The Turing Test, Artificial Intelligence and Science Fiction

It's difficult even to begin a debate about the possibility of artificial intelligence because so a lot semantic rubble requires to be cleared away before we are able to agree on what we are talking about.

For a embark on, does artificial intelligence imply artificial self-awareness, artificial consciousness? In my view it ought to, as otherwise we aren't really talking about anything except an advanced machine.

But some would disagree and say that the issue of consciousness is unimportant; the point is the building of an expert system to simulate human intelligence for practical purposes.


This may well turn out to be a question worth deciding, since quite a couple of pundits are predicting that artificial intelligence (AI) will be achieved in the present century, and will pose a huge threat to human supremacy on this planet.

additional point, less urgent maybe but equally interesting philosophically, is: can any intelligence be artificial? If a machine becomes self-well knowledgeable, ought to not that condition be looked as having been triggered, instead of "created", by the human constructors of the physical fabric of the machine? After all, parents when they beget children are regarded as transmitters instead of creators of life.

In my view, if a machine is constructed that possesses a level of recursive complexity which causes self-awareness, this will be thanks to some attraction which complexity exerts on whatever level of reality governs the arrival of consciousness. In Philip K Dick's phrase, the machine has "caught" life.

nevertheless additional point: it's possible, in the more distant future, that machine automation may advance to such an extent that automated self-adjustments and adaptations embark on to bear close analogy to biological evolution. In this case, the theme of "artificiality" is shunted further into the background, for machines in effect become part of nature, responding to natural conditions just as other creatures do. This theme is brilliantly portrayed in the Poul Anderson story, "Epilogue" (1962). Electronic templates, containing full information on the machines' design, play the part of DNA. difficult radiation affects these recordings as it would affect an organic gene, and consequent mutations play their part in natural selection. The higher machines have something analogous to sexual reproduction ("...his body pattern flowed in currents and magnetic fields through hers... the two patterns heterodyned and deep inside her the first crystallization took place").

In the Ooranye Project, a series of tales set on the giant planet Uranus - not the Uranus familiar to astronomers but its more real, archetypal self - the process of machine evolution has resulted ina category of beings, the Ghepions, which are part-organic components of cities, transportation devices or even of the landscape.

Having considered all this, what is left of the usefulness of the Turing Test?

This is the test recommended by Alan Turing (1912-54) in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". To carry out the test, somebody questions both an unseen human and an unseen machine, and tries to distinguish between them by the quality of their answers. If the machine answers so well that it cannot be told apart from the human respondent, it has passed the test and it is able to be looked as a successful imitator of the human mind.

maybe Turing himself was content to leave it there. If we are merely talking about assessing the degree of imitation, the test is a good one. But surely it's impossible to leave it there, as more extensive philosophical issues cry out for attention. it's a pity that some writers such as Arthur C Clarke seem to think the Turing Test is something more profoundly useful than it's. it's as though they're saying that the question of self-awareness doesn't matter.

then again maybe I am underestimating Clarke; maybe when he says that we are all machines (thus making the point that it's the pattern that counts and not the material), he is making a case for transcendent consciousness possessed by both organic and inorganic organisms once they strive a certain level of complexity. In other words he is saying that complexity is consciousness - which is either a wise or a stupid thing to say, depending on whether, at the back of his mind, he is allowing for a higher level of reality into which consciousness can fit.

If he's not allowing for that higher level of reality, then all he is able to allow is several particles and force fields interacting on the same monistic level. In which case no matter what the complexity, there is no room for anything qualitative. Without transcendence you are able to't even have sentience, let alone intelligence.

I pedestal this statement not on my religious nature but on the absolutely fundamental fact/value distinction in philosophy. This distinction has never been convincingly refuted and have to of course count as among the few solid conclusions which philosophers have achieved in their millennia of intellectual strivings and disputation. you are able to't derive a value from a fact. That is, you are able to't derive an ought from an is without already presupposing a "better" and a "worse".

If you do not believe me, try it. Is life better than death? Yes? Why? Because life adds complexity and variety to the universe? But who says complexity and variety are better than simplicity and monotony? No good arguing from fact alone. Value comes from its own dimension. It has its own origin, its own aspect or level of reality. If you could derive a value from a fact it would immediately cease to be a value. ("This mother died to save her children!" "Ah, she was only obeying her evolutionary imperative.")

maybe some time in the next few decades a machine will "wake up" with a personality. Some folks may use this to argue against spiritual beliefs, as though it proved we had imparted mind down to earth and shown it was nothing but a refined circuit board. On the contrary, I would say: the creation of an artificial intelligence will be the final nail in the coffin of materialism.