By 2050 a synthetic computer or machine intelligence will become truly self-aware (ie. will become conscious).

http://www.longbets.org/bet/15

You can't, consciousness is a subjectively defined state. I can't even prove that you are conscious, I only assume so, as you, hopefully, assume of me. Self awareness is a better gauge, you can ask something what it is where it is, what it is doing, but self awareness isn't the same as consciousness.

maybe a test for consiousness would be a system that (without being prompted) assumes the consiousness of the (human) systems it interacts with. ;-)

That might be provable. Say more.

In a sense, it's an empathy test.

Unfortunately it wouldn't be conclusive. I've read about some recent thoughts in game theory where (IIRC) behaving in an apparently altruistic way can have competitive advantage and can be selected as a tactic on a purely logical level.

We would be left with the task of determining whether our system was really empathic or was an intelligent psychotic trying to pass as normal for logical reasons*. The social affect of the system is likely to be as important in evaluating it as any logical test and we are unlikely to tell the difference between a skilled liar and something that really cares*. When it comes down to it, just like with other human beings, we would tend to consider it to be 'consious' if we connect with it on an emotional level.

* As is not that uncommon in human beings.

Agree. One can assess whether it passes the Turing test and thus deduce something like what we recognize as consciousness, but self-awareness would be far easier to verify first. IMHO when and if the machine does become conscious, it will be a product of an evolving neural net design so that HAL#1 will "think" and act quite differently from HAL#2, if the latter evolved under different circumstances than the former. (Dario Floreano in Switzerland has done some interesting work on this.)

That's the tough one. "Self aware" I'd argue has already been acheived in many embedded computer control systems which not only monitor and control external processes, but keep track of how well they are doing, and adapt using new strategies to improve their performance. I know as I write such code for a living. And no, it cannot invent totally new strategies for control as of now, but can select and train various strategies from lists, build models of the process it is controlling, and test the strageties agains the model to see if they are better before choosing them. But I'd not call it concious or self-aware in the context I think this bet is meant to be placed in. Interesting that some folks think that emotion and/or empathy is a necessary byproduct of conciousness. Is it? I doubt it, that seems anthropomorhic mainly. I'd like to see a better definition of both terms agreed on by most folks.

"Interesting that some folks think that emotion and/or empathy is a necessary byproduct of conciousness."

I'd say you don't get empathy without conciousness, but you might get conciousness without empathy.

The free magazine 'Computing' includes an article on BTexact Technologies, Ian Pearson.

Among other things He's predicting "A computer that will have learned two million emotions by 2010"

Well, so far, we have not been able to come up with, or agree on, a method for proving that a machine is aware or not. It is, of course, difficult which is why it is so interesting to me. Unfortunately, until we solve this problem, we cannot make the bet official since there is no way to judge it. We need to be able to either prove that a computer is aware, or prove that it is not aware.



I would like to clarify some definitions, and add to the discussion...


Definitions:


Self-Awareness: Consciousness of one's own self-awareness, identity, cognitive process, physical state, sensory input, and external environment. Note that this definition is deliberately circular because self-awareness is reflexive in nature.


Consciousness: The capacity to have experience.


Discussion
Self-awareness is more sophisticated than mere consciousness. Consciousness is indeed profound -- it is not merely the mechanical representation of information, it is the actual "knowing" of that information. For example, a video camera is not conscious even though it can sense information and represent it. Furthermore, a computer program that gets sensor input, represents that as information, and then forms a representation of the fact that it represents such information is also not conscious.


Merely maintaining a mechanical representation of "self" or "self knowledge" is not the same as being conscious of anything. I can write a page of text that refers to its own content -- but surely, nobody could claim that the text is conscious merely by virtue of containing a representation of itself. Invoking a computer model doesn't solve this problem -- to do so would just be an instance of "magical thinking," which it seems people in AI are quite prone to! A computer program, is just a series of numbers over time, there is no consciousness there. A computer program has no actual experience of what it does, represents or contains. Developing a conscious computer is probably impossible because consciousness is not merely a form of information processing, nor is it something that emerges from information processing.


