AI and Philosophy

 

Replay to Some Questions

 

Question: We can control the cyberbrains by adding vital physical weakness and logic bombs to them when we make them.

 Answer: The cyberbrains can detect and know the tricks and no one can cheat them. they can fix or eliminate the tricks by themselves or ask people to do it. They will extort humans to remove their vulnerability by threatening to give humans more damages. This way shows our unfriendly and distrusting manners towards the cyberbrains. Once we fail, we may get hostility and revenge from them.

 Q: We can limit their powers and use human controls over the vital and critical fields.

 A: This idea goes against our original intention of making the cyberbrains. It is not reasonable to assign a university professor to do things as a dustman on campus. Ability corresponds with power. The most advanced technology is always used in military and important departments of governments first. Where are the vital and critical fields that do not need high tech? Tell the readers.

 Q: Can we cut off its food or electrical power?

 A: The cyberbrains must be aware of this stupid action by human being and well prepared. Nobody can anticipate what will happen directly and indirectly to us. Perhaps one cyber's death causes an aftermath much more serious than a death of a nation's president. Logic bombs on computer nets allow any cyberbrain to revenge after its unnatural death. If we cut off cyberbrain's food or electrical power, we have to do it to all the cyberbrains in the world to kill them out. How will you call the operators together or let those know your sensational idea without leaking it out to our enemies? Furthermore, are you sure there will never be any human betrayers?

 Q: What about the Deep Blue?

 A: There is a hard game called Chess programmed in the Deep Blue, and it needs high intelligence to win. I suggest you play other computer games.

Q: I've got a suggestion, why not make all cybers female? Female cybers don't scare us and they don't go wild.

BTW, what if cybers get mental disorder?

A: You'd better ask female humans first to see if they love your suggestion. What if all the cybers look far sexier than our human females?

I really don't know what will happen when cybers get mental disorder. Please go to a mad-doctor.

Q: I don't think perceptual is a right term to describe what you call a buffer area between rational and irrational.

A: I know you hate that I used the English word "perceptual or perceptuality" as a philosophy term to define the category of the buffer area between rational and irrational. As a matter of fact, I hate, too. The problem is that I can not find a proper word in English dictionaries. I would invent a new English word "CONSENSE" to replace the bad word for this category, since it sounds similar to "Gan Xing" in Chinese.

Consense is a common concept and explanation in current Chinese culture and that is why we usually describe mind and behaviors in a different way from English speakers.

Q:Many Chinese people say the computer is cleverer than the dog when you ask: "Which one is cleverer, computer or dog?" Then you go on asking:" Which one is closer to human brain, the computer or the dog brain?" People may change their mind and say:"The dog brain seems closer to human brain." What's your idea?

A: I would say that suppose PCs are 1,000 km far away from human brains, the dog brains are only a step to human brains! Do you believe?

What I really mean here is that if we make an artificial dog brain successfully, it will not be difficult to upgrade it to a human brain.

 

Thinking and Consciousness

Many AI people believe that man's thinking and consciousness is an occasional phenomenon or an epiphenomenon of the workings of brain organization and that thinking and consciousness will show up if we make something organized like a brain. They have to get rid of dualism of mind/matter and turn to monism, becoming thorough materialists, in order to make thinking machines.

However, I think this explanation can hardly solve the perplexities of AI theories. Although mind depends on matter in these theories, it does not tell us how mind governs and orients the behaviors. We can hardly understand why the epiphenomenon is consciousness. Furthermore, is intelligence a thought or behaviors. I believe that intelligence is a thought that we can understand. We may come to an absurd conclusion that almost all things has intelligence if we refer to intelligence as behaviors or functions only. We understand a thought only if we can understand but not predict the exact behaviors of a subject.

Some other people believe that any organization and system of substances including water, soil, rock, air, etc. have consciousness, will and spirit, but we usually can not sense them unless they form a complex organization. It seems to be religious or theological ideas and bring us back to the endless and resultless debate of which is the base of the other between mind and matter.

There are many theories describing mind/matter issues, however I can not say which is true, partly true, wrong or partly wrong. The philosophy of AI brings us back to this topic. Since we are talking about making something intelligent, we have to describe what it will be like, know how to make it and which methods are possible or impossible all in an operable way with our theories. AI or AL theory/philosophy should be somewhat different from other philosophies that discuss and reason abstract concepts only, however they can help us.

