Mechanical Being

[MJK]

Vacation makes me so "off-topic".... Maybe that text below should go to "creative writing" thread.

Humans were once one of the animals born in the wild.
These animals do not understand logics and numbersㅡthe mathematics.
Humans did, and thus developed as a unique specie.
But humans are not mathematical in origin. They perceived a limit in satisfying their desire. They need a tool, a machine, that is the computer, a machine to compute.
Humans should progress more with this computer.
There are players all around, and of course are computer-players, who finally made up the machine that I'm typing with. We can do everything with this machine to compute, and why not make it think as us.
Technology will advance and this must happen. People will code this numberplay-machine with those humanlike characteristics such as emotion, intuition, creativity.
Humanlike computer can improve itself, and will improve for many times backed up by its human-alikeness unlike other machines.
But computers are not emotional, intuitional, creative in origin. They perceive a limit in satisfying their desireㅡof development, progression, improvement. They need a tool...

Is the human being once created as a tool for the Machanical Being?

[Bonobo]

Very interesting ideas, but I believe that machines have no needs, they just exist, only organic beings have needs. I believe that machines “grow” from organic stuff, sort of like termites build their huge structures. I also believe that, no matter how much of human (organic) properties like emotions, intuition and creativity we try to model and implement into machines, they will always stay “dumb machines” that only appear “intelligent” to beings not familiar with the models, cf. ELIZA, the machines will always be a step behind the humans that built them, even if they can do things much faster. But computing speed is NOT intelligence, IMHO, it is “just” speed.

Anyway, this just states my (current) beliefs, I know too little of AI and computing to have really educated opinions about this. But what little I know of psychology, sociology, biology and neurophysiology convinces me that all machine-intelligence will be just like LEGO compared with the smallest organic being. We will be able to build autonomous roboters and “thinking” machines, and they will be able to do amazing things, but they will always stay behind when it comes to imagination and empathy.

And now I'm confused I think I must think about this quite some more.

Thanks

[leichtloeslich]

Just a few thoughts.

These animals do not understand logics and numbersㅡthe mathematics.

Not so sure about that. I think our ( meaning humans' ) main ability is speech which allows very high levels of abstraction. But I'd suspect basic logic and maths isn't beyond most mammals. Surely there are studies about that but I'm too lazy to google it.


About the rest, here are a few interesting links on consciousness and computers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_prob ... sciousness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

[Mike Novack]

A matter of dispute.

Are we humans different IN KIND from the other animals or only IN DEGREE?

In other words, do the other animals have NO capabilities in logic, numbers, language, etc. or have these in lesser amounts. Are we basing our beliefs on this matter on science or religion?