I listened to a great episode of Philosophy Bites the other day, David Chalmers was discussing the singularity and how it may come about. He proposed two ways in which it might happen:
1. We are able to create a computer which is at least our intellectual equal, or;
2. We are able to transfer our own minds to a computer.
If the first way happens, it should be fairly easy to tell; all we have to do is give the computer a problem which humans haven’t been able to solve or else ask it to design a computer more powerful than itself. If it can succeed in this latter task, that’s the very definition of the singularity. But there is so much more to the mind than pure intelligence – language, thought, consciousness, creativity, emotion…
We can already program computers that are coming close to understanding natural language, although we do have quite a ways to go with semantics. Last night I searched on Google for ‘One and One’, the hosting company, and the first result I got was ‘one and one = two’. The processing that computers do could be characterised as thinking, and one could argue that they are already able to create original works of art. Not convinced? Then check this out – http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/11/david-cope-computer-composer
Consciousness is an insoluble problem. Even if a highly advanced computer told us that it was conscious, and all the proofs we could devise seemed to come back affirmative, we could still never know for sure that it was conscious. There is no-way for any of us to know if anyone else is conscious. I may belief you are because you look like the same kind of thing I am, and act in ways I would expect a conscious and self-aware being to act, but the ‘internal’, or private nature of the mind means that we can only ever know for sure that we ourselves are conscious.
Finally, we have emotion; and for me this is the big tripping point for a computer possessing mind. We philosophers have made a bit of a rod for our own backs by making such a big thing of the distinction between mind and body, but in understanding the nature of our emotions we show how the two are intimately linked, and why I doubt that the mind could exist without the body.
Fear is the example most often used, so stop for a second and consider what fear is, what happens when you are afraid? Adrenaline floods your body getting ready for a flight or fight, your pulse rate shoots up, your muscles tense, perhaps you mentally relive past experiences of the same situation, all the others times you’ve been stung possibly, and you worry about what may happen, about the pain of being stung again. What is ‘fear’ without those physiological responses? Is there some emotional core that could be said to exist which doesn’t in some way depend on the body?
It’s hard to imagine it. One could argue that this isn’t a deal breaker, that an artificial mind could exist in an emotionless state of pure logic, but we have some experience of this. There are people who have suffered brain damage which has left them almost totally without emotion, and what we find is that they are crippled by indecision. Even simple tasks like choosing a cereal in a supermarket becomes impossible because without emotion or desire there is nothing to chose between them all; they are left standing in the aisles reading the boxes in minute detail trying to find some little thing to separate them.
There are other ways our bodies and minds are intimately linked also, think of how much we are all driven by our sexual desires. It could be argued that everything we do is a response to the desire to either eat or mate. What would motivate an artificial mind?
Some of these problems could perhaps be mitigated if we go down the second route, transferring our minds and consciousness to computers, and we do have some experience of the mind existing, essentially, without a body – people who have lost almost total use of their bodies for one reason or another, Professor Stephen Hawking comes notably to mind. Such people, however, are rare, and Prof. Hawking’s genius lies not in his intellect (almost anyone can achieve greatness in a given specialism, just spend around 10,000 hours at it!) but in his personality. When he was struck down with motor neurone disease he chose not to give up but to fight on as best he could and concentrate on what he could do. That particular character trait is extremely rare, and it’s why I think so few of us would be able to go on existing as a disembodied mind.
Perhaps the solution then, is to create simulated or artificial bodies also.
Some more interesting art from around Newcastle, this one was found between two buildings where no-one will see it.
I'm 29, Scottish, but live in Newcastle, and I work in ICT.
