Is it possible to create artificial intelligence?
This question was first asked in the 50s of the last century, and at first no one doubted his positive decision. The effect of the euphoria of initial optimism probably had an effect, but like many similar global problems, its solution was not as simple as it was thought to be at the very beginning. Of course, the computers themselves, which were undoubtedly contenders for the role of carriers of artificial intelligence, have progressed so far in their development during this time that we can safely speak of a revolution in information science. But has there been a qualitative leap in the ability of computers to think like a person? The answer is known to all - no, not in the least.
Yes, computers can analyze texts, graphics, translate from one language to another, play chess (even win against world champions), compose music, books, and even talk (i.e., play text in their sound). Not to mention the computational abilities of modern computers - in this they have long surpassed the mental abilities of people. All these computer abilities, were they demonstrated 50 years ago in the era of the birth of cybernetics, could shock people, because such abilities were only predicted in science fiction books. But if this is so, then what is the problem, is it really not possible to take just one more step and achieve the seemingly unattainable - create an artificial mind? Before answering this question, it is necessary to understand as deeply as possible what the human mind itself is and how it differs from the computer.
First a small example. You talk with your friend about, say, a new book, and discuss with it its advantages and disadvantages. Then your interlocutor leaves, and you habitually sit in front of a computer monitor and suddenly find information on the same book on the Internet, moreover, on the forum devoted to the same book, you can read a lot of various comments about it. So what is the difference? The difference is that the computer in this case is only a conductor of information, both about the book itself and the reviews about it. And if you enter into the memory of your computer the text of this book, and even install some special program that can allow the computer to analyze and discuss this book, it is unlikely that the result will satisfy you. Discussion on the forum on the Internet, and even more lively conversation with a friend about the book you like will differ from the possible answers of computer analysis of the text of this book so much that you will have no idea about any artificial intelligence. So the weak point of the computer “brain” lies, first of all, in its inability to analyze and draw conclusions not from logically constructed texts (for example, mathematical formulas), but from literary texts.
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It is in the field of art that a person is ahead of the computer so much that the above-mentioned abilities of the “electronic brain” to compose music and books still look childish and naive. Moreover, without an operator who installs software into a computer, these modest abilities would not be possible. This is quite understandable and natural, because we, as a matter of fact, are talking about the artificial intelligence that humanity is trying to create. But if it still stumbles upon such obstacles as the inability of a computer program to analyze a literary text, then what can help it in such a difficult task? First of all, it is necessary to understand how the human brain received such an incredible ability to evaluate and analyze works of art. To do this, we will have to turn to the very sources - to the very ability of a person to think. And here, at first glance, we see striking coincidences with the structure of computer “thinking”. A person, like a computer, has a long-term and short-term memory; a person, like a computer, performs most of his actions subconsciously, that is, according to the program; and even the failure in memory that every person has from birth to about 5 years is due to a similar reason that a computer that has just been turned on does not have enough resources to use this same memory. And the fact that the computer is turned on this ability appears in a few seconds, a person appears only a few years after his birth. But on this coincidence ends, and the discrepancies begin.
To begin with, unlike a computer, we cannot determine where a person’s thoughts come from, that is, how exactly the thinking process takes place. Of course, everything can be explained by the flow of information coming from outside, which a person receives from the senses. But imagine that you were still able to create a computer with artificial intelligence, and even made for it analogs of the human sense organs, which will send a continuous stream of information about the external world into the artificial brain you created. And what will you see as a result? If the chips of your artificial mind do not burn in the very first moments after switching on, then consider yourself lucky, because to process this amount of incoming information you will need incredible memory resources, but even providing such resources and installing the appropriate program for processing and analyzing the entire received information, you will get a dull and boring picture as a result. Your supercomputer will simply generate environmental statistics, i.e. the maximum that he will be able to do is to display data on the temperature and humidity of the air, atmospheric transparency, light intensity, etc. And where is the thinking? It means that something else is needed besides information coming from outside through the senses. For a computer it is a program. But really, some kind of program unknown to us is also needed for human thinking?
