Will computers ever experience depression?
Possibly something analogous, if they ever become advanced enough to be considered alive.But if you're only talking about the symptoms of depression, they could of course mimic those naturally without any special programming. Such as running on an infinite loop doing nothing, or waiting on some input that never arrives, or flooding your screen with error messages. The root causes will of course be quite different.
How will we know the precise moment when computer intelligence overtakes human intelligence?
We can break this problem down into simpler subparts and arrive at some semblances of answers There are several tasks which either require intelligence or were thought to require it. Mathematics was one example, until computing machines came about. Chess another, transcribing speech into text yet another. For all such well-defined tasks we can point to the year when computers either surpassed humans or at least became indistinguishable in the Turing sense [1]. A possible answer is therefore:We have been overtaken several times, one of which was May 11th 1997 when Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue. The computers are now competing with us on well defined tasks that we don't understand how we do, such as recognizing faces, plus tasks we've never managed, like picking out the relevant gene sequence among a million others. But these tasks are still well-defined. Your translation from cantonese can be bad or good, your transcription of someone elses handwriting contain a specific number of errors. But humans also perform tasks which have no clear definition nor agreed-upon content, like providing leadership, showing compassion and being creative. It's next to impossible to measure people's performance in these areas on an objective scale. Yet computers have made forays into all three areas. Just like we no longer equate intelligence with the ability to multiply numbers, the Deep Blue achievement were soon brushed away by some as mere calculation. 'True' intelligence laid elsewhere. This will continue, until 'intelligence' is only associated with such indefinable or unmeasurable tasks as e.g. 'true creativity' The final overtaking could then be defined as follows:We have been completely overtaken by AIs when the concept of 'intelligence' has become void of content. The bigges change may not come from the things AIs will do for us. After all, people have had other entities do their bidding in the past, without that changing the human condition. The loss of the very concept of intelligence could have far wider ramifications. [1] You could devise an speech-to-text turing test. Is the transcription so good that it fools you into thinking it's a human?
Why must computers be ever so complicated?!?
I'm a geek, and I think computers are too complicated. They're a bit like the space shuttle with all of the different systems of systems, and countless options and controls. Then add the confusion with all the different versions and patches for everything, and you have incomprehensible chaos and zero security. The average person surely has continual problems and stress from dealing with this stuff. I know I do. In this society, people think more is better, and I guess that's why these guys keep adding features instead of making things work properly and efficiently. Do you have administrator privileges on your computer for installing the updates?
Consciousness of computers (artificial intelligence)?
Could you help me in refuting this claim?: "Functionalist consciousness arguments are fundamentally flawed. Computers gaining even a fundamental consciousness is impossible. Computers, no matter how complex, simply deliver a finite number of pre-determined responses to inputs. Think Chinese rooms and beer-can brains."
If consciousness is prerequisite to existence and I can't be conscious of my consciousness, do I really exist?
When you are sleeping at night, do you exist?Are you conscious?You see, this question can be rearranged to give a better answer. Consciousness “exists” yet sometimes it is in an active state and sometimes a dormant or latent state.So: You exist. Sometimes you are conscious of your consciousness and sometimes you are not. Therefore, consciousness (as in awareness) is not a prerequisite for existence.Alright then, what makes us conscious? Movement. When we perceive something as “other than I” then “I” comes into existence. In order for us to perceive something as “other than I,” we must perceive movement. If nothing moves then we are one thing.So, in deep sleep state, consciousness has withdrawn from the senses. Everything is one. As soon as our mind “stirs” we begin to come into waking consciousness and then we see and hear things and perceive so many things as “other than I.” What happens? I exist.In the little known book called Truth Eternal by Ram Chandra (Lalaji) he explains that consciousness moves between conditions, it then “settles” on one, thereby merging or becoming it’s qualities and then it “unsettles” and moves again.So, when consciousness “settles” on the soul, it goes into a state of non-awareness as soul state is at rest. When it unsettles, it is like a stir or movement, consciousness then associates itself with mind, which always moves, and thus we become aware.This represents the larger picture of “existence,” which also includes non-existence but better termed “latent” state. When consciousness is in a “latent” state, it may not be aware but the term itself holds the potential for it to become aware. In other words when energy is “latent” is still exists but is not moving or active.My apologies if this went a bit deep. I have tried to find simple expression for it.Meet you in the latent state…b
How does human intelligence compare to artificial intelligence?
