainly you aren't.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LL:


how do you explain thought?

By looking at how we use the word in everyday life -- how else? [Not that it needs explaining, since you already know how to use that word, and its cognates.]


or the use of language?

If you did not already know how to use language you'd not be able to understand the 'explanation', would you? So, no explanation is needed, nor could one be given.


Wittgenstein said, "...It seems that there are certain definite (his emphasis) mental processes bound up with the working of language, processes through which alone language can function. I mean the processes of understanding and meaning."
The Blue Book.

In fact, he was challenging this whole (traditional) way of looking at this alleged 'problem' -- and one that had actually crept into the Tractatus, too.


What is understanding and meaning other than the mind?

Well, you say this, but you have yet to show there is such a thing as 'the mind'.


Isn't psychology, cognitive science, etc. all about a scientific study of the mind?

So we are told, but then scientists used to believe in witches and mermaids, too.


I suspect that the mind is an evolutionary development...in humans more highly developed because of the nature of their social interaction; that there is no such thing as an "individual" mind, but only a grouping of social minds with variations. a kind of social psychology.

Once more, you are assuming the existence of something you have yet to show exists. So, how can 'it' evolve if there is no such thing as 'the mind'?

[Broletariat]

Edit: Read that a little too fast.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Broletariat:


Are you using the word "explanation" differently than "definition" in this response? If so what do you mean by "explanation" that makes it differ from "definition?"

Well, I'd use neither word in this context. Recall, it was LL's use not mine.

I'd neither try to define nor explain language, and for the reasons I gave.

Of course, it's up to scientists to try to do both; I merely record my objections to their (frequent) misuse of language while they do so.

And their confusion of philosophical with scientific questions.

[ar734]

Broletariat:





I'd neither try to define nor explain language, and for the reasons I gave.



If that's the case then you can't define, explain or 'elucidate' anything.

Ordinary language for "mind."

1. Are you out of your mind?
2. Don't mind me.
3. It's all mind control.
4. It's mind over matter.
5. "The human character of nature and of the nature created by history – man’s products – appears in the form that they are products of abstract mind and as such, therefore, phases of mind – thought-entities." less ordinary language of Marx.
6. "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." sublime language.

7. Doing the mind guerilla...john lennon

[ckaihatsu]

So you're saying it is fundamentally and forever impossible to imagine an artificial creation exhibiting functionally identical qualities to human beings? How can you justify that claim?





it depends on what qualities you are talking about. robots are used every day to put cars together; and, in the process, put human beings out of work.

now, the quality of self awareness, first you have to define it; then you have to distinguish human and non-human, probably starting with the primates, self awareness.

You could probably create a robot which mimics the human brain, but the human mind?





Furthermore, there is such a thing in AI work called "dynamic" or "evolutionary" programming. In other words, certain parameters are set up and then programs are successfully challenged by selection criteria and killed off, and are capable of self-adaptation and modification. If a human-like artificial being came out of such a process, by what right would you have to dismiss it. It wasn't programmed in a top-down way. Certainly the criteria and parameters for its evolution and creation were artificially imposed, versus naturally for us, but why would that make a quintessential difference?


The difference between programming and self-awareness is the difference between a fancy toy and a creative being navigating new environments.

As soon as formal criteria and parameters are imposed from above it sucks out any claim to genuine autonomy for each and every unit within -- just as in politics, for people. The complexity of the mechanism within -- however sophisticated -- will still be bound by these "outer limits".

In the interest of pursuing some kind of *subjectivity* within a possible artificial life form, we might say that the test is whether the artificial entity would spontaneously generate some sense of its own self-preservation, thereby indicating self-awareness and subjective self-worth. We may also see if it can self-develop a sense of belonging within a larger social structure -- especially since our (revolutionary) basis for individual identity is societal -- the social context.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LL:


If that's the case then you can't define, explain or 'elucidate' anything.

Not so. I can explain, and have explained, why I won't even try to explain language, for example.

And, when it comes to technical uses of language, say in logic, mathematics or the more formal sciences, I could, if asked, define certain terms.


Ordinary language for "mind."
1. Are you out of your mind?
2. Don't mind me.
3. It's all mind control.
4. It's mind over matter.
5. "The human character of nature and of the nature created by history – man’s products – appears in the form that they are products of abstract mind and as such, therefore, phases of mind – thought-entities." less ordinary language of Marx.
6. "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." sublime language.
7. Doing the mind guerilla...john lennon

Where did I say that the word "mind" does not appear in ordinary language?

What I said was that there is no such thing as 'the mind'. Your examples, in fact, only serve to confirm my allegation.

[Although, one or two of them reveal infection from Cartesian/Platonic dualism.]