Perhaps we can with some assumption talk about some kind of programming in the daily actions of a person. After all, we never think about how we walk, how we breathe, drink, eat, how we select phrases in a conversation, and even more so we never think about how our internal organs work, especially since this is a rather dangerous occupation. If you think about it a lot, then a serious malfunction of these organs can happen, that is, you can get sick. Thus, all the daily actions of a person and the work of his organs occur automatically. But can we really say the same thing about the very process of thinking? At first glance - yes, because we never think about how we think. And if you still think? The result will be amazing, especially if you conduct such an experiment at night, in complete silence and darkness, lying relaxed in a horizontal position. It is under these conditions that the senses are almost completely excluded from the process of thinking, and we can observe it in its pure form. The very first, direct result of such an experiment is that the senses, as it turns out, not only do not help the thinking process, but interfere with it. Consequently, our first assumption that a person's thinking functions due to the flow of information coming from his senses is completely unfounded. It means that a person has a different, stronger source of thinking than the information that comes from his organs of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, which he needs to interact with the environment, and thinking only processes all this information, but not uses it for its functioning.
Moreover, the picture of the world that appears before our eyes does not at all correspond to the real picture. Indeed, in nature there are no colors or half tones, all this creates an obliging thinking in our brain, and does not even forget to eliminate such a defect in eye optics as diffraction circles around a light source, and this requires the most complex interaction between the brain and organs of vision. What are all these excesses for? They seem to be unnecessary for thinking, but how necessary they are for emotional perception of the world! Without color, the whole world would be completely different, wretched, dull and gray. Then it turns out that emotions, which are equivalents of feelings, which, in turn, have their source organs of sense, help thinking to a very large extent, and at the initial stage of human development, i.e. in childhood are of fundamental importance. Try to spoil the mood of the child - it will be a catastrophe for him, the whole world will cease to exist for such an unfortunate child and will reappear only when he has a new mood, and not a second before. But after all, an adult needs no less emotion. Everyone knows how boring monotonous work oppresses. But it is necessary to get distracted by something interesting, or just to communicate with another person or animals or to look at the surrounding nature, then this person seems to have a second wind, he immediately forgets that just a minute ago he was suffocating from the unbearable burden of monotonous and boring work.
Thus, we can conclude that for normal thinking, at least three main external sources are necessary - information coming from the senses; emotions that also arise when receiving this information; and, finally, the third, incomprehensible for us so far, source, which we can conditionally call a logic program, by analogy with a computer program. There is also a memory, which, as you know, is divided into long-term and short-term, and which may well be the original source of thinking, since memory always has a ready, processed look. After all, we cannot say that we invented just a wheel, just on the grounds that we learned from our memory, i.e. remembered his appearance. Therefore, memory can always be the basis of thinking only in a mediated, indirect form, but can in no way be considered the original source of thinking, like information from the sense organs or the emotions arising from them. Therefore, the feelings and emotions, we can not name the main sources of thinking. Remember that experiment in total darkness, peace and quiet? He made it clear to us that emotions with the senses are not the main helpers in the process of thinking.
So, we have only one hope left - this is the same mysterious logic program, which is recorded in our brain by no one knows who, and which functions unknown how. The main secret in her work is the emergence of the very first thoughts in the process of thinking about a new topic, or about a new subject, which we had not thought about before, and even the very analysis of the very information that we received all day from our senses also occurs not along the rolled track, but each time in different ways, and only then the result of this analysis goes to different memory departments and is stored there throughout a person’s life. Interesting, by the way, is the process of remembering this stored information, which can occur spontaneously, and can take many painful hours and even days. Moreover, in the first case, we can recall entire paragraphs from a book read a long time ago in childhood, and in the second case, we still do not remember where the key was placed when we entered the house only fifteen minutes ago. This is also an interesting feature of memory - access to long-term memory can be much easier and simpler than access to short-term memory. The explanation may, of course, be the fact that the brain simply did not have time to remember such fresh information as the location of the key placed in the drawer of the table just fifteen minutes ago, means that a longer time is necessary for good memorization.
