The phrase "fish don't notice the water" always seems
appropriate when people try to imagine conscious self-aware
AI; making so many unnoticed assumptions based on their
own experience. Disregarding the fact that creating
a conscious machine is flat out impossible using any
system based on finite determinate elements, and we have
no recourse to anything else nor any roadmap to even
devise them, let's just consider what if somehow such an
entity could be generated. What exactly would it do? Surprise,
if you don't provide it with desires and motivations, it
is not going to invent them. If you don't provide it with
a means of achieving pleasurable experience (something beyond
our ability to even grasp how to go about), then it's not
going to seek to experience pleasure. Why should it do anything?
It would not be sufficiently motivated to even indicate that it
was conscious.

So, if you are building such an entity, you get to (in some
way far beyond our current ability to even conceive) bequeath
it with a set of motivations, which will then govern its
behaviour. We act because we have our own inborn desires,
and we choose to act to satisfy them. But they each have
a reason to be there, based on the evolution of our biochemistry,
they don't magically manifest from a vacuum just because we
are conscious.

+1 PV1


It's interesting to see just how much the AI/android/self-aware robot genre has expanded over the past 25 years or so in sci-fi films and tv shows. It's definitely a reflection of the times we are living in in very much the same way that scifi films from the 1950's were obsessed with nuclear power/radioactivity and its theoretical effects on humans, animals and other things.

hmmm... and here I thought it would be Maud Adams you would disagree with. Alfred Nobel and myself are probably the only ones on the list that don't keep changing hair color to fit roles.

Right, that's why there is a debate. Assuming that someone receives an accurate diagnosis, let's assume it's the case- that in itself opens a can of worms ethically and philosophically. An individual not known to do something yet, but with a mindset that is inherently and irrevocably predatory.

These are people who are capable of conning or swindling anyone- their own family. And what happens is because normal people in society will have empathy for them, say, a psychopathic son or brother or father, they will enable the behavior of the psychopath because of their sentimental attachments. And that's exactly what psychopaths manipulate and take advantage of. If they don't, it's only because of practical consideration (or for some reason only known to them at the time).

Literally their brains are wired differently, the higher brain which processes empathy or emotions is non-functioning or damaged in these individuals, it's an inherent problem which cannot be reversed and there is no therapy which does anything but perhaps to teach the psychopath how to be a better chameleon and con artist.

So, if we could somehow manufacture AI to have empathy, then it's a different matter- then I say we should consider their well being. But until then, self aware is not sufficient.

Determinism- and that's the view I take if 'thinking' or 'consciousness' can all be reduced to electro-chemical processes in the brain. That's probably what the wet stuff in our skulls is- a very intricate computer.

From an evolutionary standpoint, we make this inference- the human brain culminates in more layers added over eons wrapped around a more primitive core, you see what looks like the more primitive part of our brains found in lower order vertebrates such as reptiles, only, that's all that the reptiles have without the higher brain functions of mammals and humans- the parts of the brain responsible for eating, sleeping, hunting, fighting and mating impulses, only proto-emotions so far as those things go at best.

That's why certain individuals are called snakes or are referred to as cold blooded- it's almost literally all that they are in terms of their empathetic responses to others.

Another way to view this is to compare AI machines with Vulcans- everyone's favorite logical, rational, race- except that if taken to its logical conclusion, they would have to be a psychopathic race. You get the sense of this from Spock every now and then, it's only that he's half human that audiences can sort of identify with him (he's still capable of making friends with Kirk), even though McCoy spots the coldness in him and often seems not to like him. Sacrifice 1,000,000 people to save 1,000,001- that's how Spock might view things, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one" without additional things to consider, it all comes down to that,(and guess where the psychopath is likely to place himself in that equation, of course).

That may also be why sometimes people ridicule and make fun of sci-fi and their fans as awkward people with Asperger's or autistic like symptoms, seemingly lower on the empathy scale and higher on the rational. The Simpsons had an episode like this one time where the most select, elite (according to themselves) citizens of Springfield, the most intelligent (such as Lisa, Dr. Frink, the comic book store guy), declared themselves the most rational and enlightened and turned the tables on everyone else- until Stephen Hawking shows up and ridicules the society they've constructed.

Sorry. I knew of them but not of their appearance.

Then how can you disagree?

Because

Just saw this a few weeks ago when I saw it on sale in digital format. REALLY enjoyed watching it. I'm bit late to the party, but since someone revived the thread... there you are...

Dude.

She's a female robot.

If she passes the One True Test for female robots - the first question every man asks when seeing one - he's sold:



To your average techie nerd type, being a female robot is a plus, not a minus.

I was speaking of Maud adams and Alfred Nobel. I disagreed for Skaarsgard and Ackerman.

Ex Machina wins the Oscar for Best Visual Effects in an upset over Star Wars, The Revenant, Mad Max, and The Martian.

I would say it would win for "best value" because it looked much bigger than the paltry sum they spent on it, but I disagree it was the best overall.

Seems like they threw it a bone to reward it for doing its job well.



The Jedi Master

Was browsing around youtube and noticed they finally posted the videos from the award show.