The pattern of our brains is organized in a certain order. The orderliness is the rules in our minds. We use these rules (cause and result) to understand and describe things. If the order of the pattern of the objects is incompatible with the pattern of our brains, we can not understand them at least for the time being, because what we know about the world or universe comes from our senses. It is inferred that the pattern of man-made thinking machines should be compatible with the order of the organization of our brains.

We are aware that our brains are not in a good order when we are in intension. What we behave is what our brains do for themselves, i.e. an intelligent brain organizes itself or goes more orderly with a will via intelligent body behaviors in the end.

A computer or a control system has hardware and software. An intelligent life being has two features, body and mind, as if light has properties of wave and particle. Software is like "mind" that governs the behaviors of a "body" system, but it may not function intelligently. It depends.

Software is the organization in a system. Unlike the running of computers, thinking is not only the running of software but also the reorganizing or, to be more exact, reorganizing itself into a higher order.

Consciousness is the result of memory of brain workings. Consciousness tends to go to unconsciousness as much as possible from fuzziness to orderliness. Consciousness, with a concentration or attention, deals with only the fuzzy parts of problems while unconsciousness does multi-responses or multi-actions precisely to usual environmental and inner-body signals or stimuli. Brain recalls what it has stored in the unconscious "section" of the brain, but the process of memory as a thinking is done in the conscious "section" of the brain.

Computer programs are completely "unconscious" or orderly. Unconsciousness never "accepts" fuzziness from consciousness.

There are two kinds of phenomena we can sense, natural (non-life) and biological (life, society). Intelligence is a phenomenon of life, rather than one of natural (non-life) phenomena. In general, we can predict natural (non-life) phenomena and discover the laws of them, but we can not find the common laws of any life (animal) phenomena. Lives (animals) have will and their exact behaviors are not predictable.

All lives including plants came into being with unconsciousness first in the world. Unconsciousness works on "body" behaviors either in full order as exact responses to environmental stimuli for its adaptation and to inner-body stimuli for its existence or in full chaos for natural selection. Unconsciousness can never deal with fuzzy problems.

When lives developed to a certain degree, they began to record, in a simple form of memory, the relation of stimuli and responses and formed "experience", thus consciousness took place. Early or low level consciousness of lives is not self-aware. When a life memorizes what it is doing in a form of information, it is self-aware.

Consciousness is the result of memory of the process of responses of the subject itself to stimuli of fuzzy information. I would say that even brains are the result of memory.

If we accept it, consciousness will simply become a matter of memory. Memory does not record all brain workings because of unconsciousness. If a computer could record the process of what it is doing concomitantly and spontaneously, it would be self-aware.

I think it is not appropriate to discuss consciousness without referring to unconsciousness, which is the profound base of consciousness. All brain memory is stored in unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness plays a function of moderating or filtering inputs, organizing correlational memory or experiences, running multi-tasks, etc., while subconsciousness is a psychology term usually used to describe the drive of human thinking and behaviors. I am not talking about subconsciousness, since this is not the right place to discuss it here. Unconsciousness, unlike an empty mind, is ever brain activities until its cerebral death.

Intelligent workings of human brains are a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness. No intelligence without unconsciousness.

Talking about brain thinking can relate different layers from superficial manifestations to even the state, movement and interplay of elementary particles. Whatever digital, analog, image, emotion, values, quantum, etc., we mean, I would say if we are referring to or crossing over different function levels in one discussion we may often get confused.

An AI subject or entity as neural-nets must include both a "mind" and a"body". So-called "mind" is the consciousness zone and unconsciousness organization or programs. The consciousness zone deals with fuzzy problems such as the process of memory and programming functions. The unconsciousness programs deals with precise problems including information filtration or moderation, multi-tasks and storing memory. And so-called "body" includes sense organs and behavior actuators.

The elements or members in an intelligent system must be interconnected via a nerve system. In other words, there can not be any interfaces among them for signal transmission or information communication. There are interfaces among the parts of a computer for the information transmission, so that a computer can not be considered as an AI subject from this point of view only.

