What Happens When Machines Become Conscious?
Some leading techno-pundits like Ray Kurzweil believe that machines will become conscious within our lifetimes. In his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil writes that computers will, “increasingly appear to have their own personalities, evidencing reactions that we can only label as emotions and articulating their own goals and purposes.” He goes even further to say that the computers will “appear to have their own free will”, and “have spiritual experiences” (Kurzweil 6). This is an astounding prediction, but one that is echoed by many of today’s artificial intelligence (AI) theorists. In this brief discussion, I will bring into focus some of the questions surrounding the topic of intelligent computers and consciousness.
Whether or not computers will be conscious or spiritual in the future, the fact remains that they are increasingly able to accomplish tasks which were thought only achievable by humans, such as playing chess, or even reading printed text aloud to assist the blind. Stanford computer scientist John McCarthy believes that the only reason computers cannot do some tasks as well as humans is that we do not have an actual understanding of how we solve the problems ourselves. He writes that, “whenever people do better than computers on some task or computers use a lot of computation to do as well as people, this demonstrates that the program designers lack understanding of the intellectual mechanisms required to do the task efficiently” (McCarthy 2004). This lack of understanding of underlying mechanisms is apparent in the situation when experts in a field cannot fully explain how they accomplish a complex task, such as playing the saxophone or swinging a golf club, which they may only fully understand on a subconscious level.
As brain researcher Fred Genesee (2000) writes, even the human learning process can be seen as a kind of “programming”:
We now think that the young brain is like a computer with incredibly sophisticated hardwiring, but no software. The software of the brain, like the software of desktop computers, harnesses the exceptional processing capacity of the brain in the service of specialized functions, like vision, smell, and language. All individuals have to acquire or develop their own software in order to harness the processing power of the brain with which they are born.
Alas, if only we could find a better way to teach the computer how to solve problems, rather than the current programming methods! Kurzweil suggests that in the future we will be able to use detailed, non-invasive scanning of the human brain to replicate a brain’s structure inside a computer (53).
deep need to probe the mysterious space between human thoughts and what is a machine can
The brain receives input and somehow transforms it into output. How does it do it? In part because of the extraordinary technological feats achieved using digital processing computers, the brain has often been interpreted as a symbol manipulator and its cognitive activities as the transformation of symbols according to rules. By contrast, recent successes with parallel distributed processing computers have encouraged a connectionist theory of mind which regards the brain as a pattern recognizer and its cognitive activities as the transformation of neuronal activation patterns; however, these pattern transformations are not rule-governed processes, but straightforwardly causal processes in which networked units (neurons) excite and inhibit each other's activation level.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Inside Literature. Ed. R. S. Gwynn and Steven J. Zani. New York, New York: Longman Publishers, 2007. 144-158.
Three dimensional motion capture requires more than one camera to create depth in the motion being performed. A good example is eyesight. If someone where unfortunate enough to only have one eye they would be unable to see the 3-D depth in motion. Having two eyes allows for depth in motion when seeing, which is similar to the idea of using two cameras in order to fully capture the depth in motion. One of the few techniques discovered and used in 3-D motion capture is Direct Linear Transform (DLT). Using the idea that, images from the cameras are determined by their placement to discover their distances, equations could be formed and used. Test subjects wear reflective markers to allow the cameras to follow their movement and motion through space. These reflective markers are placed on certain joins and parts of the body the researcher would like to study. The reflective markers ca...
Wall-Paper.'." The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper". Ed. Catherine Golden New York: Feminist Press, 1992. 307-318. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 201. Detroit: Gale, 307-318. Literature Resource Center. Gale. VALE - Essex County College. 15 Nov. 2009 .
One of the hottest topics that modern science has been focusing on for a long time is the field of artificial intelligence, the study of intelligence in machines or, according to Minsky, “the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men”.(qtd in Copeland 1). Artificial Intelligence has a lot of applications and is used in many areas. “We often don’t notice it but AI is all around us. It is present in computer games, in the cruise control in our cars and the servers that route our email.” (BBC 1). Different goals have been set for the science of Artificial Intelligence, but according to Whitby the most mentioned idea about the goal of AI is provided by the Turing Test. This test is also called the imitation game, since it is basically a game in which a computer imitates a conversating human. In an analysis of the Turing Test I will focus on its features, its historical background and the evaluation of its validity and importance.
