Philosophy of artificial intelligence

This is a sub-article of Artificial intelligence(AI), focusing on the Philosophy of artificial intelligence.

Strong vs. Weak AI

The debates on weak AIvs. strong AIis still a hot topic amongst AI philosophers. This involves philosophy of mindand the mind-body problem. Most notably Roger Penrose, in his book "The Emperor's New Mind" and Searlewith his "Chinese room" exercise, argue that true consciousnesscan not be achieved by formal logicsystems, while Douglas Hofstadterin "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and Daniel Dennettin "Consciousness Explained" argue in favour of Functionalism . In many strong AI supporters? opinion artificial consciousnessis considered as the holy grailof artificial intelligence.

Ethical Issues of AI

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a somewhat recent (1960s) development in computer science. If sentientAIs, as depicted in many science fiction movies, became real, many ethical problems would derive from that.

• Could a computer simulate an animal or human brainin a way that the simulation should receive the same animal rightsor human rightsas the actual creature?
• Under what preconditions could such a simulation be allowed to happen at all?
• What are the possible criteria for a computer, whether it simulates a brain or not, to be considered sentient or sapient? Is the Turing testapplicable?
• Can a computer that must be considered sentient ever be turned off?
• In order to be intelligent does AI need to replicate human thought, and if so, to what extent (eg. can expert systemsbecome AI)? What other avenues to achieving AI exist?
• Can AI be defined in a graded sense (eg. with human-level intelligence graded as 1.0)? What does it mean to have a graduated scale? Is categorisation necessary or important?
• AI rights: if AI is comparable in intelligence to humans then they should have comparable rights. (As a corollary, if AI is more intelligent than humans, would we retain our 'rights'?)
• Can AIs be "smarter" than humans in the same way that we are "smarter" than other animals?
• Designing and implementing AI 'safeguards': it is crucial to understand why safeguards should be considered in the first place; however, to what extent is it possible to implement safeguards in relation to a superhuman AI? How effective could any such safeguards be?
• Some may question the impact upon careers and jobs (eg. there would at least be potential for the problems associated with free trade), however the more crucial issue is the wider impact upon humanity.
• Technological singularity

A major influence in the AI ethics dialogue was Isaac Asimovwho fictitiously created Three Laws of Roboticsto govern artificial intelligent systems. Much of his work was then spent testing the boundaries of his three laws to see where they would break down, or where they would create paradoxical or unanticipated behavior. Ultimately, a reading of his work concludes that no set of fixed laws can sufficiently match the possible behavior of AI agents and human society. A criticism of Asimov's robot laws is that the installation of unalterable laws into a sentient consciousness would be a limitation of free willand therefore unethical, consequently Asimov's robot laws would be restricted to explicitly non-sentient machines, which possibly could not be made to reliably understand them under all possible circumstances.

The movie The Thirteenth Floorsuggests a future where simulated worlds with sentient inhabitants are created by computer game consolesfor the purpose of entertainment. The movie The Matrixsuggests a future where the dominant species on planet Earth are sentient machines and humanity is treated with utmost Speciesism. The short story The Planck Divesuggest a future where humanity has turned itself into software that can be dublicated and optimized and the relevant distinction between types of software is sentient and non-sentient. The same idea can be found in the Emergency Medical Hologramof Starship Voyager, which is an apparently sentient copy of a reduced subset of the consciousness of its creator, Dr. Zimmerman, who, for the best motives, has created the system to give medical assistance in case of emergencies. The movies Bicentennial Manand A.I.deal with the possibility of sentient robots that could love. I, Robotexplored some aspects of Asimov's three laws. All these scenarios try to foresee possibly unethical consequences of the creation of sentient computers.

Over time, debates have tended to focus less and less on possibility and more on desirability, as emphasized in the "Cosmist" and "Terran" debates initiated by Hugo de Garisand Kevin Warwick. A Cosmist, according to Hugo de Garis, is actually seeking to build more intelligent successors to the human species.

Expectations of AI

AI methods are often employed in cognitive scienceresearch, which tries to model subsystems of human cognition. Historically, AI researchers aimed for the loftier goal of so-called strong AI—of simulating complete, human-like intelligence. This goal is epitomised by the fictional strong AI computer HAL 9000in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This goal is unlikely to be met in the near future and is no longer the subject of most serious AI research. The label "AI" has something of a bad name due to the failure of these early expectations, and aggravation by various popular science writers and media personalities such as Professor Kevin Warwickwhose work has raised the expectations of AI research far beyond its current capabilities. For this reason, many AI researchers say they work in cognitive science, informatics, statistical inferenceor information engineering. Recent research areas include Bayesian networksand artificial life.

The vision of artificial intelligence replacing human professional judgment has arisen many times in the history of the field, and today in some specialized areas where "expert systems" are routinely used to augment or to replace professional judgment in some areas of engineering and of medicine.

Even though a substantial amount of AI functionality exists in everyday software, some misinformed commentators on computer technology have tried to suggest that a good definition of AI would be "research that has not yet been commercialised". This happens because when AI gets incorporated into an operating system or application it becomes an understated feature.

See also

• Artificial intelligence
• Brain (other matters section)
• Brain-computer interface
• Artificial consciousness
• Strong AI
• Weak AI
• Philosophy of mind
• Technological Singularity
• Three Laws of Robotics

External links

• BBC News: Games to take on a life of their own

• 3 Laws Unsafe Campaign - Asimov's Laws & I, Robot

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy+of+artificial+intelligence Wikipedia article Philosophy of artificial intelligence.