PHILOSOPHY 100 (Ted Stolze)

Notes on James Rachels, Problems from Philosophy

Chapter Seven: Could a Machine Think?

Descartes on Thinking Machines

“It is indeed conceivable that a machine could be made so that it could utter words, and even words appropriate to the presence of physical acts or objects which cause some change in its organs; as, for example, if it was touched in some spot that it would ask what you wanted to say to it; if in another, that it would cry that it was hurt, and so on for similar things. But it could never modify its phrases to reply to the sense of whatever was said in its presence as even the most stupid men do.”(From Discourse on Method, translated by Laurence J. Lafleur [Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960 (1637)], pp. 41-42.)

The Piecemeal Replacement Argument

Objections to the Piecemeal Replacement

Argument

• Computers can do only what they’re programmed to do.

• Tipping point

The Turing Test for AI

Alan Turing, 1912 - 1954

“The basic idea of the Turing Test is this: Take two humans and a computer and put them in different rooms, allowing them to communicate with one another only by typing messages. One of the humans--the interrogator--will ask questions of the other two and try to figure out, from their responses, which is the person and which is the computer. The interrogator can ask any question he likes--he can initiate discussions of poetry, religion, love, or the latest fashions. He can try to trip up the computer in any way he can. The computer, meanwhile, will deny it is a machine, and it will not deliberately say anything to give itself away. . . .Turing argued that if a machine passes this test--if we can tell no difference between its performance and that of another person--then the machine must have the mental properties of a person. After all, you take what I say to be proof that I am conscious and intelligent. To be consistent, mustn’t you also say that a computer giving the same verbal performance is equally conscious and intelligent. Of course, the machine does not look like a person, and it is made of different stuff. But so what?” (pp. 92-93).

A Failed Turing Test: The ELIZA Counseling Program

http://www.masswerk.at/eliza/

Passing the Turing Test? Eugene Goostman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHL1JpPTle0&feature=youtu.be

John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument against the Turing Test

John Searle, 1932 -

“If Strong AI were true, then anybody should be able to acquire any cognitive capacity just by implementing the computer program simulating that cognitive capacity. Let us try this with Chinese. I do not, as a matter of fact, understand any Chinese at all. I cannot even tell Chinese writing from Japanese writing. But, we imagine that I am locked in a room with boxes full of Chinese symbols, and I have a rule book, in effect, a computer that allows me to answer questions put to me in Chinese. I receive symbols that, unknown to me, are questions; I look up in the rule book what I am supposed to do; I pick symbols from the boxes, manipulate them according to the rules in the program, and hand out the required symbols, which are interpreted as answers. We can suppose that I pass the Turing test for understanding Chinese, but, all the same, I do not understand a word of Chinese. And if I do not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the right computer program, then neither does any other computer just on the basis of implementing the program, because no program has anything that I do not have.You can see the difference between computation and real understanding if you imagine what it is like for me also to answer questions in English. Imagine that in the same room I am given questions in English, which I then answer. From the outside my answers to the English and the Chinese questions are equally good. I pass the Turing test for both. But from the inside, there is a tremendous difference. What is the difference, exactly? In English, I understand what the words mean, in Chinese I understand nothing. In Chinese, I am just a computer.”(From John Searle, Mind: A Brief Introduction [NY: Oxford, 2004], p. 90.)

The Chinese Room Thought Experiment

http://youtu.be/TryOC83PH1g

An Objection to Searle’s Chinese Room

Argument

•What more do you want?

Ray Kurzweil on the Coming AI “Singularity”

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/381488/april-12-2011/ray-kurzweil

Noam Chomsky on the Singularity as Science Fiction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s