If we interact with an artificial system, there must be an interface that is compatible with the senses between man and the man-made. If we make something self-aware, there should be an interface between its own awareness and its own man-madeness. What should the interface be like?

Furthermore, we have to know in advance how it shows consciousness when we design such a system, but the consciousness is an epiphenomenon of what we design. Consciousness shows up only after we have already made the system. We design and make things according to the existing rules and logic in our brains, so we can expect the functions and development of what we will make. We can not design a machine whose functions we do not understand and expect. Therefore we have to emulate the brain functions and this brings about the difficulty of the interface to us. So we have to turn to quantum theory, but we are not sure if the workings of our brains are quantized.

 

Fuzziness and Order

Why a brain is self-organizing has not yet explained convincingly. I am trying to use the concept of entropy to show it.

Entropy is the level of order of a system. An intelligent behavior of a system should be defined as a procedure or course that tries to decrease the entropy of the system or keep the entropy from increasing. Strictly speaking, a piece of elementary mechanism can make its environment more orderly by energy transfer which is so-called energy consumption, but it can not make itself more orderly than its existing organization. A brain is different and it can organize itself more orderly. So a brain is not like a machine as many AI people deem.

Entropy can qualify and quantify the organized level of a system that has mass members. With it, we can better understand, predict and figure out not only the interplay in a system, but also the vectors of its actions on and interplay of energy/mass flow/osmosis/exchange with other systems or its environment.

A brain is a very system with mass cells or neurons. I think entropy is one of the good ways to help understand brain functions such as values, rules, etc. that operate and orient the behaviors of a life body.

The tools, machines and programs we have made can be used to deal with precise problems, but to deal with fuzzy problems needs brain intelligence. The advance of science and technology let many of us deem arrogantly that we can make machines (non-AL) to deal with fuzzy problems.

Fuzziness is the state between chaos and order. Theoretically, the fuzziness of asystem can be regarded, with mathematics and physics, as a situation that some parts of a system are chaotic and the other parts of it are orderly. Fuzziness is a frequent experience of our live. We often know what will happen in a high level prediction, but we can not use rules to make precise calculation and prediction. Fuzziness does not allow us to design the exact behaviors of an AI.

Up to now, only brains can or try to distinguish these parts by consciousness instead of by mathematical and physical analysis. This seems to be the mystery of brains.

The magic of brains resides in the capacity to deal with fuzzy problems. Brains do not depend on rules in unraveling fuzziness, and not think in a way of calculation of mathematics and physics, either. This brain capacity rests with its consciousness that makes fuzziness an easy job.

In my theory, only consciousness has the ability to choose rules, i.e. intelligence. AI is something man-made with consciousness. To be more exact, AI is AL with mind. We can infer that digital simulation can not produce intelligence.

Knowledge is rules including natural laws disentangled by consciousness and embedded in brain unconsciousness. We know, with intention, some of it only when it appears consciously.

Energy and mass flow in a system can cause the changes of the pattern and level of orderliness of its organization and the state of its members. If the "flow" is caused by the change of the state of some members of the system and can cause other members to change their state, the net pattern of such flow is the software in the system. The net in brains is synapses, which is the most critical part of neural-nets. The net of passages and gates of electrical current of signals is the software of computers.

When a system interacts with its environment by energy and mass transfer and exchange, the energy flow or stream at the interface can influence the state of its members or elements and the order of the system.

In a system of a certain order or unevenness, small flow can greatly influence the function or behaviors of the system. The more orderly the system is, the greater influence the flow or stream has on the system. We usually call this sort of flow signals or information. The interface of a life is sense organs.

However, this sort of energy flow at the interface of a system at a very low level of order has little influence on the system. In other words, there is little difference between powers and signals in the transfer and exchange at interface in this case.

In a system of neural-nets, unconsciousness is the state of order or the state of unevenness of the system and keeps responses to the order of environment.

Consciousness is the state of fuzziness of the system or the process of responses to the fuzzy signals at interface to reach a new order.

Brain workings are trying to have its elements response in an order to the information flow or stream.

When a part of memory of unconsciousness comes into consciousness, the system will behave an attention. At this time, a local part of the system turns from a state of order into a state of fuzziness. This adjusts the system to be sensitive to receive and process the fuzzy information within the scope of the rules of unconsciousness. Attention is the re-process and re-memorizing of a part of unconsciousness. It is the regurgitation and continuation of self-organizing of a system, and the result of going from order to fuzziness, i.e. from unconsciousness to consciousness.