Thus, when comparing a person’s thinking and computer operation in their original, initial state, a significant difference is revealed. That is, we are well aware of the source of “intelligence” of a computer — a program written by man, but the source of human thinking is absolutely unknown. Rather, he is known to us by such a vague definition as “consciousness”, but what exactly is this consciousness itself, no one knows and cannot even give at least an approximate definition. The fact is that consciousness, being undoubtedly obvious of human existence (indirectly, through its thinking), is elusive for external observation. Thus, the fundamental non-observability of consciousness makes it impossible to define it by generally accepted scientific terms. There are two ways to determine the source of consciousness - to explore it through external factors, which as a result leads to the loss of personal context; on the other hand, use introspection techniques oriented towards the study of one’s own “I”, which fix objectively universal and universal signs of personal experience. Despite the diametrical opposite of the direction of research of the source of consciousness in the first and second methods, it becomes obvious that consciousness has a single, universal essence, that is, consciousness can be defined as an absolute, timeless and extra-dimensional imperative of the existence of the universe. Such a definition makes consciousness independent of the material side of being, since a single, absolute entity cannot be material by definition.
Now we can sum up the final result of our research on the possibility of creating artificial intelligence. We found that there is a fundamental difference in the mindset of a person and the operation of a computer (despite the many similarities in their functioning). On the one hand, a computer is an unconditional human creation, from its hardware (“hardware”) to software (“software”). Moreover, a person could not in the slightest degree peep into the surrounding nature of a single prototype or analogue for the invention of a computer other than his own thinking. On the other hand, man himself is a creature of nature, and his thinking is an integral part of the most complex process of interaction of his brain (“hardware”) with the environment, while in the human mind a mysterious logic program (“software” ), which is traditionally referred to as consciousness. So can we create a computing system similar to human thinking? The answer is obvious - we can, if we can connect this system to the logical program of consciousness.
PS
I apologize for such a large amount of text :)
The author is not me - asked to post.
Yes, computers can analyze texts, graphics, translate from one language to another, play chess (even win against world champions), compose music, books, and even talk (i.e., play text in their sound). Not to mention the computational abilities of modern computers - in this they have long surpassed the mental abilities of people. All these computer abilities, were they demonstrated 50 years ago in the era of the birth of cybernetics, could shock people, because such abilities were only predicted in science fiction books. But if this is so, then what is the problem, is it really not possible to take just one more step and achieve the seemingly unattainable - create an artificial mind? Before answering this question, it is necessary to understand as deeply as possible what the human mind itself is and how it differs from the computer.
First a small example. You talk with your friend about, say, a new book, and discuss with it its advantages and disadvantages. Then your interlocutor leaves, and you habitually sit in front of a computer monitor and suddenly find information on the same book on the Internet, moreover, on the forum devoted to the same book, you can read a lot of various comments about it. So what is the difference? The difference is that the computer in this case is only a conductor of information, both about the book itself and the reviews about it. And if you enter into the memory of your computer the text of this book, and even install some special program that can allow the computer to analyze and discuss this book, it is unlikely that the result will satisfy you. Discussion on the forum on the Internet, and even more lively conversation with a friend about the book you like will differ from the possible answers of computer analysis of the text of this book so much that you will have no idea about any artificial intelligence. So the weak point of the computer “brain” lies, first of all, in its inability to analyze and draw conclusions not from logically constructed texts (for example, mathematical formulas), but from literary texts.
