Artificial Intelligence as a Part of Our Future - Essay Example

 Artificial Intelligence Even though most people don’t seem to take much notice, technology is slowly impacting every element of how we live our lives. Computer engineering is the field of the future, always looking forward into how our machines can become faster, stronger, more intuitive as to our needs as humans. The field of artificial intelligence is at the head of that wave, trying to find a means by which to make machines capable of true thought. Once this achievement has been reached, many things will again change. However, the greatest challenge in this field has been to identify just what makes the ‘mind’, the thinking, caring, processing animal that it is. In many ways, the human brain is known to assimilate and process information like a computer. Yet, even with our best technological designs, the computer still does not develop the same sense of consciousness as the mind of man. It cannot perceive beauty or generate moral judgments or come up with the kind of rationalizations known in any child. This concept of consciousness is essentially the difference between man and machine. Because machines can only follow directions, they are not able to be self-aware. However, if artificial intelligence is to reach the levels of consciousness man is attempting to create, it must be asked what enables the human ‘machine’ to reach consciousness. The answer to this question might exist in the fact that the human brain is naturally self-organizing (Kak, 2005). A man’s brain responds to the independent nature of interactions that take place between itself and its environment. Computers can’t do this. Yet this is not necessarily considered a higher function because many types of simple ‘animals’ and all plant life can respond to their environment but are not aware of themselves. Thus, while self-organization is a building block of consciousness, it isn’t the source. One indication of artificial intelligence is the ability to solve a problem that requires generalization, but biological intelligence includes progression. To define progression, it is helpful to think of animals whose functions often depend on customary behaviors. “In cognitive tasks of the kind normally associated with human intelligence, animals may perform well. Thus rats might find their way through a maze, or dolphins may solve logical problems or problems involving some kind of generalization” (Kak, 2005). It can thus be argued that many animals possess at least a degree of human-like intelligence. There are two major areas where machines still lack the abilities of the human brain. First, they cannot self-organize through a recursive method. Second, mechanical knowledge is founded on conventional logic. Human intelligence, by contrast, depends on quantum mechanics. This enables them to acquire information using a technique with a variety of attributes. “A quantum state is a linear superposition of its component states. Since the amplitudes are complex numbers, a quantum system cannot be effectively simulated by using random numbers. One cannot run a physical process if its probability amplitude is negative or complex” (Kak, 2005). Studies of neuroscience demonstrate how some parts of the human brain are specifically devoted to certain cognitive tasks. Each part of the brain functions within its own world of experience and can generalize at an individual level. This generalization learns from new experiences and incorporates them into further cognitive activities. When this complex neurological brain activity is understood, it becomes clear that the human brain’s cognitive ability cannot be duplicated within the computer’s algorithmic, mechanical method of ‘thought’. Each human cognitive process integrates into the ‘universal field of consciousness.’ Machines, on the other hand, have a fixed universe of discourse so they are unable to adapt in a flexible manner to a changing universe (Kak, 2005). This is why they cannot match biological intelligence. The quantum theory provides an understanding of why biological processes cannot be explained in similar terms as is the mechanical process. One example of this is found in the protein sequencing progression. Proteins, which are chains of amino acids, organize into a specific structure that establishes their function within an organism. It has been estimated that a high-speed computer would take more than ten thousand years duplicate even a small part of this sequencing process. Natural biological functions, on the other hand, take only a matter of seconds. This is because quantum natural computations are much quicker than mechanical computations. “The anomalous efficiency of other biological optimization processes may provide indirect evidence of underlying quantum processing if no classical explanation is forthcoming” (Fraenkel, 1999). Though it is clear that the human mind travels very quickly, studies have shown that it is able to travel quicker than believed possible. Individuals know, or can sense, information they did not previously have access to, commonly called intuition. A computer can discover knowledge but it can not crave an answer and cannot be curious about something unknown. If scientists could discover the origination of curiosity, they may be able to translate this to artificial intelligence mechanisms. But, science has not yet discovered why the human brain yearns for what it doesn’t know. Consciousness exists only in the realm of the living (Rosenblatt, 1982). The concept of consciousness has been an unsolved question throughout the ages. Typically, consciousness is defined in terms of what it is not, such as in a comparison of what humans are as opposed to machines and even other living creatures on the planet. It is considered the key to the mystery that places us on a higher plane of existence. In seeking the answer to this question, several theories have been proposed that either affirm the existence of such a concept or that attempt to explain where this elusive seat of the self might hide within the human form. In