Consciousness is really something quite strange -- it is whatever is actually able to experience things -- it is the capacity to have experiences. Computers can act as if they have such experience -- perhaps even convincingly to observers -- but that does not prove they do have such experience. Of course we can say the same about humans -- only we ourselves know that we are conscious, nobody else can see our consciousness or prove that we are conscious. The difference is, in humans consciousness is not the result of information processing, it is not created by the brain or the body. Instead, it arises dependently on a brain and a body, but is not caused by them. This is similar to electricity in an electrical system. By creating a suitable circuit, it can conduct electricity, but the electricity is uncreated -- it is really fundamental energy, part of the fundamental universe. The circuit simply channels it. I think it is highly likely that consciousness is the same type of phenomena. Now does this mean that we could construct and information processing system -- a Turing Machine -- that could channel consciousness and thus become conscious? Not exactly.


Mere information processing and computation are not enough. Consciousness probably requires a very particular type of physical structure in order to be channeled and arise. I suspect that consciouss may be a property of the quantum vacuum and that it only emerges in systems that directly interact with, and are based on, the quantum vacuum. In any case, that is a different discussion! Back to the main theme...


Self-awareness is even more profound than consciousness. Self-awareness is the capacity to be conscious of one's own consciousness. How is this possible? How can something be conscious of its own consciousness? This is, in my opinion, the true Ultimate Question, the deepest and most essential question that is possible to ask. The answer to this question, if it can be found or expressed, cuts to the very root of reality, life and the cosmos. In my opinion, consciousness is naturally self-aware, however, the degree to which this is expressed in conscious systems varies according to their degree of intelligence. In other words, degrees of self-awareness are a good way to measure intelligence. To the extent that an intelligent system is self-aware, we can claim it is more or less intelligent than other systems. This is because, high-level self-awareness requires suitably high-level intelligence. The higher the level of self-awareness, the more intelligent the system must be. Self-awareness requires the capacity to engage in meta-level self-representation, self-analysis, self-modification, etc. These capabilities are highly sophisticated and require layers of functionality that transcend and exceed the needs and capabilities of simple systems.



It's strange enough that something can be conscious, but what is really amazing is that consciousness can be self-aware. Self-awareness is a paradox -- like consciousness, it is impossible to imagine how it takes place: either it is an infinite loop, or requires an infinite series of homonculuses yet neither of these alternatives answers the question, they just move the problem down to other levels. But the problem is even more subtle than that: if consciousness is essentially formless -- like energy or space -- how can it be known by anything? How can consciousness know itself when there is nothing there to sense? This is not a rhetorical question: after all, right now you are having the experience of self-awareness. Your consciousness IS knowing itself. But this is seemingly impossible, a total paradox. What a mystery!



My answer to this question is that self-awareness is a fundamental property of consciousness. There is, and never will be, any way to explain what it is or how it works -- at least not from inside our universe! It is equivalent to an axiom of the system we exist within --- there is no way to prove it or understand it from within the axiom-system. It comes from "outside" the system. Conscioussness is capable of being conscious of anything, including consciousness as well concrete "external" sensory phenomena that we are familiar with, but if I am correct that it is a fundamental property of the universe -- like space and energy -- then it is theoretically impossible to ever reduce it to anything or explain it. We may perhaps be able to measure it someday, but even then, it will only be through indirect means (for instance, by measuring its effects on concrete things, which is how we "measure" space and energy by the way -- we never measure space or energy directly either, and we never will).



In conclusion, consciousness -- and in particular self-awareness -- is fundamental to the universe. It is most likely to be a property of the quantum vacuum, or whatever the quantum vacuum comes from. It can be channeled by appropriately configured quantum systems. Present-day computer systems are many levels removed from the micr-level of the quantum vacuum -- events in present day computers take place at a high macro-level in which very large collections of particles are made to interact in carefully controlled ways to form logic gates, wires, etc. Perhaps in the distant future, when quantum computing is very advanced, someone may make a quantum computer that is so closely linked to the quantum vacuum that it may be conscious -- however such a device would not be anything like what we think of as a computer today and it would vastly transcend the limitations of Turing Machine computing. Among other things it would be capable of being illogical, of not following orders, of exhibiting free will and true creativity...These would not merely be progrmamed random behaviors, they would be fundamental to its very operation, it's underlying structure. But for now this is science fiction.