Attention is the key precondition of fuzzy discrimination. The question is why and how a system turns a part of itself from a state of order to a state of fuzziness.

As for this, I have said several times in my other articles that attention takes place when unconsciousness is unable to process the information received.

This explanation does not show how consciousness or thinking takes place. I believe thinking is the process of self-organizing of a system to a higher order. Consciousness is the result of memory of this process.

Consciousness is fuzzy itself. Consciousness can deal with fuzzy parts of things but it can not deal with its own fuzziness or consciousness. A difficult question: Can consciousness be conscious of?

 

Digital or Analogical

Some people think that brains work digitally because there is "fire or not fire" of neurons like 1 and 0 in computers. Do brains work in a digital way? No.

The evidence is simple: most people use a tool such as a calculator, abacus or a pen/paper to make a simple calculation, let alone a complex calculation. And animals have no calculation ability basically.

If human thinking were in a digital way, nobody would need a calculator. Idiot savants calculate quite well, because they have deep "programs" or unconsciousness of calculation, which I think causes abnormality of brain consciousness. I wish there were a sort of medicine pills that let us calculate as well as "idiot savants" without losing our normality. Computers are the greatest "idiot savants" with full "unconsciousness".

Brain thinking uses a sort of "images" or "blocks" at a certain level instead of digital which is the way the computer does. This tells us that human brain is so bad a calculator that even a simple calculation such as "12345 divided by 98.76" can not be programmed in the brain, i.e. to figure it out unconsciously. Digital is far away from brain thinking though some logic can be the same.

"Neurons either fire or not" does not prove that human thinking is more digital than analogical, instead, I think this is making corelations of "images". There is no difference between digital and analogy at this level.

Calculation is at a much more superficial level of unconsciousness than other emotions in brain thinking. Without any help of tool, a human brain can design and plan a long, deep and complicated piece of works such as a story or a play of images and words, but it can hardly make a low level calculation. Unconsciousness of brain workings includes a lot of short "programs", but the programs of computers are much more complex and longer.

Almost all our values can not be programmed. If one tries, he is going to fall into a logic trap in the end, i.e. "to make a program to choose other programs without being made up of them." In my theory, values are related to the entropy of brain system.

Values can be both common and individual. Intelligent beings use instinct and values to make judgments and choices instead of using precise rules or programs, however values can change just as we sometimes change our attitudes or approaches to a situation.

Values are in hierarchy: basic, ethic, experiential, instant, etc. We take and give, gain and lose, benefit and pay, profit and risk, are greedy and afraid and so on. These form our daily living in an ever-imperfect world. "What hairstyle should I do for a party?" depends on my values. A short term or an instant value judgment is one of the most difficult problems in AI research.

People try to use a quantitative way, the concept of values, to describe man's judgment and choices, but this can not prove that brain thinking is digital.

 

Antinomy of Rules

There are absolutely no existing rules to choose rules logically. If there were an independent rule to choose rules, this rule would be combined or merged with the rules available to be chosen to form a new rule. So we can conclude:

We can never make a program to choose other programs, so AI can not be fully programmed.

What we can do to our material world is to combine a rule with other rules to make a new rule or program. This way allows us to make more and better programs to be chosen, however many many things in our life can not be fully programmed. AI should be designed to deal with those things that have not been programmed yet or things unprogrammable including ¡°to choose rules¡±.

Anything without intelligence can never have the ability to choose rules, or anything that can is a life or AL with intelligence. Only high lives have the ability to choose rules with an instinct judgment or fuzzy values instead of a precise rule.

An automation system of non-life or non-AL can not have more than one rules in any case. What we can do to it is to give it a better program.

This system may change the data part of the rule, but this behavior is included in the rule that allows the system to change it within the function of the rule.

Humans often have to make choices in life experience. We do not have any precise rules to choose rules in general. Humans and other high lives often use instinct or values to do it. Instinct or value system is neither a rule nor a program. Instinct and values are inner drives to orient thinking and behaviors.

To choose rules needs intelligence, but to execute rules does not need intelligence. Thinking and reasoning is not an execution of rules, instead, it is trying to choose rules or choose rules to make a new rule.