attempting to determine a solid definition of the term ‘consciousness’, one will discover it is a very difficult idea to pin down in specific words. When attempting to determine a specific definition, distinctions are made between what Sigmund Freud termed as ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ which helps to clear up the issue somewhat. Conscious thoughts are generally recognized as those that deal with identifying the textures and feelings of the various objects around the physical body, the plans one might have for how the day should be spent or the daydreams of what the future might hold. Other thoughts, such as those that control one’s heartbeat and breathing, determining which muscles must be used in order to pick up a pencil or placing the words one is about to speak in the appropriate order, tend to fall more into the realm of the unconscious. While consciousness has been scientifically linked with the physical properties of the brain and therefore emerges as little more than a biological process that does not mean it lacks any features that make it unique among other biological features. The way that sensory impressions feel to each individual can be described as a conscious state; this state is also referred to as qualia. “Qualia include the ways things look, sound and smell, the way it feels to have a pain, and more generally, what it’s like to have experiential mental states … Qualia are experiential properties of sensations, feelings, perceptions and, more controversially, thoughts and desires as well” (Gregory, 2004: 1). In the face of the physical reality of consciousness, scientists continued to point to qualia as evidence of a non-physical aspect to the concept. “The subjective feature of conscious mental processes – as opposed to their physical causes and effects – cannot be captured by the purified form of thought suitable for dealing with the physical world that underlies the appearances” (Nagel, 1986: 13). This subjective state in which each individual has different impressions of pain, joy, warmth and caresses is what has convinced us that there is such a thing as consciousness yet also makes it difficult to determine just what the true nature of this phenomenon might be. As if the definition wasn’t hard enough, the real difficulty enters the equation when one attempts to explain the ‘why’ of consciousness. “The hard problem is explaining how subjective experience arises from neural computation. The problem is hard because no one knows what a solution might look like or even whether it is a genuine scientific problem in the first place” (Pinker, 2007). This is the question dualism attempted to answer by not answering. Dualism held that the mind was some non-corporeal substance that existed in harmony with, yet apart from, the body. However, without a substance with which to work, even the earliest philosophers such as Descartes himself could not explain how signals would pass from this unsubstantial mind to the materially existing brain. An existence that is able to defy the laws of gravity, glide effortlessly through walls and therefore render itself undetectable is also a substance that cannot, by definition, effect any changes upon the material things that don’t affect it. Because of this major issue of how the mind works, the dualists adopted the stance that the mind was made of a substance that could not be found and therefore could not be explained – in effect, ignoring the question. Most scientists and philosophers admit that the mind must have some kind of connection with the brain in order to order the quick reactions and subjective, individual responses observable by others. This line of thinking is referred to as materialism because it holds that there is some form of physicality to both mind and brain, if they are not one and the same organ, and that this connection can and someday will be discovered. Essentially, these theories revolve around the idea that the mind and the brain are a single entity, somehow communicating both action and theater at the same time. These theories express “the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain” (Pinker, 2007). The differences experienced in the colors of the rainbow, the smell of the flowers, the daydreams of an idle hour spent under a palm tree on a beach, are all caused and differentiated by the different neurons that fire in different areas of the brain at different rates of activity. The human mind has the ability to know what is morally right or wrong almost instantly without the need for assimilating much information. It can make decisions based on the unknown knowledge and can rationalize, justify and reason which traits are only known to that which is conscious. Knowledge has no life; it is based only on cold facts whereas knowing is uniquely biological in nature. There is much puzzlement regarding knowledge and knowing. The difference between the human brain and a machine of any type is that humans create machines to be used as a tool. Human intellect is extremely intricate and consciousness too mysterious to be duplicated. On the day that a computer can lie or cheat, when it prays to an unknown entity and feels shame or sorrow then, possibly, it can be compared to the human mind. Until then, the only similarity is that both process information but to vastly different extents and by vastly different methods. Works Cited Fraenkel, A.S. “Protein folding, spin glass and computational complexity.” Third Annual DIMACS Workshop on DNA Based Computers. DIMACS Series in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science. University of Pennsylvania: Vol. 48, (1999), pp. 101-121. Gregory, R. “Qualia.” Oxford Companion to the Mind. (2nd Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Kak, Subhash. “Artificial and Biological Intelligence.” Ubiquity. Vol. 6, I. 42, (November 16-22, 2005). Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pinker, Steven. “The Mystery of Consciousness.” Time Magazine. (January 19, 2007). Rosenblatt, May. “The Mind in the Machine.” Time Magazine. (May 3, 1982). Read More