In Its Image. Computer That might prevent death in the future!

reply to post by KaginD


wow, I like it.

I am a software dev myself and have used the most basic style of neural networks in some problem solving tasks. Although I always had the hunch that noise driving a neural network was involved in the process of "dreaming" I would not have come to most of the conclusions presented here, especially that noise plays a role in pretty much *all* of the creative process, not only dreaming.

Thanks!

-rrr

These "creativity machines" are supposedly conscious, can eventually match and surpass the human mind, and yet the scientists working on them don't question the morality of enslaving these conscious machines, and doing experiments on them? Oh well, maybe the machines will become politically active and demand rights some day.

Originally posted by _Phoenix_
Combining ourselves with technology is highly possible, but transfering ourselves to another object would not make any sense, for example look at cloning, you could create a copy of yourself, but the other person will live on as another being if you die.

For nano technology to make us immortal it would have to somehow stop the natural degredation that happens as cells reproduce anyway, the reason our bodies die of old age in the first place...

Originally posted by Distractions4Nothing
These "creativity machines" are supposedly conscious, can eventually match and surpass the human mind, and yet the scientists working on them don't question the morality of enslaving these conscious machines, and doing experiments on them? Oh well, maybe the machines will become politically active and demand rights some day.

I don;t recall any claims of it being 'concious'? If there were any then I'd have to strongly disgree. See my earlier post about conciousness for why...

Originally posted by Vector J

Originally posted by _Phoenix_
Combining ourselves with technology is highly possible, but transfering ourselves to another object would not make any sense, for example look at cloning, you could create a copy of yourself, but the other person will live on as another being if you die.

For nano technology to make us immortal it would have to somehow stop the natural degredation that happens as cells reproduce anyway, the reason our bodies die of old age in the first place...

Well the theory is that nanotechnology can work at molecule level, so many new possibilities can come from that.

What I was asking was more the fact that transfering yourself to a computer would not really work, the computer would live on as you, but you will still exist in your human body, so when you die, the computer lives on as someone separate,or if the computer dies you still live on.



[edit on 31-8-2008 by _Phoenix_]

Forget Obama or McCain.

Vote Creativity Machine '08!

Change that's real.

The biggest problem with these people is they believe they've answered all the questions about what IT is when in fact they haven't answered anything important. If these devices achieve consciousness-- and I'm not sure how you'd prove it other than their subject reporting-- it still doesn't explain it. In essence question space just got bigger.

Now, if that made sense to you...congratulations!

I've managed to write a creative machine myself which within seconds had created an actually physical machine made up of a box and some yogurt cartons (obviously the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts) this thing whirled for a few seconds then came to this conclusion, it had no other external input that the video given and a copy of Horse and rider 86



I'm just lost for words on the remarkable real world connection

Originally posted by _Phoenix_
What I was asking was more the fact that transfering yourself to a computer would not really work, the computer would live on as you, but you will still exist in your human body, so when you die, the computer lives on as someone separate,or if the computer dies you still live on.
[edit on 31-8-2008 by _Phoenix_]

I'm with you on that one. You might be able to transfer a copy of your mind into a machine, but it wouldn;t be you, just a copy. Though if somehow soulds are linked to minds, prehaps when your biological body dies, the soul switches to your mind in the machince, but that just doesn;t sound right. The guy in the vid seems to be of the opinon that you merge your brain with the machnie to merge your minds, and that when your biological side dies, your mind living on as part of the machine is the same as you living forever. I wonder if he believs in the existence of souls...

I just can't wait for virtual reality with highly advanced A.I, that would be some serious fun!!

Also robots! , That clean your house, robot maid!

[edit on 31-8-2008 by _Phoenix_]

Originally posted by Vector J


I'm with you on that one. You might be able to transfer a copy of your mind into a machine, but it wouldn;t be you, just a copy. Though if somehow soulds are linked to minds, prehaps when your biological body dies, the soul switches to your mind in the machince, but that just doesn;t sound right. The guy in the vid seems to be of the opinon that you merge your brain with the machnie to merge your minds, and that when your biological side dies, your mind living on as part of the machine is the same as you living forever. I wonder if he believs in the existence of souls...

