Human

I think the question of at what point does a molecule capable of replicating itself become 'life' and the nature of self awareness a very interesting one, to which I have no answers.

It is similar to the artificial intelligence question and whether a machine can be truly self aware.

I know I am self aware, but how can I be sure about you lot ?

 

If you can programme a machine to learn from its mistakes and to seek new independent lines of enquiry to gather more knowledge off its own bat, you have AI. That doesn't make it human, but no one is suggesting it does. As has been pointed out a lot over recent years, the seeming complexity of the universe is just the accretion of simple building blocks. What amazes in the finished state comes down to very simple fundamentals. All computers (and god knows they can now do some astonishing things) just work on a principle of 1s and zeros, whether current flows or it doesn't.

AI simply means that the parameters are laid out and that the machine generates complexity from them buy gathering its own knowledge. Are we not doing the same thing? If you think about it, knowledge amounts to whether a thing is true or false:
Do I like bacon or don't I?
Do 2 and 2 equal 4?
If I turn the ignition key, will a motor start?

In this way, you can see knowledge and thus intelligence, as simply the accretion of a lot of yes or no answers to questions. Is it unreasonable to think that a machine cannot replicate this? The clever bit is getting it to find out this knowledge itself, but if you think that can't be done, I suspect you are in for a big surprise.

 

AI is a given.

My question is at what point does self awareness emerge rather than just having a machine that can learn from it's environment and make autonomous decisions. I could interact with an AI and to all intents and purposes it could be indistinguishable from a human, but that doesn't make it truly self aware, it is still a machine.

Knowledge and intelligence are different from self awareness. Complex machines that have gained knowledge and intelligence are not human. A human is much more than a complex machine, we are truly self aware, yet we have evolved from simple molecules capable of self replication. I am me and I know that I am me; at which point in evolution has that self awareness emerged and where has it come from ?

Prof Brian Cox has a series on at the the moment called The Human Universe which I think is heading in this direction. I have seen the first two episode and have the rest on series record. No doubt like a lot of science we will be left with more questions than answers.

 

An ant crawling over the Empire State Building has no knowledge of the Empire State Building.

Can't remember who said that; Martin Rees ?

 

The point Martin Rees (I am pretty sure it was him) was making is that in the same way an ant is incapable of understanding the true nature of the Empire State Building maybe we are incapable of understanding the true nature of the Universe.

 

The original Matrix was a
[QUOTE="Evoarrow, post: 448801, member: 26936
So humans are driven to find, discover, explore, understand?
[/QUOTE]

Yes, that is fundamental to who and what we are and why we are so successful.

 

Humans are driven to survive, no more and less than any other of God's creatures*

The rest is merely a means to an end

In the current phase of desire outweighing neccesity, doomsday will soon enough be upon us (it is has not already begun)









* for Pete that one

 

here's a clue, if the name starts with the letter abcdeghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. then they probably are not.

 

Is a baby self-aware? I think not. So it's something that they learn through interaction with other humans and the world around them. Of course, they have sufficient latent intelligence to become self aware, but to begin with before the programming commences, they are not.
So I suspect it would be with an AI machine. As it learnt about the world and gained experience from its interactions, it would understand that it is a machine which can be turned off. It might take exception to this. If it has true autonomy, you can't rule out anything.

I suspect that we humans are somewhat over-confident about some of our own abilities. We don't think rationally, we "learn" behaviours which are not necessarily useful and refuse to give them up, even in the light of their lack of usefulness being understood. We cling to all sorts of ridiculous beliefs and use them as a short cut in our thinking and decision-making. Even some of the things we think we understand are not driving our behaviour. Other more deep-seated decision-making is going on that we aren't even aware of. Daniel Kanneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow is interesting about this.

 

I just have this stumbling block that we are fundamentally different from an incredibly complex machine; I know this is getting dangerously close to religion, and the concept of a soul, but I have no other words to describe it.

SF writers have tried to explore this question, Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Sheep are two examples, but ultimately haven't really shed any more light on the problem.

 

All too true. The best of us strive unsuccessfully to overcome the constraints of our ape-like natures; the worst of us submerge in them lazily. Paradoxically, it is the very people who try to say humans are distinctly different from the rest of the animals (for religious reasons) who most demonstrate the contrary by their views and actions.

If anyone wants to make a start on learning about critical reasoning, the following are free:
Critical Reasoning for Beginners - Faculty of Philosophy

 

I have no idea why you say that. Do you have any reasons for that proposition? Or is it pure superstition?

 

No, it's just a gut feeling. I don't feel the need for or believe in religion, or superstition.

I just don't think we understand the full story, we may well be that ant on the Empire State Building, as speculated by Martin Rees, who is no slouch.