Mind And Machine

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Mind and Machine: The Essay

Technology has traditionally evolved as the result of human needs. Invention, when prized and rewarded, will invariably rise-up to meet the free market demands of society. It is in this realm that Artificial Intelligence research and the resultant expert systems have been forged.
Much of the material that relates to the field of Artificial Intelligence deals with human psychology and the nature of consciousness. Exhaustive debate on consciousness and the possibilities of consciousnessness in machines has adequately, in my opinion, revealed that it is most unlikely that we will ever converse or interract with a machine of artificial consciousness.
In John Searle's collection of lectures, Minds, Brains and Science, arguments centering around the mind-body problem alone is sufficient to convince a reasonable person that there is no way science will ever unravel the mysteries of consciousness.
Key to Searle's analysis of consciousness in the context of Artificial Intelligence machines are refutations of strong and weak AI theses. Strong AI Theorists (SATs) believe that in the future, mankind will forge machines that will think as well as, if not better than humans. To them, pesent technology constrains this achievement. The Weak AI Theorists (WATs), almost converse to the SATs, believe that if a machine performs functions that resemble a human's, then there must be a correlation between it and consciousness. To them, there is no technological impediment to thinking machines, because our most advanced machines already think.
It is important to review Searle's refutations of these respective theorists' proposition to establish a foundation (for the purpose of this essay) for discussing the applications of Artificial Intelligence, both now and in the future.

Strong AI Thesis
Strong AI Thesis, according to Searle, can be described in four basic propositions. Proposition one categorizes human thought as the result of computational processes. Given enough computational power, memory, inputs, etc., machines will be able to think, if you believe this proposition. Proposition two, in essence, relegates the human mind to the software bin. Proponents of this proposition believe that humans just happen to have biological computers that run "wetware" as opposed to software. Proposition three, the Turing proposition, holds that...

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.... Translation is a wonderful possibility of these expert systems. Imagine the ability to have a device translate your English spoken words into Mandarin Chinese! This goes beyond simple languages and syntactical manipulation. Cultural gulfs in language would also be the focus of such devices.

Through the course of Mind and Machine, we have established that artificial intelligence's function will not be to replicate the conscious state of man, but to act as an auxiliary to him. Proponents of Strong AI Thesis and Weak AI Thesis may hold out, but the inevitable will manifest itself in the end.
It may be easy to ridicule those proponents, but I submit that in their research into making conscious machines, they are doing the field a favor in the innovations and discoveries they make.
In conclusion, technology will prevail in the field of expert systems only if the philosophy behind them is clear and strong. We should not strive to make machines that may supplant our causal powers, but rather ones that complement them. To me, these expert systems will not replace man - they shouldn't. We will see a future where we shall increasingly find ourselves working beside intelligent systems.

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