Weak AI vs. Strong AI
Weak AI: “Machines acting as if they were intelligent”
Strong AI: “Machines are thinking, not just acting as if they were”
“Strong AI” later refers to “human-level” AI
“Aerial flight is one of the great class of problems with which man can never cope” –Simon Newcomb (two months before the Wright Bros. flew at Kitty Hawk)
Turing argues “from informality” that human behavior is just “too complicated” to ever be encoded in a machine
“Artificial Intelligence pursued within the cult of computationalism stands not even a ghost of a chance of producing durable results” –Kenneth Sayre (1993)
They were mostly referring to Good Old-Fashioned AI (GOFAI)
The qualification problem describes the problem of having to describe every rule and every state, every contingency.
However… probabilistic systems have shown to be effective in open-ended domains. Deep learning also can capture irregular and even unknown rules.
Hubert Dreyfus (What Computers Can’t Do [1972] and What Computers Still Can’t Do [1992])
\[ Dog(x) \implies Mammal(x) \]
Can never be as good as a human’s lived experience.
Andy Clark (1998): “Biological brains are first and foremost the control systems for biological bodies. Biological bodies move and act in rich real-world surroundings.” … “Good at Frisbee, bad at logic”
Embodied Cognition approach claims that “cognition” and a “body” can’t really be considered separately. “Cognition happens within a body”
“A machine could never do X” What do you think machines could never do?
Turing:
Be kind
Be resourceful
… beautiful
… friendly
have initiative
have a sense of humor
tell right from wrong
make mistakes
fall in love
enjoy strawberries and cream
make someone fall in love
learn from experience
use words properly
be the subject of your own thought
have as much diversity of behavior of man
do something really new
“Make mistakes” check
Computers can be enabled with metareasoning, thus “be subject to their own thought
“… fall in love with it”, teddy bears and other toys
David Levy predicts that by 2050, humans will routinely fall in love with humanoid robots
Robots falling in love is common in science fiction (though with sparse academic study) Funny story…
Computers certainly have discovered new things (astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy, biology, computer science, and art!)
Sometimes AI is better, sometimes worse than humans.
They can never be exactly human
Godel and Turing both proved that certain mathematical questions are unanswerable under the formal systems used to construct them.
In short:
It is possible to construct a “Godel sentence: \(G(F)\) such that:
\(G(F)\) is a sentence of \(F\) , but cannot be proved within \(F\)
If \(F\) is consistent, then \(G(F)\) is true
Some academics find this a compelling reason to believe that AI/Machines have an intrinsic limitation when compared to humans
I.E. machines cannot establish the truth of their own Godel sentence, while humans can.
Queue academic gangland:
Sir. Roger Penrose advances this idea in “The Emperors New Mind” he argues that the known laws of physics are insufficient to explain consciousness.
“…[he argues] humans are different because their brains operate by quantum gravity— a theory that makes multiple false predictions about brain physiology”
The authors cite three problems:
Adam cannot assert that this sentence is true
Godel’s IT applies to mathematics not computers
Nothing and noone can prove something that is impossible to prove
“Humans must be consistent”… no?
Also, the IC only was proved for systems powerful enough for mathematics, which includes Turing Machines
Except Turing Machines != Computers
Turing Machines are infinite, brains and computers are not
“Humans can change their minds, well so can computers”
Turing Test is perhaps the most famous test for a thinking machine
Typed conversation between human and machine
For five minutes
With the program fooling the interrogator 30% of the time
This is much easier than you might think…
In 2014 “Eugene Goostman” fooled 33% of “untrained judges” in a Turing test
So far, no “trained judge” has been fooled
However… nobody really cares.
Do submarines swim?
Do planes fly?
Turing again: polite conversation (ignoring philosophical zombies)
John Searle rejects polite conversation and proposes a thought experiment
…they’re made out of meat (Bisson 1990)
The line drawn through every debate on “Strong AI” is consciousness
Awareness of the world, yourself, and the subjective experience of living.
Qualia (“of what kind”?) Do machines experience qualia?
What does 404 feel like?
Do your pets have consciousness?
Oven crickets? But do they feel it?
Turns out, it’s difficult to define (and therefore prove and demonstrate)
Though there are those (Templeton Foundation) who are doing experience to find out…
Turing again: “I do not wish to give the impression that that I think there is no mystery about consciousness… But I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question with which we are concerned with in this paper.”
Humans can easily compare our own experiences with others… machines cannot easily do this.
Machines can share code… humans cannot easily do this…