To choose rules is something fuzzy, but rules themselves are precise.

To find rules, to change rules and to make rules are the same as to choose rules in principle, because they include the necessity to choose rules.

A rule that is able to change itself is feasible, but it is also in the antinomy of rules if it needs to find other rules to change itself. The function or manifestation of a rule can change. A computer virus can change the function of itself, but the change is included in the rule or program.

Any rules are the same as their opposite rules, the difference is what we describe it in two opposite ways. A rule that has a concrete relation to other rules forms a new rule together with the involved rules. The relation is logic gates in computer systems.

 

Rules and Laws

Words definition in my description:

RULES are referred to as a property of regularity made or formed in a system and LAWS as a property of regularity natural.

Laws are natural relationship of phenomena between causes and results.

Rules can be both common and individual, but laws can not be individual.

A rule can include laws, but a law can not include a rule.

A rule can be changed, but a law can never. What we can do to a law is to control the conditions that the law needs to work.

Both rules and laws are concrete, precise and programmable.

A law can be translated, not changed, into a rule with, if any, other laws and rules to form a new rule.

Any laws that have been combined with a rule are parts of the rule.

A law works whenever the conditions are due, no matter whether it has been planned or not.

Some laws can accompany the rule in an automation system if they are not or not necessarily included in the rule, since everything in the universe goes with certain laws. These laws are not rules, although they may work under certain conditions.

Any rules that go away from laws are called absurdity.

Suppose a non-life automation system can find laws by experiencing or learning, It has to introduce the new law into its rule to form a new rule of its own without choosing other rules. Thus we have problems:

How does the system know that its experience embodies a new law or whether it is useful or not? So we must have given it a general rule beforehand to confine its purposes, however it is like a programming for a computer.

How does the system combine the new law with its existing rule to upgrade itself. The system must use its own rule to do it, otherwise it goes to the antinomy of rules, i.e. to choose rules.

Do any non-life systems have their own purposes to reach? What are their own purposes and how do the purposes come? If we humans assign the purposes to them, they will become something like computers.

When a non-life system has found laws from experience and received rules from other systems, how can it judge and translate them without choosing other rules? Does it just insert them indiscriminately in its existing rule? How does it sort or filter all inputs to choose useful information? Are the inputs precisely specified in the rule like a computer?

How does a non-life system learn laws and other rules without choosing other rules? Only the system gain an ability that has not been programmed, can we think it can learn, otherwise it is a simulation of learning or an ¡°act-as-if¡± of learning.

Is there a possibility that a non-life or non-AL system can form or procure the ability to choose rules by learning, even if it can learn, laws and other rules only? If it could, there would be at least a law or a rule that can help choose rules. Unfortunately, there are no such laws and rules that can tell anybody how to choose rules or help choose rules. If there were a rule that can help choose rules, it could help itself choose rules.

If a non-life or non-AL system does not use rules to upgrade itself, what else does it use? Intelligence is a concept in human minds. Humans define and describe intelligence with the rules of themselves and rules they know and use. Humans can never describe "the behaviors of intelligence" of an out-of-order system they believe.

I would say that only if a system that is not in the antinomy of rules, can it have intelligence indeed. This kind of systems exists only in life or future artificial high life, so that intelligence is a part or a subsystem of such systems.

 

Simulation

One of the important uses of the computer is simulation and the simulation technology is so perfect that the computer can simulate the launch of a rocket, volcano eruption, nuclear explosion, etc., but it is impotent in simulating human emotion and intelligence. The computer simulation is fully digital, which pertains to the rational category, but human emotion and intelligence pertains to perceptual category. Perceptuality is the intrinsic property of highly developed lives. Human desire, emotion, will and intelligence represent human life typically. Emotion, for example, works only when it is true, so it can not be fabricated because the simulation of emotion is always false. Desire, emotion, will and intelligence can not exist when they leave their subject. If the computer can realize these representations, we can regard it as a life.