Yes this is exactly what I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. There really is a missing link, could it really be the soul?

Anyway we are living in times of change, the future is now, so I can't wait for all the great inventions, especially A.I in robots, computers, virtual reality etc. Who knows they might learn wisdom we never thought about.



[edit on 31-8-2008 by _Phoenix_]

Originally posted by Vector J
reply to post by spitefulgod

 

That I'll agree on, the slagging off of people who write gait algorithms was rather harsh. I'd be interested to see how fast it can make a bipedal robot move, which, in my opnion is more of a challenge than an insectoid layout (but I might be wrong about that)...

I've always thought the boston dynamics robot (shown below) and the Sony Qrio (shown even more below) have some amazing gait routines

Originally posted by Vector J

I don;t recall any claims of it being 'concious'? If there were any then I'd have to strongly disgree. See my earlier post about conciousness for why...

The problem with discussing whether or not something other than yourself is conscious is that it requires faith. Sometimes a lot and sometimes only a little.

It is relatively easy to believe that another fellow human being is conscious. We have neurons in our heads that allow feelings of empathy, and then, it takes very little trust to recognize that, because you think, therefore you "are" then, so does the other person. The familiarity of another person enables these feelings. If you were to merely read text coming from a window, those feelings are slightly diminished. At some point a computer could very well be writing this very text and you would not know the difference. If it was a face to face conversation your feelings of human empathy take over and you are certain that somebody else is conscious.

A machine does not elicit those emotions in us, because of the lack of a human looking body and humanish thought process and dialog. If such a machine was made that appeared to us physically undistinguishable from a person, then we would naturally conclude it is conscious. But the point is, whatever one person decides about another "entity" (person or not) level of consciousness, has nothing to do with the "reality" of that subjective "experience" to the other entity.

Whatever our strong opinions may be as to whether machines are really conscious or not, we have to recognize that we are talking about matters that are by their lack of definition, impossible to resolve. Just like you will never know if my perception of red is different from yours and I just happen to call it red because of social conditioning, so you can never tell if my subjective experience of consciousness is any more "real" than yours. And even harder to know from a computer.

Just like we will never know if somebody other than ourselves is conscious, although we feel a very strong hunch that they are in fact as conscious as ourselves, we do not have a way of knowing whether a machine is conscious, and there is nothing to support the phenomenon of empathy in the case of a machine.

Another example of this is how easy it is for us to kill and eat creatures that are remarkably different from ourselves. We are much less inclined to eat creatures that we keep as pets, and we are very disinclined to kill and eat other people.

The appearance of humanity is all we have going to decide whether or not something else is conscious.

In the end, when dealing with questions of morality with machine intelligences, we will eventually decide based on the machines ability to appeal to our empathy: If the machines themselves can make a good case for their own consciousness and recognition, whether by arguing with us, or by having the strength to defend themselves, or cry and scream when hurt, then we will treat them like "conscious entities". If they don't scream and cry when unplugged, we will do it with no remorse, for better or worse, just like we kill a fish and feel little or no remorse.

-rrr

reply to post by rickyrrr


Excellent post. It also very much comes down to what we define conciousness to actually be, and there is no current agreed answer to that. In neuroscience we can look at the patterns of activity between the neurons, but we can';t say 'ahah! Thats conciousness!'. Linking experience and emotions, thoguhts and memories in a coherent way that can describe conciousness hasn't, and possible can't, be done. There are ideas, some better than others, but still no actual answers. And if we can't narrow down what conciousness is in humans, how do we apply it to anything else?...

Morning All,

Love the vid, nice find KaginD. I personaly love the idea of living in a machine, or better, in a whole network. But this is not all I wanted to say about this video.


I THINK THIS SCREEMS BORG




Hope when I fully transfer into the machine Seven Of Nine is still part of the collective.

reply to post by manicmark


Hummm, the thing about a borg is that you can mess around with it while it's in a regenerative cycle.

Originally posted by Vector J
reply to post by rickyrrr

 

It also very much comes down to what we define conciousness to actually be, and there is no current agreed answer to that.

That is very true and a proper appraisal. What it is runs all over the map and yet is intuitive to grasp subjectively.