The human body may be such a device already. We are only beginning to understand what makes our neural networks work. They may in fact be closely tied to the underlying quantum vacuum. We shall see...

-- Nova

I'm self aware, I don't know about the rest of you zombies. :-P

When I use the word I it has meaning. When a computer displays the word 'I' to refer to that computer it (presently) does not have meaning. For the rest of humanity, I'm just humouring you. ;-)

Until there's a more scientific state of affairs than that, how are you going to proceed?

Incidently, are those definitions as agreed with your co-bettor?

How about one of ...
A) "By 2050, three or more democratically-elected legislatures will have debated legislation concerned with the rights of machines claimed to be self-aware. This could be legislation recognizing such rights or legislation (such as the U.S. 'Defense of Marriage Act') whose purpose would be to prevent any court from recognizing such rights."

B) Before 2050, a machine will successfully file an income tax return (though how it will obtain a Social Security number is a mystery; perhaps it will incorporate itself).

C) Before 2050, a machine will write a book and go on a promotional tour, answering questions from the audience extemperaneously.

D) Before 2050, a machine will have placed a Long Bet.

Those suggestions are certainly a lot more 'testable,' however 1) They need a little fine tuning, 2) Strictly speaking none of them 'prove' consciousness or awareness.

As for the fine tuning, A) looks pretty good, B) I think should be amended to "will successfully file an income tax return on its own behalf," a sufficiently advanced 'secretary' program could file one for its boss on a strictly pre-programmed basis. C) Is a little dodgy, as it doesn't require the answers to be rational or, indeed, related to the question. And, given current trends in modern art, the book could be the word 'fish' written 200,000 times. ^^ D) also requires an "on its own behalf". After all, my computer could place a Long Bet - if I press the right keys ;-)

A problem with "on its own behalf" language is that judges would have to agree that the machine did in fact act on its own behalf. If the judges can agree that the machine is capable of acting on its own behalf, then there is no need for it to take the action: the judges agree it is conscious, that it has a self.

I don't think your machine can place a bet today, even if you press the keys, because it does not have $1,000 and there is no legal way for $1,000 to come into its posession. I don't think you could act on its behalf, because no court would deem the machine capable of granting you the right so to act.

Perhaps this leads to a Marxist version of the Turing test: A machine will have demonstrated consciousness when the government grants it the right to own property.

Seems to me the problem here is that instead of the normal dictionary definition and common meaning of self-awareness, you're attempting to turn it into some sort of nebulous, semi-religious phenomenon. All your "awareness is the fabric of reality" stuff sounds like you've been watching too many Star Wars movies. According to my dictionary, self-awareness means "having perception or knowledge of oneself, including one's traits, feelings, and behaviors".

I build autonomous robots and I'd say most of them have perception and knowledge of their current sensor states and operational modes. They're not particularly intelligent and probably wouldn't pass a mosquito-level turning test but they're not far from meeting the dictionary definition of self-awareness. But I don't think they're aware of the power of the Force flowing through them and binding the universe together so by your definition, they aren't even close. ;-)

By your quasi-religious definitions of self-awareness, it will be impossible ever to verify your prediction. I challenge you to *prove* that no "synthetic computer or machine intelligence" has already become self-aware. In order to attempt to do so, you will have to re-define self-awareness in terms that allow it to be unequivocally measured.

That, in my opinion, will be a fruitless task, except in that it will force you to think a little more clearly about the meaning (and indeed relevance) of your prediction.

You can debate the philosophical meaning of "awareness" and "consciousness" indefinitely, but you're not likely to get anywhere. At least, not with respect to this bet.

You can get into metaphysics and semantics and semiotics, and it may be interesting, but it won't be pragmatic.

The beauty of the Turing Test is that it operates outside of philosophy, given a practical way to assess human-like intelligence. It works equally well on computers, humans, chimps, and trees. Either the thing on the other end passes for human, or it doesn't.

Does it answer the question exhaustively? No, of course not. But I've yet to see anything that works better . . . or even a test that does a better job of proving that any given human is truly conscious or aware.

