Subject: (urth) Re: urth-urth.net Digest, Vol 5, Issue 41

From: turin <turin at hell.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 18:16:34 +0000

turing called it the imitation game.

it is not enough for a machine to produce the same outputs as a person, it must arrive at its outputs in the same fashion, that is whatever the functional apparatus, it must have the same cognition and intentional and phenomenal states as a person. the machine would obviously have to have a certain degree of self recursion or sentience, and something which resembles linear consciousness, it is debatable whether there is any other kind. the imitation game taken literally is the same kind of reductionism as behaviorism.  and turing was really just talking about how we identity other people, especially under certain circumstances.  the test itself was just the "chinese room", but i wont explain that here.  om short, turing is just the jumping off point for cognitive science.  for a mahine to be a person it has to have, and in the 40s and 50s this was a taboo subject in psychology, a mind.  the rigidity of your criteria for cognition and and whether phenomenal states or emotions are even meccesary are something else entirely.  "creativity" is just a way to describe solving complex problems when there is incomplete information, indefinite goals, or both.  most "real world" problems are like this.  what we really  mean is that the machine will have to be flexible and proficient in a wide variety of tasks.  it also means that the machine will have to be self correcting, possess learning algorithms, and that it will be able to reset its own goals, though its programming would not have to be completely transparent or malleable to itself.  ours arent.  i'd love ot be able to reset some of my goals.  EOT;

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 13:13:42 +0000

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 18:16:28 -0800 (PST), turin <turin at hell.com> wrote:

> it is not enough for a machine to produce the same outputs as a person,
> it must arrive at its outputs in the same fashion, that is whatever the
> functional apparatus, it must have the same cognition and intentional
> and phenomenal states as a person. 

How would you be able to demonstrate that it had these "states"? How
can you define them in humans? To the best of my knowledge neither 
of these questions has any empirically testable answer to date.

> the imitation game taken literally is the same kind of reductionism
> as behaviorism.  

The imitation game stands as the only empirical test thus far 
proposed for identifying a machine intelligence, if one should 
arise. It has several flaws: I find most significant among these
its failure to account for the probability that the experiential life 
of a machine intelligence would differ in important ways from that
of a human; thus, it would tend to eliminate a (hypothetical as of
today) class of genuinely sentient mechines which were not good
at imagining and empathizing with the experiential life of humans.

> the test itself was just the "chinese room", 

You betray your prejudices by even mentioning Searle's quibble.

> for a mahine to be a person it has to have, and in the 40s and
> 50s this was a taboo subject in psychology, a mind.  

This grotesquely misrepresents the psychological institutions of
the period: this was the heyday of behaviorism, but behaviorism
was never the sole dominant school of psychology.

--Dan'l

-- 
"We're going to sit on Scorsese's head"
     -- The Goodfeathers

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 14:13:31 +0000

>arise.

But the very term "the imitation game" suggests that in tFHoC maybe...just
maybe...long before the Long Sun and the Short Sun...Wolfe was considering
the Turing's postulates in terms of the validity of apparent consciousness
vs real consciousness.

~ Crush

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 14:30:07 +0000

Dan'l said:
>at imagining and empathizing with the experiential life of humans.

I think it's possible to accept the test without engaging in full-blown 
reductionism, although yes, it does smack of behaviorism regardless. 
Basically by endorsing the test you are making an ought-claim (possibly of 
the ethical variety, although the ethical isn't the only type of "ought"): 
that, regardless of the truth behind the currently impenetrable curtain, we 
*should* make our judgments concerning intelligence based on evidence of 
behavior. It is, granted, a short step from there to saying that the 
evidence of behavior *is* the only truth of the matter there is, that 
there's nothing to see behind the curtain - but this additional step isn't 
really necessary to accept the test for what it is.