There is an interesting gap in the research into artificial intelligence. I was talking with a professor of computer science at a local university and found that no one that he or I had found in our research has tried to break down the consciousness of the human mind and then try to code it into an artificial intelligence. Until someone does this, making comparisons is really not that practical. About the best comparison of functionality I have heard goes on a few assumptions. Assuming that the average human brain has 100 million neurons and no more than about 10 percent are active at any given time and that the average neuron can only fire about 50 times per second and assuming one firing neuron is the equivalent of one computer instruction executed, yields a speed of 500 million instructions per second (MIPS). Again, that is assuming a lot. The average computer using a complex instruction set, CISC processor, that I have encountered executes an instruction in an average of 30 clock cycles. This would put a PC with a 3.0 GHz processor only executing 100 MIPS. That is one fifth of the speed of the human brain, and that is not even figuring on the difference in the efficiency of the software, so to speak. Some would say that until technology speeds up the processing capability computers, a general form artificial intelligence, or as some people call it artificial general intelligence, is impossible.
Is computer programming a dying career? Is computer programming a career that's likely to be automated out of existence sooner than most others?
No. If anything, the opposite is true.Every reliable data point shows that there’s big growth in programming. The BLS is just one source that shows strong growth. (Interestingly, they show an 8% decline for ‘computer programer’ but a 17% growth for ‘software developer’, so if anything is dying, it may be a name.)As more and more of the world comes online, there’s more demand for web-based everything. To do that, you need web developers. Thinkful, the coding academy where I work, trains developers to meet the new demands of the market. Our experience shows that automation is actually driving the opposite effect.More than any other industry, software developers share tools that help others do their work more efficiently. Simple tools that make writing code easier, like autocompleting text editors, to libraries that allow newer developers to build complex systems, are making development more accessible to a wider group of people.For example, students in Thinkful’s Web Development Bootcamp learn the ‘MERN stack’ — a group of JavaScript-based technologies that allow developers to build robust web apps, using only one language. The ‘R’ in that stack stands for React, a library Facebook built and released to the public, that allows developers to build a dynamic, component-based frontend.In other words, any web developer can use the same technology that’s at work on your Facebook home page, with the proper training and practice. Software developers are making it easier for each other to build programs by writing great, functioning code — drag and drop is far slower and far less robust.Programming is also working its way into traditionally non-programming fields. Over the past few decades, we’ve already seen people who grasp the deeper functions of Microsoft Excel being able to leverage small levels of programming knowledge to do big things. They didn’t build Excel, but they know enough programming to be incredibly efficient with it.That’s just one example. How many times have you wished you understood a little HTML and CSS, just to help polish some rough edges on your company’s website? How frequently do you hear about a great idea for an app or service that should be built, if only we had someone who could code?So no — until AI takes over the world, computer programing is probably the furthest thing from a dying career.
Will a computer/machine ever be conscious or self aware?
Yes it is dependent upon the "software" not the material that stores it. Our mind stores info via neurological connections, that turn stimuli into reactions If you programmed a computer to turn the same stimuli into reactions it would "think" exactly like ourselves It may also be possible to "make" computers "think" of new outlandish concepts such as 1+1=3, or other dimensions, things we as humans have no ability to perceive correctly Good Question
If a robot or a computer were programmed to assert "cogito ergo sum," would it be correct?
“If a robot or a computer were programmed to assert "cogito ergo sum," would it be correct?”I have two different view points to answer this question. As a Buddhist I see that Descartes's assertion is wrong. Therefore even if we somehow met a robot that asserts above there could be some gap between the robot and a person.It is equally logical to think about Descartes himself, or any other human being for that purpose, as a biological robot from the point of view of Buddhist anatta (no-self) characteristic. So we already have enough robots around asserting the same and probably not knowing “I’m a robot” in some sense and there are Buddhist and other (even materialist) robots who disagree with the the robots who follow Descartes.As per my own limited understanding of AI research there is no sensible model that describes how intelligence work. Sure we have various computer programs that mimic facets of human intelligence. But tackling the problem of artificial general intelligence is not well understood yet. So under present state of science and technology the biggest problem is not in the validation stage but in the design stage of the robot.