I was having a discussion with a friend today about the future of artificial intelligence. My friend was excited about the prospect of computers evolving to human-like intelligence and beyond.<\/p>\n
I said that this was a subject which never really interested me. And that’s not because I am afraid of Skynet<\/i>-like nightmare scenarios, where the moment the computers achieve sentience they try to wipe us out.<\/p>\n
But rather, I simply don’t think of a computer — or a computer network — as a fellow being, the way I think of a person, or a dog or an elephant as a fellow being. I’ve never been drawn to the entire subject of trying to reverse engineer whatever it is that allows us to possess consciousness.<\/p>\n
I think of the computer as a tool, like a piano or a screwdriver. It’s something we humans use to express ourselves, to communicate with each other, or to help make things happen that we want to happen in the world.<\/p>\n
I am indeed interested in making a computer appear to convey the appearance of intelligence, but this is really a form of puppetry — clearly not at all what people mean when they talk about computers becoming<\/i> intelligent.<\/p>\n
I don’t think this is an intellectual disagreement, but rather a difference of temperament. There are those who wish to create life itself. And then there are those like me, who simply want to put on a good puppet show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was having a discussion with a friend today about the future of artificial intelligence. My friend was excited about the prospect of computers evolving to human-like intelligence and beyond. I said that this was a subject which never really interested me. And that’s not because I am afraid of Skynet-like nightmare scenarios, where the … Continue reading “Puppet show”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14860"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14861,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14860\/revisions\/14861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}