I have often thought about the particular flaw that Dan'l identifies. It 
seems to me that the class of sentient machines that you're saying would be 
excluded would really be comparable, all in all, to madmen. A madman might 
have trouble passing as "sentient" by rigid standards, and yet they are - at 
least to some extent - somehow identifiable as intelligent, but insane. 
Labeling a machine as "insane" might be quite unfair, but pragmatically 
would have to be done. A machine intelligence with perceptions and 
motivations sufficiently different from our admittedly arbitrary norm would 
be far more dangerous than any homicidal madman.

>You betray your prejudices by even mentioning Searle's quibble.

I really don't follow what you mean by this. He may have been mentioning 
"Searle's quibble" because I brought it up earlier, and I don't think that I 
have a bias on the matter, nor do I think simply mentioning him in this 
context is irrelevant or biased.

-- Civet

--
"You must not be soft, but cover yourself up; for you must discover an 
intellection abstractional and fraudulent."

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 15:19:14 +0000

My apologies to both Turin and Civet: I had mossed the latter's
earlier mention of Searle's "Chinese Room."

I do think that the "Chinese Room" is a quibble, and a bad one 
at that: it involves a particular kind of essentialism that I don't 
have any use for, and I perceive it as a desperate attempt to 
defend the epistemologically unique status of the human "mind," 
in advance of any serious assault made on that status by (for 
example) a machine capable of winning the Imitation Game
with any regularity.

> Basically by endorsing the test you are making an ought-claim 
> (possibly of the ethical variety, although the ethical isn't the only
> type of "ought"): that, regardless of the truth behind the currently 
> impenetrable curtain, we *should* make our judgments concerning
> intelligence based on evidence of behavior. 

I don't think it's an ethical but an epistemological "ought," but I 
agree with your interpretation here. But then, what evidence - 
other than _some_ kind of behavior - is avaialable for or against 
the existence of _any_ intelligence, machine, animal,human, 
or alien?

I don't think I'm "endorsing" the test, though: I'm simply 
challenging those who think it's invalid to come up with something 
better, ideally something that doesn't rely upon intuition. (The
Turing test relies on a statistical summation of multiple people's
intuitions over many runs; the Searle-Penrose axis rely totally on
their intuition that intelligence is "something more" than massively
parallel information processing.)

> It is, granted, a short step from there to saying that the
> evidence of behavior *is* the only truth of the matter there is, 

It is in fact a huge leap: one, I gather, that some behaviorists
have made, but very few. I certainly have never encountered 
a behaviorist who would deny his or her own consciousness.

> I have often thought about the particular flaw that Dan'l identifies. 
> It seems to me that the class of sentient machines that you're saying 
> would be excluded would really be comparable, all in all, to 
> madmen.

H'mmm. No. I'm suggesting that its experiential world might be far 
more different from thine and mine than that of, say, a sociopath,
or even a catatonic: at least as different as the experiential world
of one of the "higher" animals. As far as I can tell, a sentient 
machine would operate from, at least some, entirely different 
_kinds_ of sensory input from humans, for example; nor would it
likely be bashed about by hormonally-induced "moods."

> be far more dangerous than any homicidal madman.

Only if it also had the ability to act upon its motivations. I see no reason
why such a machine should be granted, for example, arms or any other
manipulating appendage.

---

From: maru <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 15:27:14 +0000

That's not nearly certain:  Some think that emotions have a dual use: first,
to provide some a priori biases in the decision-making process, to speed 
things up
(this view derives from certain psychological disorders where emotions 
are largely stripped
out. The sufferers experienced great indecision, and often made very 
sub-optimal choices.)
and as a 'super-rational' evolutionarily developed strategy.  Ie, if 
everyone 'knows'
that you do not make rational choices, and are entirely willing to 
escalate, they will treat you
with deference. Sorta like the Russian or N. Korean nuclear strategies :)

