Reading the Week in Review section of the NYT today, I came upon an interesting column about a new computer–dubbed Watson–that its developers hope will rise to the level of AI, defined in the side bar copied above. Watson will soon be in a “Jeopardy” type competition to see how it does.
What I found refreshing about the column, by novelist Richard Powers, was the absense of the oft-stated claim that if a machine actually reached the AI level of computering capacity, it would be a person. Throughout, the new computer is described as a very high tech and powerful tool. Horray!
This is a small example of the difference between a human being and an AI machine. From “What is Artificial Intelligence?”
Consider the challenge: Watson will have to be ready to identify anything under the sun, answering all manner of coy, sly, slant, esoteric, ambiguous questions ranging from the “Rh factor” of Scarlett’s favorite Butler or the 19th-century painter whose name means “police officer” to the rhyme-time place where Pelé stores his ball or what you get when you cross a typical day in the life of the Beatles with a crazed zombie classic. And he (forgive me) will have to buzz in fast enough and with sufficient confidence to beat Ken Jennings, the holder of the longest unbroken “Jeopardy!” winning streak, and Brad Rutter, an undefeated champion and the game’s biggest money winner. Machine’s one great edge: Watson has no idea that he should be panicking.
That might be nice in a quiz show context, but in life, it could be a huge impediment. We don’t just make decisions based on raw data and logic. We are moral agents, who sometimes refuse to do the logical thing because we consider it wrong. We are emotional beings. We are impulsive. We are risk takers. We are so much more than mere computers, which is how some anti human exceptionalists like to describe us.
And ponder this paragraph:
Does Watson stand a chance of winning? I would not stake my “Final Jeopardy!” nest egg on it. Not yet. Words are very rascals, and language may still be too slippery for it. But watching films of the machine in sparring matches against lesser human champions, I felt myself choking up at its heroic effort, the size of the undertaking, the centuries of accumulating groundwork, hope and ingenuity that have gone into this next step in the long human drama. I was most moved when the 100-plus parallel algorithms wiped out and the machine came up with some ridiculous answer, calling it out as if it might just be true, its cheerful synthesized voice sounding as vulnerable as that of any bewildered contestant.
No, Watson did not make an “heroic effort.” It’s makers, perhaps. But it is just a machine. It’s voice was not vulnerable. That was human interpretation, anthropomorphism, if you will. (I could swear that my GPS voice gets irritated if I don’t take “the highlighted route” and must engage in “recalculating.”) And only a human being could get choked up because of the success of a quest. You see, only we have such romantic notions.
The piece ends with a Jeopardy-type question and answer:
Should Watson win next week, the news will be everywhere. We’ll stand in awe of our latest magnificent machine, for a season or two. For a while, we’ll have exactly the gadget we need. Then we’ll get needy again, looking for a newer, stronger, longer lever, for the next larger world to move.
For “Final Jeopardy!”, the category is “Players”: This creature’s three-pound, 100-trillion-connection machine won’t ever stop looking for an answer.
The question: What is a human being?
Yup. Exceptional US.
February 6th, 2011 | 12:08 pm
Very much agree that humans are human beings.
I think it’s theoretically possible for a machine to be a moral being from a standpoint of Catholic moral reasoning– basically, if it acts enough like a moral being that I can’t tell the difference, I must act like it’s a moral being.
That said, as much as it pains me to admit it, be able to answer questions based on puns and word play isn’t the defining trait of a moral being. It’s a lot sillier and more emotionally appealing than figuring the square root of whatever, or solving a math problem with five variables, but I don’t think it’s actually harder.
It’s a really nifty bit of programming.
I’ll start considering artificial persons when they can make choices, or at least tell jokes on the level of my doesn’t-really-talk daughter.
(Child: points at cat. Yells ‘dog.’ Laughs herself sick. No, we didn’t teach her this, as opposed to the computer’s programing.)
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 6th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Foxfier: C moral teaching, I’ll bet, presumed a living being, not an inanimate object. And that raises the question, which we don’t get into here, of souls. Also, of whether a machine could “sin” and hence, be in need of “salvation.” I have a feeling the CC would say no, but I am not a Catholic theologian. But it would be an interesting question for them, I think.
February 6th, 2011 | 12:45 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, Eva Miranda. Eva Miranda said: Artificial Intelligent Computers Would be Tools, Not Moral Beings …: We are so much more than mere computers, … http://bit.ly/fxhLo4 [...]
February 6th, 2011 | 1:05 pm
Nope, life not a primary definition– being a material being isn’t even needed. (angels are moral beings)
The best discussion I ever heard on the topic by a professional theologian was on the question of zombies and vampires, actually…. Basically, if it seems to be a moral being to the point where you can’t prove it does, charity requires that you assume it is a moral being.
Given that a true artificial intelligence would be incredibly lonely, not to mention being by definition unnatural, actually trying to make one would be pretty dang disrespectful of other moral beings– sort of like trying to make a chimera Neanderthal if you believe they were moral beings, or genetically engineering a human Naga or something.
It’s sort of nifty– we’ve got all these new things that we’re doing, but most of the moral questions have been thought about already, at least in little chunks. Problem becomes one of definition.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 6th, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Foxfier: Well, in Catholic theology, as I understand it, angels–and demons–are alive. They are just immortal and immaterial. But they are not inanimate.
