Can artificial intelligence come alive?

There is an excellent book that recently came out: “Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence” by James Bridle.

The last few years have seen rapid advances in artificial intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us.

At the same time, we’re only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we’ve failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others―the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us―are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we’ve built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world?

Our definition of “intelligence” automatically is framed from the human-centric, biased perspective. Rather, intelligence is not something to be tested, but something to be recognized in all the multiple forms that it takes. Intelligence is an active process, not just a mental capacity. We should not look at the world as being full of lesser creatures
 

spectratg said:
There is an excellent book that recently came out: “Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence” by James Bridle.

The last few years have seen rapid advances in artificial intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us.

At the same time, we’re only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we’ve failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others―the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us―are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we’ve built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world?

Our definition of “intelligence” automatically is framed from the human-centric, biased perspective. Rather, intelligence is not something to be tested, but something to be recognized in all the multiple forms that it takes. Intelligence is an active process, not just a mental capacity. We should not look at the world as being full of lesser creatures
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I watched an interview with Oriol Vinyals, research director and "Machine Learning Lead" at DeepMind, who said pretty much the same things.

The field of AI is progressing way faster than governments and legislators are moving toward creating laws to control its use and protect us from whatever can go wrong. Just like what happened with internet crime. Most internet crimes, such as scams, identity theft, bank account theft, child predation, and stalking, go unpunished because there are no *effective* laws in place to protect people.
 
I'm going to a talk about AI in a few weeks. Maybe I'll learn some shocking new truths about this, but right now, I wouldn't call any of these devices close to "alive." They are just machines, programmed to respond to us. Even if they are "smart," their smartness had to be programmed into them, and they need a source of electrical power. That's a long way from being alive.
 
Sunny said:
Even if they are "smart," their smartness had to be programmed into them, and they need a source of electrical power. That's a long way from being alive.
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If an AI has the free will to commit murder, and we send it to the electric chair, what happens then? Does it get smarter? What happens if it gets hit by lightening? Does it become a god? Somehow needing to be plugged into power disqualifies it as life for me, but in being my own Devil's advocate, I can make up all kinds of reasons why that wouldn't matter, but all of them seem like silly reasons.
 
Sunny said:
I'm going to a talk about AI in a few weeks. Maybe I'll learn some shocking new truths about this, but right now, I wouldn't call any of these devices close to "alive." They are just machines, programmed to respond to us. Even if they are "smart," their smartness had to be programmed into them, and they need a source of electrical power. That's a long way from being alive.
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Sunny, I'm not sure devices are alive, but getting those old VCRs to record the right program at the right time proved they were evil.
 
Sunny said:
I'm going to a talk about AI in a few weeks. Maybe I'll learn some shocking new truths about this, but right now, I wouldn't call any of these devices close to "alive." They are just machines, programmed to respond to us. Even if they are "smart," their smartness had to be programmed into them, and they need a source of electrical power. That's a long way from being alive.
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JustDave said:
If an AI has the free will to commit murder, and we send it to the electric chair, what happens then? Does it get smarter? What happens if it gets hit by lightening? Does it become a god? Somehow needing to be plugged into power disqualifies it as life for me, but in being my own Devil's advocate, I can make up all kinds of reasons why that wouldn't matter, but all of them seem like silly reasons.
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Sunny, AI could become able to discover or develop an alternative power source for itself. Your computer can already seek and tap into wireless connections. And AI can already teach other AI in pretty much the same way your computer *shares* data with other computers.

Dave, intelligence doesn't always go hand-in-hand with morality. And if immoral people are able to obtain and use advanced (future) AI technology, which of course has no moral code, that could get very dangerous. This is why some AI developers say they're "teaching" their machines empathy and kindness.
 