~Maru

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

>--Blattid

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 16:30:05 +0000

>example) a machine capable of winning the Imitation Game

I don't entirely disagree, although I think, to be fair to Searle, he didn't 
intend it to be quite the desperation-position it seems to be. In answer to 
a rhetorical question you ask later on, "what other evidence is available?" 
Well, there's empirical evidence about the processes that we presume produce 
our consciousness, which interestingly *would* catch some subset of possible 
"weird" intelligences that would never be picked up by a Turing test, so you 
could say there is a return to Searle's angle there. The very obvious 
problem with this is that it is difficult/impossible to quantify which 
*aspects* of these processes are the ones that make them essential to 
intelligence. And nobody's seriously going to fall back on Searle's apparent 
presumption that, for lack of knowing any better, basically *all* of them 
are essential.

>the existence of _any_ intelligence, machine, animal,human,

I'm not really certain it's either of the above, which is why I'm pretty 
wishy-washy here. I think the "ought" can be framed any number of ways, 
which pretty much determines how you'll then choose to characterize it. I 
just have a vague suspicion that if you tried to get down to one essential 
formulation that sums up all the rest, you'd end up with either an aesthetic 
or ethical claim.

>a behaviorist who would deny his or her own consciousness.

Point taken, although I still think it is a relatively easy step to take 
(not that I find it desirable). The way has been prepared ahead of time by 
other epistemological arguments.

>likely be bashed about by hormonally-induced "moods."

I was using, or was trying to use, "mad" in a sort of abstract sense. 
"Madness" as that which lies outside the realm of intelligibility; incapable 
of being reduced or expressed logically in human terms. So your 
garden-variety crazyperson is only a little mad in this sense. A machine 
could do it much better.

>why such a machine should be granted, for example, arms or any other

The problem is in knowing just how many limitations would be enough to 
render such a machine harmless. It is, potentially, much much much smarter 
than any human meatbag.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 13:54:35 +0000

Turin wrote...

> intelligence.

First of all, to say this involves a set of a priori assumptions, not least of
which is that there are some "aspects of the processes" that make them
"essential (note this key word) to intelligence."  This in turn involves an 
interesting (to me, at any rate) set of as-of-not unverified (and to my 
thinking unlikely ever to be verified) assumptions about the _nature_ of 
"the processes that we presume produce our consciousness": specifically, 
that there exists some empirically-unique set of processes that etc.  But
as of now (30 Jan 05 @1.30PM PST) I know of no evidence that supports
this hypothesis and, in fact, conclude from evidence available-to-me at 
this time, the (empirically observable) "processes that produce our 
consciousness" occur in many contexts that do _not_ produce consciousness,
at least that we can tell. Rather, consciousness appears to occur as an
emergent phenomenon, and there is no a priori reason to assume that
other physical processes cannot produce similar emergent phenomena.
The only "reason" I can see to make such an assumption is the desire
to protect the ontologically privileged status of the human nervous system
or "soul."

(Incidentally, I brainfarted in my previous post and repeatedly used 
"epistemological" where I meant "ontological." Sorry for any confusion 
this may have caused.)

This (in brief) is why I regard the "Chinese room" thoughtexperiment 
as a desperation move taken by essentialilsts.

>  And nobody's seriously going to fall back on Searle's apparent

Searle does. And, for all I can tell, so does Penrose. Both seem to me
to be engaged in a holding battle for the ontologically unique essence
of "human mind." (In fact, I am inclined to agree with their position, but
on purely "emotional" grounds: I see not one bit of empirical evidence
to justify the position, and so believe it has no proper place in any
scientific debate.)

> >I don't think it's an ethical but an epistemological "ought," but I

Again, this should have been "ontological."

> formulation that sums up all the rest, you'd end up with either an aesthetic

H'mmmm. An interesting point. I definitely do agree that the ontological
"ought" here results in ethical issues - i.e., if we are compelled to 
conclude based on empirical evidence that this artificial system is
sentient-sapient-intelligent-conscious (pick your favorite magick word),
we have to consider our ethical stance toward it differently than if it
is "just" an artifact: we have to consider what ethically might allow or 
oblige us to regard something other than a human as a "person"
in resolving ethical questions. (Which in turn is one of the great
values of SF for us today: it doesn't resolve the questions, but it
at least gives us a sandbox in which to play with them until a real
situation arises, and so be better prepared to deal with them.)

