Introduction

GNM2209

Intelligent Machine and Human Beings

Welcome to the Hot Thinking Pot

• Just take a look at terms for future intelligent machines:– AIs, Cybermind, cyberlife, cyberconsciousness,

virtual humanity, virtual personality, cyborg, superintelligent machines, ASI (artificial super intelligence), AGI (artificial general intelligence), cognitive computing, singularity, mindware, mindclone, mind-file, mind-uploading, mind-transferring, transhuman, teleport, whole brain emulation, non-brain platform, non-biological substrate, post-biological life, spiritual machine, …

Recent Books (a)

• <Intelligence Unbound – The future of uploaded and machine minds>, 2014

• <Virtually Human: The promise – and the peril – of digital immortality>, 2014

• <Our Final Invention – Artificial intelligence and the end of the human era>, 2013

Recent Books (b)

• <Smarter than Us – The rise of machine intelligence>, 2014

• <Cognitive Computing – A brief guide for game changer>, 2014

• <How to Create a Mind – the secret of human thought revealed>, 2012

Recent Books (c)

• <Artificial intelligence Revolution – Will artificial intelligence serve us or replace us?>, 2013

• <The Future of the Mind – The scientific quest of understand, enhance, and empower the mind>, 2014

• <Superintelligence – Paths, Dangers, Strategies>, 2014

International Conference ICAART Jan.10-12, 2015

• The starting panel of the conference: “AI and the End of Humanity?”

• My speech at the conference: “Self-consciousness cannot be programmed”

Scientists’ Letter on Jan. 12, 2015

• Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and hundreds of top scientists and technology leaders signed an open letter warning the potential dangers of developing artificial intelligence (AI).

• https://uk.news.yahoo.com/dont-let-artificial-intelligence-over-top-scientists-warn-144431717.html?.tsrc=warhol#1rwTnHi

• http://futureoflife.org/misc/open_letter

•

Unprecedented 2 Centuries

• Human beings achieved terrific progress in science and technology in the 19th and 20th centuries in the spectrum of 6,000 years of human civilization history,

A Generation of Unprecedented Luck

• Comparing to our predecessors, we are the most fortunate generation(s).

• Thinking of our descendants, we are possibly the most fortunate generation(s).

A Generation of Unprecedented Responsibility

• Human has generated wealth and happiness, as well as problems that threat ourselves and our offspring.

• Technology provides individuals with more power of destruction.

A Blade of Two Edges

• Many technologies are characterized with potentials of both construction and destruction.

Computer Era

• The first industrial revolution was symbolized by flying shuttle and steam engine.

• The second industrial revolution is symbolized by computer.

Extension of Our Brain

• Machine tools are extension of our muscles.

• Computers are extension of our brains.

• Robots are extension of our brains and muscles.

Triumphing and Prevailing of Computers

• Personal computer

• Internet

• Super computers

• Built-in computer in equipment

Inescapable Impacts

• Computers are ubiquitous.

• Computers are penetrating to our daily life.

Machines

• A machine is a mechanism that is composed of parts and components and is able to fulfill designated jobs.

Make Inflexible Machine Flexible

• One distinct characteristic of human intelligence is flexibility.

• Computer and machine are not flexible.

• Artificial intelligence is the study to make inflexible machine flexible.

At present,Benefits and Challenges

• Benefits computers have brought to us:

• Challenges computers have brought to us:

In Future,Opportunities and Threats

• Opportunities:

• Threats:

In General: Turn Threats into Challenges

• The computer era is coming unstoppable.

• Understand the opportunities, benefits, and threats.

• Take opportunities, harness benefits, and turn threats into challenges.

• But, …

How Intelligent Can a Computer Be?

• Is it possible to have a machine smarter than humans?

• Can a machine be conscious, emotional, and spiritual?

• Does machine intelligence have a limit?

If Computers Are as Smart as We Are, then …

• If machine intelligence = human intelligence, then machine intelligence > human intelligence. Is it true?

• Is it a blessing or a threat to have machines as intelligent as we are?

• Are we making a species which is going out of our control?

Dualism vs. Monism

• Dualism:– Mind is something quite separate from,

and deeply from, the physical world.

• Monism:– Mind emerges as nothing but the playing

out of ordinary physical states and processes in the familiar physical world

Ray Kurzweil

• “I set the date … as 2045. The nonbiological intelligence created in that year will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.”

• “By the late 2020, we will … create nonbiological systems that match and exceed the complexity and subtlety of humans, including our emotional intelligence.”

• From his book <The singularity is near>, 2005

We Can, Why Not Silicon?

• How could a device made of silicon be conscious? How could it feel pain, joy, fear, pleasure, and foreboding? It certainly seems unlikely that such exotic capacities should flourish in such an unusual silicon setting. But a moment’s reflection should convince you that it is equally amazing that such capacities should show up in carbon-based meat …

- Andy Clark, 2001

G. Gilder & J. Richards

• “If we’re a carbon-based, complex, computational, collocation of atoms, and we’re conscious, then why wouldn’t the same be true for a sufficiently complex silicon-based computer?”

• From their book <Are we spiritual machine?> 2002

Bill Joy’s Warning

• How soon could such an intelligent robot be built? The coming advances in computing power seem to make it possible by 2030. And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.

• Researches leading to the danger should be relinquished

- From “Why the future doesn’t need us”

2000, Wired magazine

T. Kaczynski’s Anxiety

• If trends continue and scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them, … the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.”

- Unabomber’s manifesto, 1995

Jeff Hawkins

• Can computers be intelligent? For decades, scientists in the field of artificial intelligence have claimed that computers will be intelligent when they are powerful enough. I don’t think so, … Brains and computers do fundamentally different things.

• From his book <On Intelligence>, 2004

Roger Penrose

• I do my best to express, in a dispassionate way, my scientific reasons for disbelieving electronic computers would be capable of consciousness and arguing that the conscious minds can find no home within our present-day scientific world-view.”

• From his book <The emperor’s new mind> 1999

Douglas R. Hofstadter• “Will emotions be explicitly programmed

into a machine? No. That is ridiculous. Any direct simulation of emotions cannot approach the complexity of human emotions, which arise indirectly from the organization of our minds. Programs or machines will acquire emotions in the same way: as by-products of their structure, of the way in which they are organized – not by direct programming.”

• From his book < Godel, Escher, Bach>, 1999

John Searle

• Computer programs are codes. They are not intelligence.

Topics of this Class

• Introduction: - Computer, impact on us now and future.

• Computer and AI basis– Computer hardware, software, algorithm– Artificial intelligence

• Subjects, Turing machine, Turing test

• Computer and us, - now and future

Goals of this Class

• Learning:– Knowledge about computers, artificial

intelligence, and their development.

• Thinking:– Creatively, maybe fictionally, but

critically, logically, scientifically, fairmindedly, and philosophically.

Approach of this Class

• Open to arguments, possibly head-on, on various issues on machine and human being through reading articles, videos, lectures, and discussions.

• By savoring the arguments, turning them over and taking them apart, we expect to come up with insights into the destiny of human and machine, opportunity and threat.

• Answers may not be “correct” or “wrong”, but they must be “good”.

Going on Two Parallel Lines

• Readings – Lectures / Videos – Homework – Quizzes– Covering themes of this course

• Thought labs– Touching key concepts and techniques in

computer intelligence