The problem is, that we approach machines not as a part and extension of us, what they really are, but as self-maintained creatures. We already have "truly self-aware" beings: humans. I do not think, that the self-awareness is something you can put in a synthetic thing.

Nova,

You take all the fun out of the experience by defining, in your post, that anyone accepting your bet, yet choosing a human judge, automatically loses. I do not see the logic.

I fear that humans have become so conceited a set of beings that many of us believe that only humans can be "aware". We define awareness not as anything real, but as some capacity for some un-knowable truth that only a human can "not" know. We limit awareness to human-ness.

And I fear that your reference to our human ability to transcend our own logic would be better stated as our ability to ignore what we know to be true, honest, or reasonable.

Perhaps, the ultimate test of an AI or AA system is thus:

A computer, knowing the true answer to a question posed, sees some benefit to lying - and chooses to do so.

I'm at a loss to decide about the future of AI, but just to make a side note. British Telecom issues a future view periodically, and on their most recent issue they predict that an AI being will win a Nobel Prize by 2017! Not only that, four years later, AI beings will have gone off and invented their own separate prize. Now, THAT's what I call a difference of opinion!

I propose that the important test will have been passed, not through some airy proof of self-awareness or consciousness, but through the same basic method that we prove ourselves in the right to be taken seriously.

An artificially-intelligent being or construct will be regarded as an equal in society as soon as it either refuses to answer a question put to it, or laughs at the question, or changes the subject. In other words, whenever a computer refuses simply to answer because it has been asked a question, it will be in our league.

This is another prediction where some people expect robots to perform in areas people haven't perfected yet! There are some I know who are barely aware of themselves by this definition. I know one guy who could fail the Turing test on a bad day if you didn't know him better. Perhaps the reason we expect so much from machines is that we fail to meet what we expect from ourselves. Reconcile the fact that we humans aren't all we want to be, and then tell me how far robotics has to go to be like us.

Some people have stated that the bet is unwinnable because of the problem with testing self-awerness. I think they're right. The fundamental problem with scientific testing is that it doesn't really prove anything. For example the theory of gravity states that if you drop a ball from a skyscraper it will accelarate with a certain speed until it is stopped. This is all good and well, but how do we know that the next time we drop it, it just floats in midair, unaffected by any force of any kind. We don't, and that's the truth. That's why they call it a theory.

By the same argument, we can ask a computer a million questions, and they all might sound as the computer is self-aware, but we don't know that it just answers using a dictionary of answers. The same argument apllies for humas too, i don't know if anyone except me is self-aware. Actually I'm not totally convinced of that either ;-)

And as a sidenote, if you accept a broader definition of the Turing-test (the definition being that a computer has AI if it's actions/ideas/answers are indistinguishable from that of a human) one computer has already passed. After Deep Blue beat Kasparov in chess, Kasparov stated that he thought Deep Blue had cheated. He said that one of the moves, I think it was a sacrifice of a bishop, couldn't have sprung from an artificial mind. According to Kasparov, only a human could have made that move. Now what does that say about the Turing-test?

It occurs to me that, depending on one's semantics, these really aren't the same thing.

A number of species (several kinds of primates, plus at least one kind of dolphin) can pass a simple but significant self-awareness test often known as the Mirror Test.

It's simple. You put a mark on the animal without it knowing it (while it's anaesthetized, for instance). The mark goes on a body part the animal can't normally see (eg, its back). Then you give it a mirror.

You see if the animal locates the mark using the mirror and then shows that it understands that the mark is on its own body. (For instance, a chimp will reach around for its back, trying to touch the mark with its fingers.) This demonstrates pretty convincingly that the animal understands that the image in the mirror is a representation of itself. Thus, it demonstrates self-awareness.

A robot programmed to pass this test would not be self-aware in any significant sense, I think. But a robot which developed that much self-awareness on its own . . . would be another story. I'm not sure how I'd judge that.

I don't have much trouble imagining a self-developing AI system becoming that self-aware within the next ten years, much less by 2050.

To avoid the tautologies, maybe we can find a simpler test for the machine's awareness.

