There was this motherfucker named Alan Turing, and he was all inventin' computers before they existed: Thought wise. Makin' Turing machines out of squares of imaginary paper. Dude saw real fast how computers could be programed to do a lot of things we call thinking: processing information, performing logical instructions, even learning. Soon one dude programed this checkers program to learn from its mistakes. It sucked asshole at first, but soon frankensteinely beat the shit out of his master. Then master had the brilliant idea of hooking two learning checkers mothers up to each other, they eerily played out game after game, until they became unbeatable.
So computers can "think" no one would disagree, most times they think better than humans; the part most people get all pissy about is artificial consciousness. But for the time being lets just say they think, because thinking is not strictly dependent on consciousness (you’ve probably been crusin’ in your Landrover sippin on a 40oz, then 5 minutes later realize that you were driving. The whole time you were zoned out, you were still watching the road, moving the wheel, etc, all that thinking shit, but weren’t aware or conscious of that shit.) In terms of intelligence, there's no real way to measure it, 'cept for our main man Turing's test which goes a little somethin’ like this.
Turing test:
MAN / CHATBOT _________________
Questioner
The questioner is able to talk to the man, and the robot via MSN or some other shit like that. After questioning the both about anything he wants in the whole friggen world, he then decides who is who. If the test is repeated a bunch of times with different questioners, and over 50 percent (the guessing rate) of questioners pick ol chatty mc bot-bot, then the comp passes the Turing test.
Noteable Turing test Graduates: Hal from 2001 space odyssey, other than that, none have passed a questioning that was not limited to a particular subject.
So back to consciousness: So say some shitty MSN program beats the Turing test; are we then to say it’s conscious? One Hard ass Niggah David Searle says: UH-UHN. He’s all:
Let’s pretend we have a person in a room, and they are given a story, with a set of questions about said story, all in Chinese, and they don’t speak a word of Chinese. But, they have a really huge complex rulebook (ie, if you see squiggle squiggle, write down squogle beside it, which is exactly what a computer program does). They process the input story and put it back through the output according to the rule book (just forget that this would take a bazillion years) and the answers make sense to the Chinese readers. They would be like: “Excerent! This computer is very Conscious” David Searle would be like: uh-Wrong. The man doesn’t have a clue what the hell he’s writing about, he is not able to be conscious of the story.
If you asked the man in Chinese if he was conscious he would be like: No speaky
Then this other dude was like: Yeah maybe HE doesn’t understand Chinese, but the whole system does (taking for granted that the rule book was meticulously worked out) If you wrote down in Chinese, “system, explain your conscious to me” then you would get an enlightening answer in the output slot.
Testing consciousness is super hard because we only are really aware that we ourselves are conscious, we have no idea if others are aware that they are thinking, or if they are just processing information. We assume they are because they seem like us in all other respects, so it seems logical to assume in this one as well. Computers gone screwed it up though, now we’re all wonderin.
There was this motherfucker named Alan Turing, and he was all inventin' computers before they existed: Thought wise. Makin' Turing machines out of squares of imaginary paper. Dude saw real fast how computers could be programed to do a lot of things we call thinking: processing information, performing logical instructions, even learning. Soon one dude programed this checkers program to learn from its mistakes. It sucked asshole at first, but soon frankensteinely beat the shit out of his master. Then master had the brilliant idea of hooking two learning checkers mothers up to each other, they eerily played out game after game, until they became unbeatable.
So computers can "think" no one would disagree, most times they think better than humans; the part most people get all pissy about is artificial consciousness. But for the time being lets just say they think, because thinking is not strictly dependent on consciousness (you’ve probably been crusin’ in your Landrover sippin on a 40oz, then 5 minutes later realize that you were driving. The whole time you were zoned out, you were still watching the road, moving the wheel, etc, all that thinking shit, but weren’t aware or conscious of that shit.) In terms of intelligence, there's no real way to measure it, 'cept for our main man Turing's test which goes a little somethin’ like this.
Turing test:
MAN / CHATBOT
_________________
Questioner
The questioner is able to talk to the man, and the robot via MSN or some other shit like that. After questioning the both about anything he wants in the whole friggen world, he then decides who is who. If the test is repeated a bunch of times with different questioners, and over 50 percent (the guessing rate) of questioners pick ol chatty mc bot-bot, then the comp passes the Turing test.
Noteable Turing test Graduates:
Hal from 2001 space odyssey, other than that, none have passed a questioning that was not limited to a particular subject.
So back to consciousness:
So say some shitty MSN program beats the Turing test; are we then to say it’s conscious? One Hard ass Niggah David Searle says: UH-UHN. He’s all:
Let’s pretend we have a person in a room, and they are given a story, with a set of questions about said story, all in Chinese, and they don’t speak a word of Chinese. But, they have a really huge complex rulebook (ie, if you see squiggle squiggle, write down squogle beside it, which is exactly what a computer program does). They process the input story and put it back through the output according to the rule book (just forget that this would take a bazillion years) and the answers make sense to the Chinese readers. They would be like: “Excerent! This computer is very Conscious” David Searle would be like: uh-Wrong. The man doesn’t have a clue what the hell he’s writing about, he is not able to be conscious of the story.
If you asked the man in Chinese if he was conscious he would be like: No speaky
Then this other dude was like: Yeah maybe HE doesn’t understand Chinese, but the whole system does (taking for granted that the rule book was meticulously worked out) If you wrote down in Chinese, “system, explain your conscious to me” then you would get an enlightening answer in the output slot.
Testing consciousness is super hard because we only are really aware that we ourselves are conscious, we have no idea if others are aware that they are thinking, or if they are just processing information. We assume they are because they seem like us in all other respects, so it seems logical to assume in this one as well. Computers gone screwed it up though, now we’re all wonderin.
Peace out,
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xo
ben
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hope all is well in the t.o, come visit man. actually, hitch down here right now.
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