What is artificial intelligence, you ask?
It's the hottest and most talked about topic in the tech industry nowadays
Why, you ask?
Because who is the person tasked with coming to a strict conclusion about various ethical
issues and programming them into a machine?
Great question, but that's not what this post is about.
I'd like to preface this post by just putting it out there: I don't think an AI can ever be considered a mind, or "think in a manner indistinguishable from a human". However, that belief is based on humanity (as we know it) as not being a simulation, or if we are controlled by some other society or order, it's some other civilization composed of living organisms, in other words, not an order of machines, and humans having some definition of free will.
Given what we (think we) know about computers and machines in today's time, I do not think it's possible for a computer to be created by humans to challenge the uniqueness that is a human mind. I think the key words there are "to be created by humans".
I have many reasons for this thought. First, let's discuss the reasons given that
humans have free will and we are not living in a simulation.
I believe every being has a soul (that includes dogs). I also believe having a soul is
a requirement in the definition of a human mind.
To me, having a soul
means you have feelings, emotions, thoughts and aspirations... the immaterial
and random characteristics that
differentiate one unique being from another. We all think in different manners, we all
have different interests and ideas, we all have different rationales and different
mannerisms and different inexplicable draws and bonds to other unique people and
places and things.
I'd like to think there's more to souls than just that, some spiritual aspect that
most, if not all, humans have no understanding of.
I don't think that can be programmed. I don't think we have the ability to play God, especially since humans don't actually know what classifies a mind and/or soul. How do you go about programming something that you don't actually understand yourself? You can do research, test some theories, but that's beyond modern computer science and falls in the category of metaphysics. Though I personally think computer science is a philosophy, I don't think many computer scientists are trained to test metaphysical hypotheses. Even then, I think understanding souls and how to recreate one is beyond the span of any human intelligence (which is kinda necessary for a human to code one).
If we are living in a simulation, and I am being controlled by some other-worldly being, I still don't think an AI can be created to think completely indistinguishably from a human. Why? It literally explains itself! If we don't understand how our world works and how humans are actually humans, sentient and everything, then how tf can we program a machine to think like a human? Additionally, I also don't think it's possible for machines to be simulating our reality. I think it requires a mind to be able to think and plan such a simulation. I do not reject that there could some other life form whose society is far more advanced than our own, but I do not think that that changes the requirement of the ability to think, and therefore the requirement of a mind and a soul.
REMOVED PARAGRAPH Some people do not respect their privileges.
NOTE This is not angry font. tf does that mean.
Notice, I do not reject the notion that life as we know it is just a simulation. However, I do reject the idea that we are a simulation created by non-sentient forms.
The original Turing Test wasn’t intended for that, but rather, for deciding whether a machine can be considered to think in a manner indistinguishable from a human - and that, even Turing himself discerned, depends on which questions you ask.
This yawning chasm of understanding leads to the second big problem: there is no accepted theory of mind that describes what “thought” actually is.
This underlying quandary—attempting to define “thought”—is sometimes referred to as the hard problem, and the results of understanding it are called strong AI. People engaged in commercial AI remain sceptical that it will be resolved any time soon, or that it is necessary or even desirable to do for any practical benefits.
And if someone somewhere created our simulation, would that make this entity God? “We in this universe can create simulated worlds and there’s nothing remotely spooky about that,” Chalmers said. “Our creator isn’t especially spooky, it’s just some teenage hacker in the next universe up.” Turn the tables, and we are essentially gods over our own computer creations. “We don’t think of ourselves as deities when we program Mario, even though we have power over how high Mario jumps,” Tyson said. “There’s no reason to think they’re all-powerful just because they control everything we do.”