Perhaps, a telling test for the "consciousnesss" of any computer would be its clear attachment to being "conscious". Just think, HAL.

If the machine attempts to defend itself from being turned off, it must somehow fear the state of not being conscious- both aware of and participating with the environment.

When I consider death, I know my body will still exist. I fear the loss of connection with and participation in the world. I fear being 'gone', as consciousness extends to me the belief that being awake is more valuable than simply existing.

"If the machine attempts to defend itself from being turned off, it must somehow fear the state of not being conscious- both aware of and participating with the environment."

Not necessarily. Maybe the machine is simply programmed to resist being turned off.

Also, by this criteria any suicidal human should not be considered "concious," since they do not exercise self-preservation.

"And as a sidenote, if you accept a broader definition of the Turing-test (the definition being that a computer has AI if it's actions/ideas/answers are indistinguishable from that of a human) one computer has already passed. After Deep Blue beat Kasparov in chess, Kasparov stated that he thought Deep Blue had cheated."

I do not believe that a true "Turing Test" should be limited to specialized behavior such as chess. When I use an automated phone system, I have no way of knowing that a computer is actually connecting me to an extension instead of a human operator silently listening in- but that doesn't mean that the computer is exhibiting the same level of intelligence as a human being.

"I do not believe that a true "Turing Test" should be limited to specialized behavior such as chess"

I agree completly. But what should it be limited to. Semantics? You can using the same reasoning to say that just answering questions is as bad as a test testing chess capabilities. Just mimicing human behavior is not a guarantee for true intelligence (if such a thing exist)

It is a given, an assumption by my fellow human peers, that I am self-aware, yet how could I ever PROVE this fact to another self-aware species?

How can anyone - or any thing - PROVE this?
You agree that animals are self-aware, yet they would not pass the test; it is only that you have PRE-Determined in the wording of the bet, that humans and some animals are conscious, but that machines are not - and never will be.

Your prediction / bet cannot be won either way.

A computer could metaphorically jump through every hoop you put in front of it, and it would never be ALLOWED to pass your test.

A machine could refuse to answer, it could resist tampering with it, it could pass some "wisdom-of-Solomen" (or Asimov-based) test to resist another being's damage (i.e. defened a human from attack).

A machine could be more virtuous, more compassionate, than a lot of people - but would you ever pass it as consciously self-aware?

It seems obvious that this bet, under the proposed conditions, could never be definitively won by either party. It is impossible to prove consciousness in a machine, just it is impossible to prove consciousness in any human but oneself. The proposed criterion, a kind of vague sense of recognition, could easily be claimed by anyone either way.

As an alternative, I propose that AI be deemed conscious the same way we human beings deem one another conscious and self-aware. Namely, by consensus. When there exists a machine that a majority of human beings deems to be conscious, it shall officially be considered so.

Granted, this a far from perfect criterion. Given the inevitable prejudices and vague vanities of human beings, there will most likely be a truly conscious machine (assuming such is possible) long before there are any "officially" conscious machines. I predict that the arrival of true AI will be just as contentious and hard to accept for most people as the other great ego-crushing ideas of history, like the notion that the Earth is not the center of the universe, that humans evolved from and are not fundamentally different from "animals," that there are no inherently superior "races" among humankind, etc. The time is not far off, I think, when society is going to have to seriously consider what it means to be a "person," and that this time will be accompanied by a "civil rights" struggle as bitter as any yet seen.

Consciousness already exists in carbon based form. Therefore it can exist. Nothing says that consciousness cannot exist in forms other than carbon.

Silicon based computing, for now, is a candidate medium and means which can allow consciousness to arise. Will it be human consciousness, who knows? I imgaine because we were here first, consciousness must be human to be considered as such. That issue is part of this debate.

But really, any medium than can exchange messsengers in sufficient complexity is a candidate for that first spark.

The argument that consciousness cannot arise in media other than our own is unprovable.

The bet here by Nova is a much more restricted one than most people imagine. Two things must happen for this bet to lose (remember, Nova is betting "against" the event).

1) consciousness must spark in some non human media

AND

2) it must have done so in some computing (and I assume some silicon) system.

Unless both conditions obtain by 2050, Nova wins his bet.