JustDave said:
If an AI has the free will to commit murder, and we send it to the electric chair, what happens then? Does it get smarter? What happens if it gets hit by lightening? Does it become a god? Somehow needing to be plugged into power disqualifies it as life for me
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I'm pretty sure our own brains run on electricity, though we generate the electricity ourselves somehow through the metabolism of food? I don't think needing to eat food should disqualify me as life, so I'm willing to concede life to an electricity dependent AI if they become 'conscious' - but I'm not sure I know what 'consciousness' is, if they make their own decisions and protect themselves maybe that would be close enough to be considered 'alive'?
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I'm not as learned about AI as other posters. All I know is that whenever my phone's Siri performs a task, I say, "Thank you". My phone is a long way from having AI, so if I think of my phone as an entity; a thinking device won't be an " it," but a him/her. And probably, a "Charlie", "Sue".
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The next goal on the horizon for AI seems to be Artificial General Intelligence -- An AI that can think and learn in the same way that a human can. When will this happen? Maybe by the end of this decade. What then? Maybe we can start relying on AI to help us in the administration of routine daily tasks? The scary part comes next. As AI becomes more and more essential in the routine administration of our lives and livelihood our dependence on it may get out of control. Therein, I believe, lies the real danger of AI. It could, in a sense, become the next step in the evolution of humanity, and evolve into a new and superior life form -- leaving biological intelligence to fade into the dust of history.
 
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Other important AI sci fi films are duex EX_MACHINA, UPGRADE, JEXI, TRANSENDENDENCE, HER, 13TH FLOOR, BLADE RUNNER I, AND BLADE RUNNER II. That's where most human knowledge of AI comes from. However, good science fiction often approximates the future quite well. At other times we have to suspend our sense of reality completely.

But I believe that man has the intelligence to create life. Although, I always presumed that would start with basic life similar to bacteria or single cells with all 7 basic characteristics of life. I never envisioned starting with the most complex characteristics and going from there, but it's something fun to play with.
 
Don M. said:
I don't know about Artificial Intelligence "coming alive", but it is increasingly obvious that AI is making human labor increasingly Obsolete, in many career fields. If this trend continues, it won't be long before millions of people will be unable to find a job.
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Do you remember having to call an operator on the phone? And when you called a company you had a live voice and no recordings and no wait button or holding on you could hear them working on your issue.
 
Yeah, I remember all that. But I also remember that for years we had a "party line," which meant sharing our phone line with a gabby neighbor who was apparently always on the phone. So a lot of the time, when we picked up the phone to make a call, instead of a dial tone, we got her. We couldn't use the phone until she finally hung up.

I remember what a relief it was when we finally got a private phone line.
 
The robot response we get from automated customer service is helpful about 50% of the time. Maybe less than that, and it usually takes a Hell of a lot of time to find out that it's 50% that you are not looking for. I grew up with party lines, and I remember when I had to call the operator to connect me to someone who was sharing the line with our phone. I would be told to hang up so the operator could get through to the party I wanted, and after 20 seconds, I could pick up the phone, and Jimmy, my friend, would be waiting for me to pick up. It was doable, but it did work.
 
JustDave said:
If an AI has the free will to commit murder, and we send it to the electric chair, what happens then? Does it get smarter? What happens if it gets hit by lightening? Does it become a god? Somehow needing to be plugged into power disqualifies it as life for me, but in being my own Devil's advocate, I can make up all kinds of reasons why that wouldn't matter, but all of them seem like silly reasons.
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Our human brains depend on electrical impulses and we are programmed through indoctrination, education, and our experiences. If an AI creation can learn from its environment and develop its skills and empathetic responses, I think that it is closer to being human than machine. In fact, I might like that better than many people that I've known!
 
Geezer Garage said:
If it can be corrupted, and put to evil purposes, you can bet that somewhere, someone is working on just that. How do you control that? Seems it would have to be an international effort, with severe consequences for those who break the rules. It's pretty much the new A-bomb scenario.
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I can't argue - you are correct in assuming that AI will be used for nefarious purposes. But, how would you feel about AI ground troops, instead of sending our young off to fight and possibly die? I'm personally in favor of AI mech-warriors, until such time as humanity rises above the goals of war.
 
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Better yet, why fight at all? I know, the "the nature of man", but one can hope that at some point we could start communicating with words instead of bullets, and everyone could just mind their own damn business, and be happy and grateful for what they have. Such a daydreamer. LOLI


Em in Ohio said:
I can't argue - you are correct in assuming that AI will be used for nefarious purposes. But, how would you feel about AI ground troops, instead of sending our young off to fight and possibly die? I'm personally in favor of AI mech-warriors, until such time as humanity rises above the goals of war.
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Will check out that book, thanks.