February 6th, 2011 | 1:57 pm
[...] News Sources wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
February 6th, 2011 | 6:14 pm
Translation/definition problem–
they have no pulse or breath so they’re not ‘alive’ in the human and animal or even plant sense, but they’re not inanimate because,
1) they’re immaterial and ‘inanimate’ is applied to material things;
2) inanimate things can’t be conscious, let alone make moral choices.
We can’t prove something by defining it, so we can’t define ‘inanimate’ to include all artificial intelligence, same way we can’t define “moral being” as “human.”
It does all boil down to being a moral agent, not just being able to answer questions, so in theory it’s possible– just like non-human, material, mortal intelligence.
(See: the big kerfluff about the “Pope’s astronomer” saying he’d baptize an alien if asked.)
Might try going at it by the ‘created’ route, but I can’t think of any way that one say a computer was made by man therefore it can’t be a moral agent that wouldn’t also apply to the unnatural ways we make humans, or– God forbid– a human chimera.
(The old “clones aren’t people” thing that’s so popular in fiction runs into the same problem, just on even more of a gut level– if they clearly seem to be moral beings, how can we claim they are not?)
February 6th, 2011 | 10:08 pm
In my view, any being that’s conscious, or potentially conscious, is a moral being. Clearly, if a computer reached a particular point of sophistication, meaning its silicon chips, interacted with each other, in a fashion that, produced consciousness, for the computer, it would be a moral being.
If this computer, was formulated into, say, a robot, capable of locomotion, and could reason about moral issues, and therefore could behave morally, toward others, I would assume that you, Wesley, would agree that it’s a moral being.
February 7th, 2011 | 5:39 am
Bret, it has been argued that electricity is what causes consciousness (“the feeling of what happens”). My desk lamp could be conscious.
The sad thing is, the actual argument for electricity-as-consciousness is far more grounded in what is real than the arguments of scientists today who simply argue that consciousness is an “emergent property” that just magically emerges at whatever subjectively defined moment they happen to think something matches their definition of what a conscious entity might look like.
February 7th, 2011 | 10:34 am
There’s a book about all of this! Check out Stephen Baker’s FINAL JEOPARDY: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything. It’ll be in stores Feb 17 – but you can get an eBook now, online. Check out this piece on AllThingsD about it: http://tinyurl.com/4ouh4je.
February 7th, 2011 | 11:33 am
What this really points out are the limitations of machine intelligence. For instance, there’s a consistent false meme among animal rights activists that most animal research could be replaced by computer models. Well, scientists made a computer model of a cat’s brain last year, and that took a computer the size of Watson. JUST the brain, and eliminating most of its interactions with other body parts. And I’m not even sure how good a model it is.
Anybody who thinks human creations can match up to the complexity of nature doesn’t understand nature.
February 7th, 2011 | 5:59 pm
Perhaps our outlook about AI is based on a prejudice in favor of biochemical, as opposed to,electromechanical, life. Now, suppose a supercomputer were capable of producing others of its kind, programming them with a set of “values” or parameters within which to act, and providing them with the basic blueprints with which to reproduce themselves, would they be any less “alive” than we are? Caution, religious folks: before you protest that we’re “special” because “God made us in His image” consider the analogue that these generations of robots would be equally “special” because they were made in ours.
February 7th, 2011 | 7:15 pm
Blake: You make some good points. Maybe electricity is necessary, but not sufficient, for consciousness? We’re really in the dark here. As Richard Restak,M.D., a leading expert on the brain, has pointed out, we’re using the brain, to find out about the brain!
I’m inclined to agree with Colin McGinn, a british philosopher, who has argued for a “mysterian” view of consciousness: humans are not equipped, by evolution, to decipher the full reality of how the brain causes consciousness.
February 7th, 2011 | 8:07 pm
Whether computers can be conscious, hinges on whether only brains can be conscious. I don’t believe that the latter’s true.
I think that computers could be conscious. I believe that we have a soul, that survives death, and if true, would obviously entail that the notion, that only brains cause consciousness, is false.
I had a great conversation, on another thread, about a related topic, with one of the most intelligent commenters, here, Ravan Chuckwu. I argued that, brain states, do not necessarily cause mental states. She suggested that, maybe I believe that, brain states are necessary causes, for mental states, but not sufficient causes. I’ve been convinced by her intelligent formulation. I think that this makes more sense, than my previous view, that, brain states are correlated with mental states, but not necessarily causal.
one could argue that, the brain, composed of billions of neurons, and trillions of synaptic connections, interacts, in a subtle way, with the soul (as the late neurobiologist Sir John Eccles, has argued).
What does this have to do with computers? Perhaps computers, after they reach a certain level of complexity, are provided with souls!! Crazy thought? Maybe. Does anyone have any views here?
February 7th, 2011 | 8:33 pm
Transhumanists have never and will never have any credibility. There is one thing they are good for and that’s stuffing nooses.
February 7th, 2011 | 9:47 pm
If Watson pans out, it will represent a major improvement in natural language processing. But that’s about it. Jeopardy is a limited field for linguistic interaction, and natural language is only one of the many abilities of the human mind.
Given that we lack a coherent model of how the mind works or understanding of where consciousness comes from, it’s more than a bit premature to start talking about “intelligent” machines.
Present computers are instances of Turing machines, and everyone who has taken an undergrad-level Computational Theory class can identify problems that Turing machines are incapable of solving. Absent a total revolution in computer science, I feel comfortable saying that faster computers will bring us no closer to any machine that could be considered “intelligent” by any criteria.
February 8th, 2011 | 10:58 am
Cogito, ergo sum. As for the rest of you I’ll never know.
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