The goal of AI scientists is to create an intelligent robot but many people feel that goal is impossible. These people believe that the human mind is beyond nature and contains a soul that transcends our physical world. If that is true, then the goal of silicon life is probably a fantasy. However, if men and women are merely the most complex example of intelligent beings and leaves behind a trail of previous experiments by mother nature to fashion biological machines that can think, then there is a good chance we may one day give birth to our evolutionary descendants.
Folks who believe that man is different from the creatures of the Earth do so because they believe that animals lack our kind of intelligence and self-awareness. Animals studies are showing more and more that our relatives on the tree of life often show cognitive traits that we once defined as the sole providence of human nature. As intelligence and awareness are explored we’re starting to see that we homo sapiens are not that unique.
What we are learning from both robotics and animal studies is intelligence is a huge collection of tricks. To be human actually means many things, including a fantastic repertoire of abilities, any one of which standing alone can be faked by machines or revealed in animals. Robots can be programmed or designed to do one thing we can, and even do it better, like playing chess, but that doesn’t mean the robot is intelligent. The same can be said of animals and their special traits.
Animals far exceed what any robot can do today, and they too are collections of abilities. We’re starting to see robots that do more than one thing in a way that makes us see ourselves in their struggle to evolve.
Look at this video of Snowball, a head-banging Cockatoo and ask yourself if this bird is not enjoying himself rocking out to the music, and how is his response to music different from yours.
Snowball keeps better time than I do and I can’t match his dance moves. Building a robot to dance to the beat probably would be easy for today’s robot engineers, but could we build a machine that enjoys a good downbeat as much? Snowball stands above anything we’ve done with robots as people tower over ants. Right now each artificial intelligence experiment struggles to create a single intelligent function that works in the most minimal of fashion. Most people won’t think that Snowball perceives reality like a person, but if we make a list of all the things this bird can do and compare it with what we can do, there is a huge overlap.
Now look at this violin playing robot. The robot is not aware of playing music, but it can do something that most humans can’t.
But can we say that Snowball is aware of music? For all we know, the dance to the beat the bird is doing might be its way of showing pain, and we’re just anthropomorphizing that it’s getting down with the tune. I don’t think so, though.
Now look at this news story about artificial intelligence to get some idea how complex the challenge of programming abilities into a machine.
Notice how many different projects this news story covers where the robot just does one simple thing. Snowball and you have subsystems to do thousands if not millions of functions that could be considered an intelligent reaction to reality. How did evolution program all those functions?
Now look at this video of Alex the talking parrot. This bird seems to think. Alex even asks for things it wants. This is way beyond what robots can do, even though some of Alex’s tricks have been pursued in AI studies. The question becomes can a robot ever think for itself? Can a robot be created that learns from interacting with its environment like Alex the parrot?
Here’s a collection of videos that shows off robotic abilities. None of these robots think for themselves, although some give the illusion they do. Are we just highly evolved illusions? There is a difference between perceiving or reacting to reality and being able to think about and understand reality. Anyone who knows people who have suffered strokes or live with dementia know how fragile our unique abilities are, and how they can be taken away. We also know how severely the body can be damaged and yet the mind inside can soar to brilliant levels, like Helen Keller or Stephen Hawking. We have no idea what’s going on inside of the mind of an animal. Dolphins could be just as aware and intelligent as humans. How will we know when a robot becomes aware?
Robotics is the one area of science fiction prediction that is rushing ahead as fast as science can apply itself. It’s not costly like manned space exploration and the general public anticipates more benefits of its results, especially in Japan. Theoretically, an AI intelligence could be created by a high school kid in his bedroom. How soon will we see an AI robot that has the intelligence of Alex the parrot?
If you’ve studied this concept at all you’ll know it’s not something that will be programmed. Someone needs to invent an artificial brain that learns, and pattern recognition is the key. Vision, hearing, taste, touch and smell are all sensory inputs that process patterns. The brain appears to be general purpose enough to adapt the same kind of physical neural structures to handle each of these sensory pattern types. Are we, that is our minds or our souls, a byproduct of pattern recognition? What abilities do Alex the parrot have that scales up to become us? Alex can hear questions, observe something in his field of view, and reply correct. Do you see that trait in the robot films?
Spend some time and watch the film of Alex over and over. Also watch the robot films carefully too. Do you see patterns of behavior?
JWH 1/21/9
Auxiliary Memory 