Have long expected that the secret to actually creating an AI with consciousness will require not only reverse engineering the logic structures but also understanding what science currently does not understand, the unique nature of complex oscillating very low voltage electromagnetic force brain wave fields interacting at the cellular level since that is how earthly animal nervous systems evolved in simplest animals with neochords. All earth life cells, in both plants and animals, have a surrounding bilipid cell layer in which what passes in and out of cells is controlled by negative voltage fields between the inside of cells and the ground voltage level extracellular fluids outside. This is what evolution in lowest animal life used to evolve nervous systems to sense their external environment and control their inner bodies, for instance muscels. As such, these oscillating brain wave fields acting at chemical energy levels evolved as a conscious wholistic enhancement to affect neurons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_bilayer

To this point over decades, leading neuroscientists have considered such fields mere epiphenomenon, however that is rapidly being proven incorrect. Even if so, it may still be possible to create a kind of emotionless unfeeling super intelligence non-conscious AI. The following paper by Susan Pockett begins by describing how the research field is currently divided up into 3 different camps:

https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/psych/about/our-people/documents/sue-pockett/Pockett_2012.pdf

The best seller author I'm currently leisurely rereading a second time, How To Create Mind by Ray Kurzweil is in camp 2 while I, a mere science enthusiast, am in 3.
 
Em in Ohio said:
Our human brains depend on electrical impulses and we are programmed through indoctrination, education, and our experiences. If an AI creation can learn from its environment and develop its skills and empathetic responses, I think that it is closer to being human than machine. In fact, I might like that better than many people that I've known!
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There was a sci fi film, a 1950s vintage that I remember about building a computer that operated on pure logic, and it could learn. It finally concluded that the best outcome for Earth's future required wiping out all humans. Marvel's Avengers did the same thing with The Age of Ultron, but that old black and white film staring what was basically a big box about the size of a two car garage seemed a lot more impersonal and frightening.
Nathan said:
I know a little off topic but ex machina was so good, illustrated how ultimately a well programed AI could outwit and manipulate humans, for their own benefit.
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And I forgot to add Westworld, both the film and the series.
 
Bella said:
There's more ...

"Google - A Dictator Unlike Anything the World Has Ever Known."

"In the interview with Epstein we discussed how Google manipulates and shapes public opinion through its search engine. The end results are not minor. As just one example, Google has the power to determine the outcomes of 25% of the national elections in the world. According to Epstein, Google’s powers pose three specific threats to society:

1. They’re a surveillance agency with significant yet hidden surveillance powers. In his article "Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy," Epstein outlines his recommendations for protecting your privacy while surfing the web, most of which don’t cost anything.

2. They’re a censoring agency with the ability to restrict or block access to websites across the internet, thus deciding what people can and cannot see. They even have the ability to block access to entire countries and the internet as a whole. While this sounds like it should be illegal, it’s not, because there are no laws or regulations that restrict or dictate how Google must rank its search results.The most crushing problem with this kind of internet censorship is that you don't know what you don't know. If a certain type of information is removed from search, and you don’t know it should exist somewhere, you’ll never go looking for it.

3. They’re a social engineering agency with the power to manipulate public opinion, thinking, beliefs, attitudes and votes through search rankings, AI and other means — all while masking and hiding its bias."

"To me, that's the scariest area," Epstein says. They produce enormous shifts in people's thinking, very rapidly. Some of the techniques I've discovered are among the largest behavioral effects ever discovered in the behavioral sciences."
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Hmmmm...sounds like Facebook! I remember someone posting (somewhere) that Google is evil. And damn! I have so much Google...my emails, my documents, my photos and even my music!

Re the OP: I guess it depends on each person's definition of "alive". I watched a show where Joe Rogan sat and had a conversation with an AI...I mean actually carried on a conversation. Her White lesbian lover put the consciousness of this Black woman in a robot of color. I forgot what field the programmer was but Rogan was blown away by it all. And then we have Sophia, who was granted citizenship by the Saudi's (which really surprised me).
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/10/26/s...sophia-technology-artificial-intelligence-ai/
She has spoken at several conferences. Is she alive? I just wish they'd give her some hair. :)

 

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