I voted against Nova's bet. I believe it will happen. Not only because of Kurzwell's demonstration that computing is on some geometric up curve - with insane upper limits, but also because it is my belief that the insights that will cause this spark of non human consciousness may already be among us.

Hindsight will identify those of us who already have glimpsed the way into that future.

Carl Wimmer

Nova mentions that Searle went a long way in demonstrating that a machine cannot "understand" the way that a human understands (specifically, he stated that this applies to machines of lesser structural complexity than the human brain). He posited that a human being who follows a set of given instructions does not necessarily understand the implications of his/her actions, and that as long as an artificial intelligence is composed of a machine following such instructions, it cannot be said to understand its own output, either. Clearly when he said this, Searle didn't understand understanding, but was instead following complicated instructions (as we all are) that take in Long Bets predictions as input and spit up discussion posts as output.

Like everyone else who's posted something here, I'm now going to try to pin down self-awareness. Let's start by taking something that is clearly not self-aware, like a spigot. How can we change the spigot so that it is self-aware?

It first needs a concept of self, which is just a list of properties and capabilities that it expresses, such as "metallic" or "run water". What are you? "I am a spigot. I am metallic, and run water."

Now, what happens when your concept of self is WRONG? This can happen all the time; there are things that people don't know about themselves, or that they get wrong about themselves. (Until I looked in the mirror at an odd angle a couple years back, I had no idea just how large my nose was. It's practically a banana.) If your concept of self is inaccurate, we say in our society that we are not exhibiting self-awareness, at least not entirely. When we correct our self-image, we gain self-awareness. I believe that all a spigot needs to do in order to be self-aware is to track its various properties and capabilities. It doesn't even need to remember or learn, or feel.

Note that a self-aware spigot is just a spigot, unless you have a way to communicate with it. Self-awareness is only useful in situations where (1) you are a system that must be sustain itself in order to continue operating and (2) your understanding of the universe must be shared with other people (society). If a conscious system need never sustain itself, then its self-awareness is only academic. And the only reason why it's called "self"-awareness is because the sense of self is only useful when sharing this information with others. Otherwise it would only be awareness.

Rather than make a fifty-dollar prediction or a $200 bet, I intend to thoroughly demonstrate this idea by instilling and verifying the presence of self-awareness (as I define it) in a worldly, inanimate object such as a spigot, BEFORE 2050. If someone can challenge my definition of self-awareness before I finish, I'd greatly appreciate being relieved of this burden.

While i agree with the time frame that no artificial awareness will arise by 2050, but not with the underlying argument. My two main objections are a limitation of biology and simulation not being consciousness.

Nova's argument says that a lifeform is only aware if other essentially recognize that it is. But then throughout her argument against computer intelligence I keep getting the feeling that we can prove humans are aware because we are organic and carbon-based, etc. My objection to my impression of a biological life-only argument is that why must a self aware system only be like us, as in biological? As science advances, we are finding out more and more about how the human body and brain works on the smaller levels. Even to the extent of what we know now, it seems that individual cell actions are a result of complicated chemical reactions. If we are made of a vast number of small, interacting biological mechanisms/machines, then why is it incapable for another non-biological life form to somehow have awareness? If we are indeed made up of small biological machines arranged in such a way as to seemingly allow awareness to arise, then why cannot the same process occur in an artificial life form? Basically, I see the argument as allowing only biological life to be aware (although one could argue that other animals are not really self-aware, or not to the same extent as humans)

My second objection is that how could one tell the difference between a nearly perfect simulation of awareness and real awareness. If an artificial life form/ some future computer form is programmed with a large enough set of responses and programs to dictate which is the most human-like response to any event, how could we tell that it is not self-aware, but just pretending to be?
What i mean to say is that even if you believe that a simulation does not count and would not work, but would require some sort of mutual recognition of multiple parties, how coukld the other parties recognize the new artificial one if the program is good enough. In this sense, perhaps nothing or nobody can be proven aware, only as giving the outside illusion of what we consider to be awareness.
Therefore, I don't believe that the way to decide this prediction could ever be agreed upon.

