🚀 go-pugleaf

bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:

> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
> 
>    > Why is it then that when I suggest that functional organization  
>    > (or, more generally, "how it works") should count, no one on the
>    > anti-Searle side says they agree?
> 
> The distinction is between "It thinks" and "It thinks like a human".
> I can't imagine anything passing the Turing Test that I wouldn't give
> credit for thinking, regardless of its functional organization.  On
> the other hand, I wouldn't say "It thinks like a human" unless it had
> the same functional organization as a human, even if it were
> behaviorally indistinguishable.
> 
> 	-- Bill


      Which brings up the question of why one would want to attempt
the categorization of a machine as either conscious or not conscious.
Obviously a machine is what it is. The only question with regard to
it is _what is it good for_. What's laughable about this whole debate
(the A.I. debate) is that any attempt to make a machine conscious in
the usual sense would have to include giving it "a will of its own".
Nothing but the apparent possession of an ego will ever convince anyone
that a machine is "conscious". The possession of an ego, which is to
say a unified and self-serving perspective, would (no matter how it
was implemented) inevitably -- to the extent that it existed in fact --
make the computer _less useful_.

     This seems entirely self-evident to me. Being a long-time programmer
myself, and being an extreme advocate of the development of computers
for the augmentation of _human_ intellectual powers, I find the idea
of scientists sitting around trying to get a computer NOT TO DO WHAT
THEY WANT pretty funny! I like to imagine a competition between two
societies: one where they try to build intelligent computers, and the
other where they try to build intelligent people using computers. Ha-ha.

     Really the strong AI position arises out of the religious impulse.
They want to discover the principle which will allow them to duck
the responsibility for everything from then on: "Hey, the computer 
told me to do it!"

      John E. Snodgrass [snodgras@cyber.net]

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