> garden-variety crazyperson is only a little mad in this sense. A machine

Point taken and accepted.

> render such a machine harmless. It is, potentially, much much much smarter

That seems to me another presupposition. I don't assume that it _couldn't_
be, but, as long as we don't know how consciousness and intelligence 
actually arise in physical systems like brains, we don't know whether any
_c_-like limit to what a consciousness can do exists. There is a reasonable
(but not empirically testable at this time) argument to the effect
that a single
consciousness cannot handle more than some (undetermined) amount of 
"stuff" at a time without splitting into multiple consciousnesses.

--Dan'l

---

From: maru <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 14:08:20 +0000

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree here: there are good reasons to think 
that our current counsciousness
is fairly low on the intelligence possibilty-totem pole.  (I'm not 
talking about any 'c' -ish limit
on intelligence here: as long as current physics hold, intelligences are 
limited by the Berkenstein bound
and the Hubble volume.  O' course, the caveat is assuming that physics 
as we know it has no loopholes.
But then we're getting into deep anarchism, and I'd rather not go there. 
Too many transfinites.)
Consider: human brains are massively parallel. They have to be, since 
neurons are limited to 200 hz.
You could very easily bring that up several megs or gigahertz.  Without 
any splitting of counsciousness or anything-
subjectively the mind simply has more time.  You can vastly increase the 
amount of "stuff" (amount/time is whats relevant) and it makes no 
difference.
Caffeine speeds up the brain slightly, and that shows on IQ tests.  
Having been 'wired' a few time, I can say my counsciousness
felt as unitary as ever (Unless that's what each split section *wants* 
me to think!).  The only way I see greater intelligence
causing a split is if either the communications lag
is so great that each segment thinks enough on its own to be considered 
another counsciousness; or if there is so much
computing horsepower that it becomes feasible enough to literally devote 
a mind to each problem/task.

---

From: maru <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 14:48:29 +0000

Why must it be in the same way?  If over the range of all realistic 
outputs, it returns the same output, (which is feasible: Weiner spent 
considerable
time in his 'Cybernetics' and 'God & Golem' working out how functions 
can be generalized from a set of input.  Curiously, this leads to the 
corollary
that machines can reproduce- but that is a tangent.) then it doesn't 
matter.  If the algorithm followed was even more powerful then the human 
equivalent, would you disqualify it because it was deviating from the 
God-given human example?

~Maru

turin wrote:

>_______________________________________________
>Urth Mailing List
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>  
>

---

From: maru <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 14:51:16 +0000

And there's the crux of the issue: we can never get into the subjective 
experience of the counsciousness,
and asking does not suffice.  Any decent fake would of course protest 
that it felt counscious.
We can only see the seeming of the thing, never the 'ding an sich', the 
thing in itself.

~Maru

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:08:24 +0000

Whoa whoa hold up. I am definitely not Turin. Civet or Chris will do.

>"essential (note this key word) to intelligence."

I'll grant that there are a priori assumptions, although these need not be 
as extensive as you suggest. In the end not much is required other than the 
same general assumptions necessary for any causal inquiry. For example, we 
know that certain creatures (humans) seem to behave as if conscious, but if 
certain processes centered around the brain stop functioning they cease to 
behave as if conscious. This doesn't mean that there's no other way to be 
conscious, but it does suggest that the functions of those processes 
contribute toward human consciousness, and allows the suggestion that 
"relevantly similar" processes might also fulfill the same role.

This line of reasoning can lead to hasty generalization depending on the 
depth of your knowledge of what's really going on with consciousness. Which 
in our case is pitifully small. But my point was that this avenue could 
conceivably open up, and there's every reason to believe it will, at least 
to some extent.