What gets discussed, including here are the easy questions and easy answers but there are levels of consideration beyond those. Basing ones thinking on one's own subjective sense of it leads into places for which language hasn't matured enough for expression of the ideas-- it is doubful it could since because the nature of the awareness isn't shared and communicating meaning requires some common experience. It eludes itself.

reply to post by Vector J


Agree.

The undecidability of consciousness, or put another way, the "realness" of subjective experience, by its very definition, is what often drives people who study the matter to the belief of either "everything is conscious" or "nothing is conscious". Of course, the belief in a new entity, "the soul" can also be used to account for consciousness, but that introduces a new entity (as of yet untestable) and is not very occam razorish.

The thought experiments of teleportation, dupplication of ones particles (teleportation without destruction of the original) and the thought experiment of gradual replacement of each of your components, can be useful, for, even as they don't provide any final answers, they clearly expose the undecidability of the matter.

Most of us would conclude that getting in a teleporter is death followed by the creation of a "new" person just like us. I for one would be scared to death to get into a teleporter if one existed, no matter how well it was demonstrated that it "works"

Most of us consider the cloning to produce a new person, undistinguishable from ourselves, until the instant that it's history is just a tiny bit different, then it's somebody different from that point forward.

And the thought experiment of gradual replacement, well, most of us have no choice but to accept that, indeed, after all your particles are replaced one by one, you are still "yourself"; as this is in fact taking place every seven years for every human: our cells are replaced gradually, and those cells that are not replaced exchange matter gradually.

Reminds me of another thought experiment: are you still "yourself" after you wake up from sleep? and what if you had been replaced in the night by an identical copy, how would you know, really know?

-rrr

reply to post by rickyrrr


Some great thoughts there ricky.

On the gradual replacement theory, what if the gradual replacement is of parts not your own, when do you stop being you? It's like transplants, they will bever be your cells, all you are doing is feeding part of somebody else what it needs to survive to help you survive or go about your daily tasks. Can you ever consider that to be part of you?

So if you merge your mind with the creativity machine, does that process make you something other than your original self? Or would that occur only when it limited or changed what you would normally do in your own mind? Or when your last brain cells have died and all the remains is the machine with whatever part of you that exists as part of it?

The whole topic is extremly thought provoking...

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


I was rather intrigued with what he said about universe as a model for his creativity machine. I have always been of the mind that we as a human and an entity "made" by god could never understand the concept of god. Religions try to show him as one all powerful being who is like us. When in essence he is us or we are him. (not that a god would have a gender per say) Or rather the univers in the macro sense could be quite similar if not identical to our neural network in the micro sense. Some people may have a hard time understanding the concept that maybe we are just sensory inputs in the mind of god. We are in fact the 'living, breathing' embodiment of gods creativity machine. As above , so below i guess could mean more than most could ever imagine. As to the idea of a Machine to download our consciousness to, I'm not sure where I would stand. On one hand you could have the potential to extend your consciousness indefinately to be able to interact with all who are close and all who are not only without the meatsack we call a body. I know I would love to still be able to talk to my grandmother or granfather. On the other hand it could interupt some spiritual process we are unaware of. I could see the idea that what we would term death in the physical sence could be just a reintegration into the god conciousness. Perhaps this is the idea of a heaven. WHereas the Node ( our bodies) dies but the ideas and growth this node provided is reintegrated into the network to be learned from, much like how the creativity machine works. If that would be the case I think this machine could be the idea of a possible hell. Possibly the thing that would keep us from reintegrating with our creator. In effect our 'soul' (knowledge gained) would be lost and would impede the ability of god to evolve through our experiences. Anyways enough rambling, my head hurts from thinking of the possibilites this has for the advancement of knowledge both in science and in spirituality or why we are here.

I think the ideas put forth in this video combined with this video about the ten dimensions The tenth dimension could really start a brain meltdown just thinking about all of the possibilities. But

reply to post by KaginD


The concept of A.I. has always been something of study but shouldn't be a source of concern. It will simply be another tool for us to use. How we use it, plays to moral issues that surround use of any of our best tools.

Funny though that I hear the bass back beat of terminator in this video. Strike that, its from a pop up ad in another tab that is the sound I am hearing, sorry.


[edit on 8/31/2008 by eaganthorn]