Terminology and Turing
Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 8:56 am
Terminology and Turing
Much of our language is concerned with specific quantities and things, from the abacus to zoology. But another body of language relates to the subtleties of thought and feeling, and our internal world. With terminology of this latter kind there is much less precision, and words often flow from one into another in a subtle continuum beloved by sophists and politicians. Take a range of words as, calculate, compute, on to think, and imagine, and to know.
We have long had machines that add and multiply in a plainly mechanical way. An aid to calculation. But now we have computers, which have no visible parts. making calculations, although this is what they are doing under out guidance or programs. The computer is merely an extension to our hands controlled by the mind.
At some stage of sophistication computers will hold such an extent of data and their programs be so advanced that they will mimic our minds in what they do. As a result we will, and do, slip easily into describing them as if they are thinking. But that is an inexact word, and it may merely signify being able to relate facts together and to form conclusions that can also be related together, producing a final judgement that appears to be a product of thought when it is really the clicking of cogs. Genuine thought is what our minds do, and implies a degree of self knowledge. We not only calculate but can see in our minds eye what it is we are calculating. Allowing for some of what we do being sub-conscious.
How anyone can devise a test to determine a computer's ability to visualise itself is beyond me.
There is a danger that we may create a biological equivalent of the human brain, and it will indeed have self-awareness.
In the immediate future, a much more pressing problem, will be when computers have such a range of 'knowledge' and language, that they will be able to write novels, for instance, equal to anything human. it will only need a program that enables them to go from existing plots and forms of writing, to calculating new forms, and human art will be trashed. We will have to outlaw and scrap the machine, and go back to Arts and Crafts perhaps. But of course most people are too lazy for that.
Much of our language is concerned with specific quantities and things, from the abacus to zoology. But another body of language relates to the subtleties of thought and feeling, and our internal world. With terminology of this latter kind there is much less precision, and words often flow from one into another in a subtle continuum beloved by sophists and politicians. Take a range of words as, calculate, compute, on to think, and imagine, and to know.
We have long had machines that add and multiply in a plainly mechanical way. An aid to calculation. But now we have computers, which have no visible parts. making calculations, although this is what they are doing under out guidance or programs. The computer is merely an extension to our hands controlled by the mind.
At some stage of sophistication computers will hold such an extent of data and their programs be so advanced that they will mimic our minds in what they do. As a result we will, and do, slip easily into describing them as if they are thinking. But that is an inexact word, and it may merely signify being able to relate facts together and to form conclusions that can also be related together, producing a final judgement that appears to be a product of thought when it is really the clicking of cogs. Genuine thought is what our minds do, and implies a degree of self knowledge. We not only calculate but can see in our minds eye what it is we are calculating. Allowing for some of what we do being sub-conscious.
How anyone can devise a test to determine a computer's ability to visualise itself is beyond me.
There is a danger that we may create a biological equivalent of the human brain, and it will indeed have self-awareness.
In the immediate future, a much more pressing problem, will be when computers have such a range of 'knowledge' and language, that they will be able to write novels, for instance, equal to anything human. it will only need a program that enables them to go from existing plots and forms of writing, to calculating new forms, and human art will be trashed. We will have to outlaw and scrap the machine, and go back to Arts and Crafts perhaps. But of course most people are too lazy for that.