>This in turn involves an
>this hypothesis

There is actually a great deal of empirical evidence surrounding you every 
day: how often do you see something that you believe is conscious without a 
brain on the average day? Of course, it takes little imagination to reason 
hypothetically that the weight of this empirical evidence is systematically 
skewed by whatever you want to call it - the evolutionary path of this 
planet, etc. The possibility, or even likelihood, of this logical 
possibility is what would lead you to disbelieve the hypothesis as you are 
thinking of it.

But really the a priori assumption here isn't so grandiose. The "aspects of 
processes" and such are functional descriptions rather than physical, and 
fixed more or less by definition (although, again, we have a very poor 
definition of consciousness, but we may get a better one later). As a loose 
example, to describe something as a "car" you need not specify the exact 
workings of its engine, but you do need something that *functions* as an 
"engine" that makes it go.

>to protect the ontologically privileged status of the human nervous system

I guess the best way to sum up here is that I wasn't talking about this, I 
was simply suggesting that advances in cognitive science could make it 
possible to identify other possible physical processes capable of producing 
consciousness, and that this might help identify consciousnesses that 
wouldn't necessarily be picked up by a test of intelligent behaviour. 
Nothing logically precludes it, not that any test based on such a method 
would ever be any more certain of its results than the Turing test would.

>"epistemological" where I meant "ontological." Sorry for any confusion

It sort of hung together as "epistemological", it didn't seem unreasonable. 
I don't know about "ontological", though. An ontological claim is a claim 
about what "is", and "is" claims are distinguished from "ought" claims 
essentially by definition. I don't think that there can actually *be* such a 
thing as an ontological "ought".

>to justify the position, and so believe it has no proper place in any

I am not familiar with Penrose. Searle is not quite so bald about it. 
There's this whole aspect of the Chinese Room thought experiment that we 
generally strip out (and thank god we do, because thinking about it makes me 
want to scream) where supposedly the Chinese Room is a purely syntactical 
calculator *with no semantics*, and if you accept this supposition then to 
make a long story short it gives Searle some ground to stand on. But there 
are 100 pretty good reasons not to accept this, and if you reject it then 
Searle will appear to be standing in the rain shouting "Intelligence is made 
by brains!" for no particular reason.

But yeah, he was probably motivated by the same emotional reasons you 
suggest. He's just not *quite* as sloppy a thinker as all that, or at least 
not sloppy in quite the same way.

>"stuff" at a time without splitting into multiple consciousnesses.

I'm willing to accept this as a hypothesis, but I wouldn't be willing to 
wager on it.

In any event here we are nicely back in the realm of sci-fi. I am thinking 
of cautionary tales along the lines of the beginning of Vinge's "Fire Upon 
the Deep". There's probably a better example, and I know I've read multiple 
stories that picked up on the idea, but that's the only one I can think of.

Chris

---

From: Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 04:50:20 +0000

>Civet wrote...

>generally strip out (and thank god we do, because thinking about it makes 
>me want to scream) where supposedly the Chinese Room is a purely 
>syntactical calculator *with no semantics*, and if you accept this 
>supposition then to make a long story short it gives Searle some ground to 
>stand on. But there are 100 pretty good reasons not to accept this, and if 
>you reject it then Searle will appear to be standing in the rain shouting 
>"Intelligence is made by brains!" for no particular reason.
>

Ok, forgive the ignorance of a physicist... I was under the impression that 
Searle's argument was intended to attack strong AI, in particular the idea 
that algorithms alone are sufficient to simulate consciousness without 
actually enquiring into the nature of the brain, and would therefore only be 
able to attack a Turing test based on the assumptions of strong AI.  I was 
also under the impression that AI research had moved on from that postion 
towards things like neural networks, which sound more likely to work 
(largely because they imitate the only conscious things we know of), IMO.

I'm probably wrong, though.

Iorwerth