')
It is in the field of art that a person is ahead of the computer so much that the above-mentioned abilities of the “electronic brain” to compose music and books still look childish and naive. Moreover, without an operator who installs software into a computer, these modest abilities would not be possible. This is quite understandable and natural, because we, as a matter of fact, are talking about the artificial intelligence that humanity is trying to create. But if it still stumbles upon such obstacles as the inability of a computer program to analyze a literary text, then what can help it in such a difficult task? First of all, it is necessary to understand how the human brain received such an incredible ability to evaluate and analyze works of art. To do this, we will have to turn to the very sources - to the very ability of a person to think. And here, at first glance, we see striking coincidences with the structure of computer “thinking”. A person, like a computer, has a long-term and short-term memory; a person, like a computer, performs most of his actions subconsciously, that is, according to the program; and even the failure in memory that every person has from birth to about 5 years is due to a similar reason that a computer that has just been turned on does not have enough resources to use this same memory. And the fact that the computer is turned on this ability appears in a few seconds, a person appears only a few years after his birth. But on this coincidence ends, and the discrepancies begin.
To begin with, unlike a computer, we cannot determine where a person’s thoughts come from, that is, how exactly the thinking process takes place. Of course, everything can be explained by the flow of information coming from outside, which a person receives from the senses. But imagine that you were still able to create a computer with artificial intelligence, and even made for it analogs of the human sense organs, which will send a continuous stream of information about the external world into the artificial brain you created. And what will you see as a result? If the chips of your artificial mind do not burn in the very first moments after switching on, then consider yourself lucky, because to process this amount of incoming information you will need incredible memory resources, but even providing such resources and installing the appropriate program for processing and analyzing the entire received information, you will get a dull and boring picture as a result. Your supercomputer will simply generate environmental statistics, i.e. the maximum that he will be able to do is to display data on the temperature and humidity of the air, atmospheric transparency, light intensity, etc. And where is the thinking? It means that something else is needed besides information coming from outside through the senses. For a computer it is a program. But really, some kind of program unknown to us is also needed for human thinking?
Perhaps we can with some assumption talk about some kind of programming in the daily actions of a person. After all, we never think about how we walk, how we breathe, drink, eat, how we select phrases in a conversation, and even more so we never think about how our internal organs work, especially since this is a rather dangerous occupation. If you think about it a lot, then a serious malfunction of these organs can happen, that is, you can get sick. Thus, all the daily actions of a person and the work of his organs occur automatically. But can we really say the same thing about the very process of thinking? At first glance - yes, because we never think about how we think. And if you still think? The result will be amazing, especially if you conduct such an experiment at night, in complete silence and darkness, lying relaxed in a horizontal position. It is under these conditions that the senses are almost completely excluded from the process of thinking, and we can observe it in its pure form. The very first, direct result of such an experiment is that the senses, as it turns out, not only do not help the thinking process, but interfere with it. Consequently, our first assumption that a person's thinking functions due to the flow of information coming from his senses is completely unfounded. It means that a person has a different, stronger source of thinking than the information that comes from his organs of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, which he needs to interact with the environment, and thinking only processes all this information, but not uses it for its functioning.
Moreover, the picture of the world that appears before our eyes does not at all correspond to the real picture. Indeed, in nature there are no colors or half tones, all this creates an obliging thinking in our brain, and does not even forget to eliminate such a defect in eye optics as diffraction circles around a light source, and this requires the most complex interaction between the brain and organs of vision. What are all these excesses for? They seem to be unnecessary for thinking, but how necessary they are for emotional perception of the world! Without color, the whole world would be completely different, wretched, dull and gray. Then it turns out that emotions, which are equivalents of feelings, which, in turn, have their source organs of sense, help thinking to a very large extent, and at the initial stage of human development, i.e. in childhood are of fundamental importance. Try to spoil the mood of the child - it will be a catastrophe for him, the whole world will cease to exist for such an unfortunate child and will reappear only when he has a new mood, and not a second before. But after all, an adult needs no less emotion. Everyone knows how boring monotonous work oppresses. But it is necessary to get distracted by something interesting, or just to communicate with another person or animals or to look at the surrounding nature, then this person seems to have a second wind, he immediately forgets that just a minute ago he was suffocating from the unbearable burden of monotonous and boring work.