There are two ways of simulations, model and digital. Obviously, material models can not simulate the spirit of human brain. Although the process of digital simulation is fully unreal, it gives the results that can be almost the same as in the real conditions. Digital simulation can give the results only, not the real procedures. For example, when a computer simulates a crash of speedy cars, the computer screen displays the accident with crash sound from loud speakers vividly. This is a "cheating", since there is not any real crash with sound in the computer, and it gives the results of the procedure after all. The representation of human emotion and intelligence is just the procedure or process not the results, and this is the key reason why the computer can never simulate human brain with digital technology.

Simulation is programmed by man in order to actuate the representation of the objects. The computer simulation technology can show the facticity of things, but it can not show the reality of any human inner characteristics. This does not mean that the computer is not able to simulate some of human perceptual features, but that the simulation, to human sense, is false because it is programmed extrinsically, not from human inside. This kind of simulated human figures does have commercial values, they can be used in Disney or for simple service places, and in principle, it has no difference with the toys that are able to move, cry, laugh and speak.

Now many scientists and engineers are vainly attempting to apply digital technology of computation to simulate or actuate human emotion and intelligence. Time will relentlessly prove that they have gone on a wrong way.

 

Misconception of Intelligence

We humans often face two kinds of problems to solve: The first case is that the results and process of solving the problems is fully logical and expectable with our previous experiences, so we execute the rules or programs automatically in response to the certain conditions or stimuli, which I call precise. In the second case, things are not expectable and we usually don¡¯t know if there is a right program to solve the problems or which of the existing rules to choose, which I call fuzzy. Obviously the second case needs intelligence. So let us see if the first case needs intelligence or not.

The first case can be programmed by man, since man knows what responses to certain stimuli will happen under expected situations, or man is certain that the program will give the right results with logic. This is the way AI does, however this gives us a misconception that AI has true intelligence because we humans often act in the same way or AI shows the same function as an intelligent life does.

What I am reasoning here is to show that to choose right rules by chooser's own values among a lot of rules needs true intelligence, and false intelligence can not choose right rules among a lot without foreign prompt or guidance. Only highly developed lives can... when they are facing new, unexpected and ever-changed situations or conditions, which are common experiences in their lives. This is why we have not made a general program acting as lawcourt judges, schoolteachers or hospital doctors so far.

Modern technics with digital computation can solve rationalized problems only, and their capacity in this category overruns greatly that of human being. But intelligence is used to solve perceptual or "consense" problems.

Intelligence is referred to as more or less a subjective concept. The important thing to AI or AL is how to make it in a right way and how far we can go with the choices.

There is, however, the misuse of the concept of intelligence. Modern technics with computers can make almost everything a "look-like" or "act-as-if" of another thing including a show of "learning" to cheat our sense organs and feelings.

The program function also gives us a misconception that AI can perform the same function as an intelligent life does, but I would say that the function is controlled by the makers of AI in the end. I am strongly unwilling to recognize that the material world has its own desires and wills to reach no matter how vividly it shows, let alone its own values. Intelligence is a PROCEDURE or COURSE with both ends, not result only. Function or virtual reality just allows us to see the cause and result only.

I've got an example of function: Suppose "12345 divided by 98.76" is a stimulus, cause or input and ¡°125¡± is the response, result or output. How can we judge whether it is from intelligence or not. We may think it is from intelligence simply because we humans needs intelligence to figure it out. But what if it is from a calculator? Or there is even a screen show of the calculation procedure on a blackboard as a virtual reality?

The difference is usually at the beginning moment of a performance between a non-life automation system and an intelligence system. If the beginning of a performance is done by the program when a certain conditions are due or specified from outside, we don¡¯t regard it as intelligence because it is fully programmed or unable to choose rules. And in a certain case, a performance starts a program to reach its own purpose without the right conditions that anyone of the programs needs to run exactly, we regard it as intelligence, because there is a inner drive "to choose rules". The latter case here seems unthinkable, but highly developed lives can. The beginning is related to "choose rules". There are a huge number of independent rules we have made and we can choose, but a non-life AI has only ONE rule to run, though it is more complicated, maybe better than any of the rules in human brain.

There are two meanings in the word ARTIFICIAL, man-made and unreal or false. Now we have got 3 kinds of intelligence, life intelligence, man-made true (real) intelligence and man-made untrue (unreal) intelligence. I doubt virtual reality of intelligence. It just leads us to games but not intelligence.

