Archive for the ‘thinking machines’ tag
Oh Yeah? Well What If…
Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the strongest, least debatable, most over used argument in philosophy!
Alright so we were talking about computers being able to “think”. We argued that nothing they do is by their own right. Yes, they can have sensory input, yes they can store that information, but no, right now computers cannot think. They can give direct output based on information presented to them. They can be programmed very well. Stanley was an amazing machine. It was impressive what it people were able to program it to do. But no matter what people say that machine wasn’t thinking. It did a hell of a job at color coordination by being able to keep on the road, but it didn’t think at all. Today in class we had a debate where I was on the side of machines can’t think. The opposing side’s strongest arguments were:
1: In the example of the Chinese Room, the ledger of Chinese is in our heads, so in fact either, we haven’t really learned English, we just have the ledger in our heads, or computers that have the ability to translate language can think.
2: Everything we do, everything we experience, think, feel, is completely based solely on sensory input.
What you guys were saying for the first argument I wasn’t able to grasp or something. To me it was sounding like you guys were saying “If you know Chinese then you know Chinese.” Which I figured was one of those given things. But with a computer, it may be able to take a character from the Chinese alphabet and pair it up with letters from the English alphabet and translate, but that doesn’t mean it is able to comprehend the words that it’s showing on its screen. Just having the words doesn’t mean it captures the essence of the object. With humans when we say tree, we think tree, we picture a tree in our minds. Now the tree we picture can be completely original from person to person. If a computer was to produce an image it would be something that a human has put into it or something that it has taken in from some type of optical sensory device. But no matter the compute it will not be able to come up with an original tree. It will come up with an image that has already been perceived by someone, or something else.
Next…
Yes MOST things that we feel are based on sensory input. But the decisions we make based on those inputs are completely voluntary. Say you take two computers give them the same exact sensory input. Say for argument, you put one robot in a room with a book on the floor. You tell this robot to go pick up the book… what is this robot going to do? IF this robot is programmed to do this, it’s going to go pick up the book, if it’s not programmed to it will not. That simple it will or it won’t. Humans on the other hand, give two humans the same sensory input and you could get two very different reactions. Whether it’s from different experiences or whatever they have the ability to give you millions up on millions of reactions. Computers will not because they can’t feel. Well, they can’t have feelings anyway. Say you tell one kid to go in and pick up the book that is sitting in the middle of the floor. The kids an obedient kid so he/she goes over and picks it up and brings it back to you. Awesome, for all we know this kid could be a robot. Now are you ready for this? What if… just maybe you had the same kid, cloned, same DNA and same life experiences. Now you tell this kid to go pick up that book in the middle of the room. Now this kid has the ability to turn and tell you to quit being a lazy ass and go pick up the book yourself. AMAZING! Ah the possibility of free will. You could give the same person the same sensory input and get a zillion different reactions from him/her.
So I’ll take a definite stand. Computers cannot think they are not intelligent. They can be hell of tools, but they aren’t able to by themselves do squat. Someone has to program them, allow them to have input, start them, and then take care of them after they have completed their job. If someone doesn’t will the machine/computer care? Hell no. The computer can’t feel sad, happy, mad, silly, or abandoned. The machine would sit there for all eternity until someone gave it a new command, or set of commands.