PHILOSOPHY 100
(Ted Stolze)
Notes on James Rachels,
Problems from Philosophy
Chapter Seven:
Could a Machine Think?
Descartes on Thinking Machines
“It is indeed conceivable that a machine could be made
so that it could utter words, and even words appropriate
to the presence of physical acts or objects which cause
some change in its organs; as, for example, if it was
touched in some spot that it would ask what you wanted
to say to it; if in another, that it would cry that it was hurt,
and so on for similar things. But it could never modify
its phrases to reply to the sense of whatever was said in
its presence as even the most stupid men do.”
(From Discourse on Method, translated by Laurence J.
Lafleur [Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960 (1637)],
pp. 41-42.)
The Piecemeal Replacement
Argument
Objections to
the Piecemeal Replacement Argument
•
•
Computers can do only what they’re programmed
to do.
Tipping point
The Turing Test for AI
“The basic idea of the Turing Test is this: Take two humans and
a computer and put them in different rooms, allowing them to
communicate with one another only by typing messages. One
of the humans--the interrogator--will ask questions of the other
two and try to figure out, from their responses, which is the
person and which is the computer. The interrogator can ask
any question he likes--he can initiate discussions of poetry,
religion, love, or the latest fashions. He can try to trip up the
computer in any way he can. The computer, meanwhile, will
deny it is a machine, and it will not deliberately say anything to
give itself away. . . .
Turing argued that if a machine passes this test--if we can tell
no difference between its performance and that of another
person--then the machine must have the mental properties of a
person. After all, you take what I say to be proof that I am
conscious and intelligent. To be consistent, mustn’t you also
say that a computer giving the same verbal performance is
equally conscious and intelligent. Of course, the machine does
not look like a person, and it is made of different stuff. But so
what?” (pp. 92-93).
Alan Turing, 1912 - 1954
A Failed Turing Test:
The ELIZA Counseling Program
http://www.masswerk.at/eliza/
Passing the Turing Test?
Eugene Goostman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHL1Jp
PTle0&feature=youtu.be
John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument against
the Turing Test
“If Strong AI were true, then anybody should be able to acquire any cognitive
capacity just by implementing the computer program simulating that cognitive
capacity. Let us try this with Chinese. I do not, as a matter of fact,
understand any Chinese at all. I cannot even tell Chinese writing from
Japanese writing. But, we imagine that I am locked in a room with boxes full
of Chinese symbols, and I have a rule book, in effect, a computer that allows
me to answer questions put to me in Chinese. I receive symbols that,
unknown to me, are questions; I look up in the rule book what I am supposed
to do; I pick symbols from the boxes, manipulate them according to the rules
in the program, and hand out the required symbols, which are interpreted as
answers. We can suppose that I pass the Turing test for understanding
Chinese, but, all the same, I do not understand a word of Chinese. And if I do
not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the right computer
program, then neither does any other computer just on the basis of
implementing the program, because no program has anything that I do not
have.
You can see the difference between computation and real understanding if
you imagine what it is like for me also to answer questions in English.
Imagine that in the same room I am given questions in English, which I then
answer. From the outside my answers to the English and the Chinese
questions are equally good. I pass the Turing test for both. But from the
inside, there is a tremendous difference. What is the difference, exactly? In
English, I understand what the words mean, in Chinese I understand nothing.
In Chinese, I am just a computer.”
(From John Searle, Mind: A Brief Introduction [NY: Oxford, 2004], p. 90.)
John Searle, 1932 -
The Chinese Room
Thought Experiment
http://youtu.be/TryOC83PH1g
An Objection to
Searle’s Chinese Room Argument
• What more do you want?
Ray Kurzweil on the Coming AI
“Singularity”
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-reportvideos/381488/april-12-2011/ray-kurzweil
Noam Chomsky on the Singularity
as Science Fiction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG
4Zg8s