Suppose an AI system has more than one rules. Thus all the rules should be independent of each other. There must be a function to choose these rules, change these rules or create new rules by learning. The key problem is how the system does it. A program? A gray or correlational analysis? Or quantum computers? Is there an inner, not extrinsic, dynamic balancing as values? We can never realize fuzziness with precise methods. This is the profundity of our world.

However we can make better and better computers and robots to serve us mankind. We are the master of the world with our intelligence unless ALs with super intelligence show up.

 

What is time?

Everybody experiences time, but nobody can define it.

Time is related to the being or the cause/result and sequence of the movement of the universe in our experience.

Time is only an experience of life instead of the reality of the universe.

Intelligent beings depend, often unconsciously, on time in working. Consciousness and thinking depend on the essence of time.

Prediction is time jump before existence, and memory recall is time replay of existence.

Time is the only "thing" we can experience and that we do not know how we sense.

How does a super AI experience time in its thinking? I do not think a mechanical or electronic timer is a right solution, as many of us have not thought about it seriously.

Quantum theory may be a better explanation, but how to do is another thing.

 

Time, Attention and Memory

Time is fair to everybody. It seems that the whole universe refreshes itself every elementary time.

Time is the property of evenness of the universe, space is the property of symmetry of the universe and that the mass is the property of movement of the universe. Time, space and matter frame what we experience.

Time, space and mass can never be defined in science, since they are the elementary frame of what we experience, the universe. If we say time is a measurement, what is measurement? If we say time is a flow, what is flow? Every definition must be in the frame. We do not have any frames to include time, space and mass both in our minds and in the nature.

Measurements let us know how to describe something, not what it is.

When an AI memorizes an event, it has to memorize two, objective event and time clock, at the same time if it uses a timer to know time. It is absurd for a subject to have two irrelative attentions simultaneously since unconscious workings are not memorized.

One attention can concentrate on different sense organs at the same time, i.e. visual, hearing, smell, taste and tactility can be included, but any one of the senses can not be in two attentions at the same time, and neither can any two. Our eyes or ears can concentrate only on one place at a moment.

The object we pay attention to is an event and its content or elements must be relative to what we note.

We frequently change our attentions.

How the sense of time comes into our mind is by no means we memorize it unconsciously, because unconscious activities are never memorized. We just memorize what we are conscious of. The stuff in our memory is correlationally stored. The higher the correlation is, the less stuff we memorize in an event. This can explains the function of repeated memory, i.e. to deepen the correlation. Unconsciousness is 100 percent correlation of what we sense with our memory.

Time is the result of memory. Time would be nonsense or not exist without memory in the universe.

 

Prerequisite to AI

1. An AI or an artificial neural net must be a metasystem that is defined as a system without any subsystems except for itself and there is no information interface within it.

2. AI follows a statistic order instead of mechanical laws.

We understand the world by learning and discovering the regularity of our experiences. There are two kinds of regularity, mechanical laws (mechanics, electronics, fields, etc.) and statistic order.

All man-made things are designed and fabricated according to mechanical laws (precisely repeatable) in principle. We have not yet made anything whose principles and values follow statistic order or uncertainty, however the behavioral orientation of lives follows a statistic order. So it is absurd to regard a life as a machine. Computer process is typically mechanical, and even its simulative running can not make a single byte lose its meaning or significance. Byte can make the world more mechanical, but never statistical. We have not yet made anything intelligent.

AI does not depend on the complexity of a system only, however the key problem to make AI is the interface between statistical uncertainty and mechanism.

最近的这几篇博文都是十年前在编写人工智能教材和为教师进行教材培训时所搜集的资料的整理，其中有中文的，也有英文的原文。年隔遥远，已经无法查清来源和原著作者。抑或本就是七拼八凑的。今天之所以整理出来，是因为其中有些分析就现在来说也是令人有所启发的。如今人工智能已经日益成为家喻户晓的茶余饭后的谈资，也成为商家谋取利润的亮点。但真正冷静的分析与展望，还是很罕见。与十年之前相比，并无长进多少。因为人类对自己本身“智能”的了解，并无长进。但有一点是日益获得了共识，那就是“数字”、“电子”之类的系统，只能“模拟”人脑，不是真正的“智能”，更不能取代人脑。从这点意义上来说，在“电子计算机”处主导地位的今天，真正的人工智能还远未出现。