Thus, we can conclude that for normal thinking, at least three main external sources are necessary - information coming from the senses; emotions that also arise when receiving this information; and, finally, the third, incomprehensible for us so far, source, which we can conditionally call a logic program, by analogy with a computer program. There is also a memory, which, as you know, is divided into long-term and short-term, and which may well be the original source of thinking, since memory always has a ready, processed look. After all, we cannot say that we invented just a wheel, just on the grounds that we learned from our memory, i.e. remembered his appearance. Therefore, memory can always be the basis of thinking only in a mediated, indirect form, but can in no way be considered the original source of thinking, like information from the sense organs or the emotions arising from them. Therefore, the feelings and emotions, we can not name the main sources of thinking. Remember that experiment in total darkness, peace and quiet? He made it clear to us that emotions with the senses are not the main helpers in the process of thinking.
So, we have only one hope left - this is the same mysterious logic program, which is recorded in our brain by no one knows who, and which functions unknown how. The main secret in her work is the emergence of the very first thoughts in the process of thinking about a new topic, or about a new subject, which we had not thought about before, and even the very analysis of the very information that we received all day from our senses also occurs not along the rolled track, but each time in different ways, and only then the result of this analysis goes to different memory departments and is stored there throughout a person’s life. Interesting, by the way, is the process of remembering this stored information, which can occur spontaneously, and can take many painful hours and even days. Moreover, in the first case, we can recall entire paragraphs from a book read a long time ago in childhood, and in the second case, we still do not remember where the key was placed when we entered the house only fifteen minutes ago. This is also an interesting feature of memory - access to long-term memory can be much easier and simpler than access to short-term memory. The explanation may, of course, be the fact that the brain simply did not have time to remember such fresh information as the location of the key placed in the drawer of the table just fifteen minutes ago, means that a longer time is necessary for good memorization.
Thus, when comparing a person’s thinking and computer operation in their original, initial state, a significant difference is revealed. That is, we are well aware of the source of “intelligence” of a computer — a program written by man, but the source of human thinking is absolutely unknown. Rather, he is known to us by such a vague definition as “consciousness”, but what exactly is this consciousness itself, no one knows and cannot even give at least an approximate definition. The fact is that consciousness, being undoubtedly obvious of human existence (indirectly, through its thinking), is elusive for external observation. Thus, the fundamental non-observability of consciousness makes it impossible to define it by generally accepted scientific terms. There are two ways to determine the source of consciousness - to explore it through external factors, which as a result leads to the loss of personal context; on the other hand, use introspection techniques oriented towards the study of one’s own “I”, which fix objectively universal and universal signs of personal experience. Despite the diametrical opposite of the direction of research of the source of consciousness in the first and second methods, it becomes obvious that consciousness has a single, universal essence, that is, consciousness can be defined as an absolute, timeless and extra-dimensional imperative of the existence of the universe. Such a definition makes consciousness independent of the material side of being, since a single, absolute entity cannot be material by definition.
Now we can sum up the final result of our research on the possibility of creating artificial intelligence. We found that there is a fundamental difference in the mindset of a person and the operation of a computer (despite the many similarities in their functioning). On the one hand, a computer is an unconditional human creation, from its hardware (“hardware”) to software (“software”). Moreover, a person could not in the slightest degree peep into the surrounding nature of a single prototype or analogue for the invention of a computer other than his own thinking. On the other hand, man himself is a creature of nature, and his thinking is an integral part of the most complex process of interaction of his brain (“hardware”) with the environment, while in the human mind a mysterious logic program (“software” ), which is traditionally referred to as consciousness. So can we create a computing system similar to human thinking? The answer is obvious - we can, if we can connect this system to the logical program of consciousness.
PS
I apologize for such a large amount of text :)
The author is not me - asked to post.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/64794/
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