[ExI] Strong AI Hypothesis: logically flawed?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Saturday, September 27, 2014, Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote:

> This is one of my recent salvos in a discussion Nick's book -- or a review
> of it -- touched off on the Yahoo group LeftLibertarian2. I thought it
> might be of interest. The other person referred to is Jeff Olson, an active
> member of that group who's also published a novel dealing with AI.
>
> By the way, do you any of you have any comments to make on what I call the
> "core argument" for strong AI? (Scroll down, it's near the end.)
>
>
> Dan
>
> On Friday, September 26, 2014 3:08 PM, "Dan dan_ust at yahoo.com
> [LeftLibertarian2]" <LeftLibertarian2 at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
> [Snip] The actual way to demonstrate something is not logically
> impossible, is to show that nothing on a priori grounds makes it
> impossible. This doesn't mean, by the way, that one might not be mistaken
> -- perhaps overlooked some aspect of something that would make it
> impossible. But then the mistake wouldn't be with someone's overall view of
> possibility as such, but with the specific case being ill defined rather
> than poor logic.
>
> To put it pithily as possible: not being [able] to rule something as
> impossible is the definition of it being possible. (It doesn't, however,
> tell us anything about it's likelihood. Again, in common parlance, people
> often use "possible" to mean something that has a vanishingly small
> likelihood -- as if there were a scale of possible < likely/probable <
> actual/necessary. But possible as we're discussing it here really just
> means something is not impossible and only tells us that the likelihood or
> probability (which are [sometimes] distinguished) is not zero -- just like
> impossible only tells us they are zero.)
>
> Now you could make an argument that if someone holds there's no
> demonstration of logical impossibility that this implies logical necessity.
> That would be an error in modal logic as I understand it. That something's
> logically necessary, of course, implies it's not logically impossible, but
> the reverse is not so. For instance, it's logically possible that a third
> party candidate can win the US presidential race in 2016. (Okay, it's
> probably more likely that machines will not only start thinking, but
> becomes our friends too in the same year.:) But that this is possible
> doesn't mean it's necessary (or inevitable, as I think it might be put in
> temporal modal logic).


Possibility implies necessity if all possible worlds exist. This has
interesting implications. For example, if being raised from cryinic sleep
has only a 1/10^100 probability, then in a multiverse where all
possibilities are realised you will definitely find yourself waking from
cryinic sleep.


> But let me go further than this. I think the case can be made that those
> arguing for strong AI (the usual term for what you call "True AI" or
> "Actual AI"; just want to avoid multiplying terms here for what I feel are
> the same notion) are not merely arguing that their concept is not a priori
> nonsense, but that it's nomologically possible -- in the sense that it fits
> what they believe are the known laws of nature. Again, recall the argument
> I offered for their core argument:
>
> 1. Intelligence supervenes on a physical process in biological brain.
>
> 2. That physical process can be made to happen in something other than a
> biological brain.
>
> 3. When you have done this you have made an artificial intelligence.
>
> Assuming there's no flaw in this (again, rather loose) argument's "logic,"
> it seems the easiest way to attack it is to show either be shown to be
> wrong by either showing that intelligence doesn't supervene on physical
> processes (even allowing Roderick's "quibble") or that it does but can't
> happen in anything other than a biological brain (or a biological entity).
> In other words, to either refute physicalism (which, again, does have its
> serious critics) or to refute multiple realizability (in some form; there's
> a growing literature on this, but, like physicalism, multiple realizability
> has its serious critics too). I don't either falls prey to your attack.
>
> I'll go one further. I've met AI enthusiasts who posit strong AI is an
> empirical claim which they believe will be proved true in the next few
> decades. (Long enough for many of us to be dead, I take, so no egg on their
> face if their wrong -- unless you want to pull them out their cryo-tanks
> and smear it on them:). But they admit it might not come to pass. Is that a
> reasonable or unreasonable position for them to hold?
>
> And my guess is some of the strong AI types who would go further than this
> -- seeing it as inevitable -- should they live long enough and not see it
> come to pass will, no doubt, change their minds. (Just like, I trust,
> should strong AI really come about, you'll change yours.)
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>
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-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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