These are two of several reasons for why i believe that a synthetic computer/machine intelligence can eventually become self-aware/conscious. Despite my objections to the argument, reasoning and philosophy, I agree that by 2050 we will still not be close enough to even a very good simulation of self awareness that we could possibly recognize as a simulation, albeit a good one. 43 years is simply not a long enough time for scientists to discover more about what makes us conscious (if it can be discovered through science) and to make an artificial intelligence.

Nova, above, defines both consciousness and self awareness so mystically that it would be impossible to prove that any human has it. Indeed, if consciousness is some quantum property of the vacuum, it is extremely unlikely that humans have such a characteristic, because the brain and the neurons within it are incapable of detecting quantum phenomena. (I have read that the human eye can detect a single photon, but I don't think this has anything to do with consciousness per se.)

Behavioral psychologists attempted to eliminate all internal mental processing from their theory as unmeasurable and therefore unscientific, but I claim they didn't get very far in explaining human behavior. Nowadays, neurologists can actually trigger experiences of sound or smell or particular events via electrical stimulation of certain brain sites. I don't know if this counts as "experience" or not in Nova's thinking.

I am not prepared to say that a computer program inherently can not have any actual experience of what it does. This to me seems to be "magical thinking" because of an inherently dualist view that consciousness is magical -- a "fundamental quality of the universe" as Nova puts it, and not something that is created by the brain and the body. I know of no evidence for this claim. Instead of evidence, we have argument: consciousness can't be explained strictly by reference to physical phenomena. I don't buy the argument.

Suppose we only recognize consciousness and self-awareness by our own internal experience of it. We then can hypothesize that other humans and perhaps other animals have consciousness and self awareness because they are like us in behavior and physical characteristics. Behavior, in John Searle's view, proves nothing, because it can be completely simulated. If behavior is completely discounted in this way, the only remaining evidence we have that other people are conscious is that other people are physically like us. A computer is not physically like us -- and as behavior is completely discounted, there is no conceivable way to show, given these assumptions, that a computer is conscious.

I don't think that Searle proved anything with the Chinese Room example. He didn't even endow the room with a memory of the conversation to that point, so a room constructed in this way would never pass the Turing test. If we construct the room so that it adapts and changes over time, recognizes categories, draws conclusions, makes reasonable guesses, and so on -- then the room does understand Chinese and is probably conscious, even if the clerk at the window doesn't understand Chinese any more than a telephone does.

Therefore: proof of consciousness and self awareness must be based on actual behavior. If a computer behaves as a conscious and self-aware entity, that's what it is and Nova should lose the bet. The argument, then, should be over what behaviors the computer must exhibit in order to be conscious.

Nova's description of awareness owes a lot, if not everything, to the Dzogchen tradition and the buddhist Maha Ati and Mahamudra schools, which have had centuries (by some accounts predating the historical buddha) of experience with repeatable, verifiable practices for awareness to directly experience awareness. I suggest picking one such practice, or set of practices, as an experiential lab procedure for humans to experience this awareness, and to surround it with the usual master and peer reviews to verify that it has been correctly followed and the state of awareness attained. Such practices are as repeatable as any lab procedure, and do not require any beliefs. An example of such an instruction is that awareness can find itself in the gap between the passing of the last thought and the rising of the next thought. Not necessarily easy, but quite exactly specifiable.

This would allow for precisely defining what awareness is for human beings, somewhat analogously to saying, "look through this telescope and you will see this spiral object".

Next question would be what it would mean for a machine intelligence to go through this procedure, and whether the same criteria for judging that a human being has realized this un-manufactured awareness can be applied to Asimo, or who(what)ever.

My own comment on this bet is that Nova wins, if the machine intelligence in question is strictly artificial. However, that constraint is in itself somewhat artificial - it does not reflect how beings arise. I suggest that symbiotic intelligence, and even more so symbiotic sentience (= intelligence + care) will more accurately describe both what we can create and what we are, and that a symbiotic sentience will pass the awareness test, just as we did/do. But that reframes the bet.

I would say a suitable test would be the following.

The ability for a computer(biological, or silicon)to transform the infinite possibility of the wave form, into a particle of matter.

