[ExI] consciousness vs intuition and insight

[sam micheal]

ACOMA -- A COnscious MAchine

Can it be done?

Can it be designed by me?

Sam Micheal

 

It's 'official'; I'm 'nuts'. I have been officially told by a university 
professor of computer science: "This problem is too big for you Sam." 
Really? Is that so? Are you 1000% sure?

 

As a person 'in love' (understatement) with systems science, physics, 
and AI, I have taken so many courses from engineering disciplines -- I 
have lost count -- where and when.. I DO remember a computer vision 
course I took. I DO remember some basic precepts. I DO remember how we 
know almost nothing about scene recognition (this was about 15 years ago 
so perhaps we know a little more now). But if you actually READ my 
proposal, it says NOTHING about dependency on scene recognition. In 
fact, it depends not one IOTA on anything 'in development'.

 

This is the 'beauty' of our current system. "Instead of pursuing this 
avenue of investigation, /which I doubt you have any real experience 
in/.." [italics added] he continues to suggest I restrict myself to more 
'tame' and approachable areas in computer science. I thanked him for his 
traditional concern. But his 'concern' was itself dismissive. His 
department is focused on computer science education. Why should they 
care about conscious machines? "They would have done it by now if they 
could." (He voiced almost the same sentiment in the same letter.) Wow; 
what a 'revelation'. And all this to say without actually reading my 
proposal.

 

Perspective; perspective; perspective. Read Modern Heuristics by 
Michalewicz. If you can understand that, you're smart. If you can apply 
it, you're smarter. Now, I'm not saying I'm /that/ smart. ;) But I am 
saying I have some insights about the problem. Key word: insights. 
What's another key word? Intuition. Now, let me review a recent 
conversation with my mother about consciousness..

 

"The reason AI people have not developed conscious machines is because 
they have focused on intelligence NOT consciousness. And they have made 
the critical conceptual error in thinking that consciousness is 
dependent on immature technologies like computer vision. It is NOT. I 
contend consciousness is /physical/; we can understand it physically. 
However, much more elusive are concepts like intuition and inspiration. 
I contend we will develop conscious machines /way before/ we will 
develop machines with intuition and inspiration."

 

My design is more than just 'physical'; it is information dependent. 
There is a thing in my design called a rule-base. Is this the same thing 
as a database? Is it constructed with data mining? Maybe. Maybe not. I 
try to define some general specifications. I believe I have a construct 
that is 'rich' enough (diverse and sophisticated enough) to at least 
mimic consciousness. And I try to provide much more than consciousness. 
I design structures that will assist intelligence and self-awareness. 
Hopefully, these will enhance consciousness. The idea is this: I think 
it is difficult to create consciousness from scratch -- but not 
impossible. If we can create a device that is minimally aware and also 
give it some capabilities: intelligence, self-awareness (via model), and 
some capacity for visualization (which to me is Very important), we may 
achieve what most have said is impossible -- machine consciousness. My 
construct is perhaps too dependent on visualization. My original 
specification exceeded the current technology (1 mega bits cubed). 
Because that is impossible by current standards, I had to cut that down 
by a factor of one million. Can the thing still be self-aware with 
limited visualization capability? I don't know. But it's worth trying.

 

It's certainly worth more than "This problem is too big for you Sam."

 

Sam Micheal, 17/JAN/2009

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20090117/16153e64/attachment.html>