To celebrate the fact that it was Alan Turing's hundredth birthday yesterday, I feel it is time to ask a question he asked. Can machines think? He developed the Turing Test to find that out, but I don't quite agree with it. Just because a machine can hold up a constant stream of pretense, does that mean it can think?
I think it proves they can adapt but thinking is a strong word. I doubt thy can think however ill look into this for more insight.
I agree. If a computer passed the Turing Test merely by selecting an answer from a million other answers programmed for different circumstances, rather than actually thinking about an appropriate response, what then? So far no computer has been able to pass the Turing Test, but if one did I don't think that would convince me it is capable of thought for the above reason.
And HAL9000, the Geth, Mother, those robots in The Matrix, and Necrons in warhammer 40,000. Hell, all these films, books and games are starting to prove my signature correct.
I'm pretty sure HAL and Mother were just following their programming, and Necrons used to be a sentient race, and some of them still maintain consciousness from their past lives. Anyway, I agree, Turing test and whatnot.
Yes. Yes they are. As quoted from 2001 A Space Odyssey (the book) 'In some circumstances sometimes it's far better to have a button that lets you know it has done something with a brief, satisfying click.' If HAL9000 had followed it's programming to the point, it would not have attempted to kill the two men. It only did that because it's artificial intelligence allowed it to change itself to suit the mission how he it saw fit. As for mother, well, I don't know. It doesn't tell you if it is self aware or not. Bad example. Necrons? They are being controlled by machinery that can think for itself, it is killing people, how does the fact that they used to be alive change anything? Anyway, what if we looked at it from a different perspective. Modern computers can make a choice between two possible actions. It can weigh the positives and negatives of each one and choose for itself. Is that not intelligence in it's own right?
Thats percentages of success, if a computer was programmed to fail it would choose the worse objective, its programming combined with succesive variables, that only proves that computers are situational not sentient.
These malevolent god-like beings of yours are controlling these machines through machinery. That is why they are called machines. Didn't you say yourself that they were originally a perfectly organic race? So they are being controlled.
They're not physically controlled by an artificial intelligence though. Therefore they are not applicable to this whole argument.
You can't say whether computers can think, or will be able to think, until we truly understand thinking. And so far, I'm not convinced we do.
I said we don't truly understand how thinking works, which we don't. We know how to do it, obviously, but we don't understand properly how we do it.
Searle's Chinese Room Imagine you are in a room. A Chinese room. There is one door, the only way in or out. In this door there are two holes, the lower one is marked 'In' and the other marked 'Out.' Information is fed to you through the 'In' hole in Chinese. You have no idea what any of the symbols mean or represent, they mean nothing to you. Along the walls of the room there are many rule-books in your own tongue that help you manipulate the information and process it. The books do not help you understand the symbols, only help you with your given task. Once you have completed the task, you will feed the information through the hole marked 'Out.' You are using guides to manipulate information you do not comprehend, people on the outside of the room could quite easily take you for a native Chinese speaker but even after doing this a thousand times you will learn absolutely nothing. Are you thinking?