The first law of thermodynamics simply states that heat is a form of energy and heat energy cannot be created nor destroyed. In this lab we were measuring the change in temperature and how it affected the enthalpy of the reaction.
"Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness." Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 26 April 2011.
The “human sense of self control and purposefulness, is a user illusion,” therefore, if computational systems are comparable to human consciousness, it raises the questions of whether such artificial systems should be treated as humans. (261) Such programs are even capable of learning like children, with time and experience; the programs “[get] better at their jobs with experience,” however, many can argue the difference is self-awareness and that there are many organisms that can conduct such complex behavior but have no sense of identity.
The traditional notion that seeks to compare human minds, with all its intricacies and biochemical functions, to that of artificially programmed digital computers, is self-defeating and it should be discredited in dialogs regarding the theory of artificial intelligence. This traditional notion is akin to comparing, in crude terms, cars and aeroplanes or ice cream and cream cheese. Human mental states are caused by various behaviours of elements in the brain, and these behaviours in are adjudged by the biochemical composition of our brains, which are responsible for our thoughts and functions. When we discuss mental states of systems it is important to distinguish between human brains and that of any natural or artificial organisms which is said to have central processing systems (i.e. brains of chimpanzees, microchips etc.). Although various similarities may exist between those systems in terms of functions and behaviourism, the intrinsic intentionality within those systems differ extensively. Although it may not be possible to prove that whether or not mental states exist at all in systems other than our own, in this paper I will strive to present arguments that a machine that computes and responds to inputs does indeed have a state of mind, but one that does not necessarily result in a form of mentality. This paper will discuss how the states and intentionality of digital computers are different from the states of human brains and yet they are indeed states of a mind resulting from various functions in their central processing systems.
Animations is one of the most developed fields in multimedia and design, used in many areas of industry, most especial in the film industry, advertising and promotion, education and also in the game industry where they creates a lot of game using 3D animation. 3D animation consists of varying properties of a 3 dimensional scene defined in numerical quantities. A 3D model can change properties such as position, rotation, shape and surface style. An animated 3D scene is defined by the change of these numerical properties through time. Apart from 3D objects, a scene contains a camera (point of view) and lights which can also be animated. In order to create an animation each of the 3D scene needs to be rendered to create a frame. However, people are not been alert on how it started and what bring it to history. In this chapter, it will show a short brief of 3D history, techniques used and it evolution from 2D to 3D and also the storyline definition.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Women's Work - An Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Barbara Perkins, Robyn Warhol, and George Perkins. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. 640-650.
In conclusion, Students will learn to stick up for themselves and grow to be an independent person. With this program, students will be able to open up to someone they can trust and create a bond with their teachers. The children will start to think positive and live a happy life style. There will be special bonds made with the students throughout the school. The school environment will become a judgment free zone and no student will feel alone or be harassed. If every school creates a bullying awareness program, there is a chance that the suicidal rate for children will decrease. All schools should have a bullying awareness program to stop bullying and have a safe, clean school environment.
In the past few decades we have seen how computers are becoming more and more advance, challenging the abilities of the human brain. We have seen computers doing complex assignments like launching of a rocket or analysis from outer space. But the human brain is responsible for, thought, feelings, creativity, and other qualities that make us humans. So the brain has to be more complex and more complete than any computer. Besides if the brain created the computer, the computer cannot be better than the brain. There are many differences between the human brain and the computer, for example, the capacity to learn new things. Even the most advance computer can never learn like a human does. While we might be able to install new information onto a computer it can never learn new material by itself. Also computers are limited to what they “learn”, depending on the memory left or space in the hard disk not like the human brain which is constantly learning everyday. Computers can neither make judgments on what they are “learning” or disagree with the new material. They must accept into their memory what it’s being programmed onto them. Besides everything that is found in a computer is based on what the human brain has acquired though experience.
A successful budget calls not only for proficient measures in its preparation but also for stringent measures to oversee its administration/execution. This is because of the many counterforces that bombard the budget system. These counterforces include, for example, unscrupulous officials who would like to use the budget funds inappropriately; involuntary mistakes, such as miscalculations, that would overstate or understate the budgeted figures can also occur. To prevent these eventualities from disturbing the budgeting process, stringent administ...