Can Machines Think?

Last updated Jul 2, 2021 Edit Source

• Sapling

Intelligence as a measure of information conversation ratio. How do we test intelligence of machines vs humans?

Intelligence can only be contextually based on information available. There are no intrinsically difficult questions, only with respect to inputs

There are two ways of thinking about it

1. Like money → everyone has, some have more than others
   • philosophers view
2. Like wealth → something possessed by only those who have more than the average amount of money
   • computer scientists view

Thought alone is not enough, the thoughts need to do something, and sometimes explain the doing. Actions that are not governed by/explained by thought are not intelligent

Ontologically equivalent to materialism

Two main theses:

1. all mental phenomena from pains, tickles, and itches to the most abstruse thoughts are caused by lower-level neurobiological processes in the brain
2. mental phenomena themselves are higher-level features of the brain

Entails that the brain has the right causal powers to produce intentionality

• weak AI → principle value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool
• strong AI → the appropriately programmed computer really IS a mind. Computers, given the right programs, can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states
• attempting to refute the claims that
  1. the machine can literally be said to understand the story and provide the answers to questions
  2. what the machine and its programs do explains the human ability to understand the story and answer questions about it

Searle’s Chinese room argument refuting the Turing Test as a valid means for measuring general intelligence.

• argument that rests on the ambiguity of what “ information” is
• construing information processing that implies intentionality
  • programmed computer does not do information processes, it only manipulates formal symbols
• doesn’t imply intentionality
  • information transformation → taking info at one end, transforming it, and producing different information as output
  • up to outside observers to interpret the input and output as information the ordinary sense
• strong AI only makes sense given the dualistic assumptions that, where the mind is concerned, the brain doesn’t matter
• what about computability?