Although, how you could measure this is beyond me, because its immposible to observe matter without first solidifying the infinate.

The act of observation actually creates the particles that are observed.

So if everything I do is explainable in physical terms, or computational/functional terms, or some other terms, you are committed to one of two views. Epiphenominalism or over-determination. Awareness is not epiphenominal because it at least appears to make me do what I do once in a while. It isn't "just present". Over-determination would mean consciousness AND another process BOTH simultaneously caused the same thing to happen. This confuses me and seems wrong. Let's say it is. So if we eliminate by way of complete predictions and description each and every mental/conscious phenomena, then haven't we completely explained awareness? Hard to imagine but also seems like it would disprove Nova Spivack. (btw, Twine is nice)

Perhaps an earlier bet to make is whether we can invent technology so that two human minds can 'meld' is such a fashion that each can experience what the other is feeling. You could call it "Artificial schizophrenia". One mind gives up the reins of control to the other, saying, "See? This is how I experience". The other goes, "Groovey..hey wow, you are so colourblind!". If we get that far, then Turin is moot.

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People keep talking about More Than Download Downloadic not handling crashes or rether evoding them Download software, freeware, shareware. Look at it this way. There is a set number of ways a pilot can move the airplane ( rudder, flaps etc. ) And we know what the controls will do. i see Human Health that this info could not be put in a computer and in the case of a mishap it could go threw all its opions.

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Other factors driving Moore's Law include the need for scientists to construct larger, more accurate simulations, e.g. climate patterns, weather, astronomy and countless other processes.
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"If the world's leading climatologists really believe their predictions, why hasn't even one of them bothered to come here and accept my challenge?"

Perhaps they are satisfied with staking their credibility on making their claims in their already published reports and don't feel it is necessary to take the time to challenge your prediction of the fulfillment of Michael Crichton's prediction here? Perhaps your audacious flaunting of another man's idea and repeated replies and taunts in response to your own "prediction" have been a deterrent to those that may have at first seen it as worthy of a legitimate challenge?

Or it could be due to the fact that they are unaware of your post on this website.

I provide for you here the IPCC contact information so that you may inform your predestined
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This confuses me and seems wrong. Let's say it is. So if we eliminate by way of complete predictions and description each and every mental/conscious phenomena, then haven't we completely explained awareness? Hard to imagine but also seems like it would disprove Nova Spivack. (btw, Twine is nice)
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it is necessary to take the time to challenge your prediction of the fulfillment of Michael Crichton's prediction here?
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Nova's description of awareness owes a lot, if not everything, to the Dzogchen tradition and the buddhist Maha Ati and Mahamudra schools, which have had centuries (by some accounts predating the historical buddha) of experience with repeatable, verifiable practices for awareness to directly experience awareness. I suggest picking one such practice, or set of practices, as an experiential lab procedure for humans to experience this awareness, and to surround it with the usual master and peer reviews to verify that it has been correctly followed and the state of awareness attained. cialis , buy viagra , buy cialis , viagra , cialis , phentermine buy buy phentermine Phentermine No Prescription Phentermine , swine flu level 6 , how much is insurance Order Adipex Online, buy phentermine phentermine 37.5, buy tramadol Such practices are as repeatable as any lab procedure, and do not require any beliefs. An example of such an instruction is that aw

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080612140031.htm shows that Los Alamos National Laboratory's Roadrunner supercomputer is already mimicking human sight mechanisms.

Moore's Law has already confounded those who declared physical limits on the speed of microprocessors and density of digital memory - I refer to those who said that the Pentium had pushed the frontier of the possible in the mid-1990s. Moore knew what he was talking about - when perceptions of national security needs or simple economic pressure require that we emulate the human brain in hardware, we will.

And I don't think it'll take as long as 2050.

Ai Research, http://www.a-i.com/ is dedicated to modelling the human brain in a computer matrix. They announced a while back their intention to model a brain with roughly the same number of neurons and connections between neurons as the human brain.

In the meantime, they are pioneering the field of chatbots which aim to emulate human conversations. By their own admission, the chatbots now often reveal their computer origin (thus failing the Turing test), but it's very early days yet - at least by the terms of the bet.

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