The Computational Universe

I agree with some of the previous posts that Searle’s Chinese room experiment makes sense.  Computers are able to manipulate symbols according to a rulebook and when given an input, output an appropriate response.  What this does not answer however is if computers will ever be able to understand these outputs as we humans do.  However if we use that as the measure for consciousness then we are not conscious ourselves, because there are a lot of things in our own lives that we don’t truly understand, we just follow the “rulebook” for.  So, is it possible that computers are conscious in something other than understanding Chinese for example?  And what they are conscious in is something that we can never understand.

Searle says that the Turing test is not a valid test for whether or not a computer can think, and I agree with that.  However, it is possible that the Turing test is not the right test because it does not test for the “right” things.  Unfortunately, it is unclear whether humans will ever know what the right things to test for are, but some will argue that we cannot rule out that a computer can think or not think, unless every question is asked.

I agree for the most part with Searle in that computers may be able to pass the Turing test but that it isn’t thinking.  I do not believe that computers will ever be able to think like humans do, however along the same lines of what Brooks says that an alternative definition of thinking might be more appropriate.  I am not sure that I would be able to present one, because I do not believe that computers will ever be able to do more than manipulate inputs.  I believe that they will simply get better at being like humans, but that they will never think like humans.

Last night’s lecture by Sir Tim Berners-Lee went was not what I was expecting from a Public Lecture’s series presentation. Although I am sure that there were a lot of people in the audience who were motivated by the talk, I can’t say that I understood enough of what he said to be affected. There were however, several things that I took from his speech, the first being what he said about human interaction. He mentioned that as long as there is more than one person on earth, then we will have dialogue and interaction. This is interesting because I think a lot of what we talk about when criticizing new technologies is how it takes away from personal connections. The second thing is that with every advance that we make there are social responsibilities that we must consider. He seemed to not only be encouraging us to put stuff up on the web, but almost demanded that we do. His Symantec Web will not work without our help, so I think his creation depends as much on our willingness to participate as it does on his genius. It seems like his motivations for working with, and trying to create a new web system, is to actually encourage human contact with each other. By being able to tie our lives together with one another, whether in pictures or data, we will be able to reach out further, and to more people than ever before.

I didn’t especially like the talk just because I didn’t understand the computer lingo. That being said, I thought his passion for creation and for the future was a breath of fresh air. It is not everyday that you encounter a person who has a vision about the future, and has the ability and the desire to make that vision become a reality. Sir Tim Bernes-Lee is one of the greatest inventors of our time, and I cannot wait to see what he comes up with next.

It is amazing to think that a machine could input any information and spit out an output appropriate those those inputs.  There have been several blogs written about the siplicity of the machine and I definitely have to agree with that.  It is difficult to imagine a Universal Turing Post machine because we ourseleves act as a sort of Turing Post mechanism.  We register certain inputs, and, admittedly with more processing, come out with a response.  The Turing Post might be slightly more simplistic than the actions of a human being, but one could imagine a more complex post one day being able to act just like a human.

Of course, there is the halting problem of the Turing Post machine that makes the Post’s adaptation into a simulated human thought process impossible, but it is fun to imagine those sorts of possibilities.  In reading the story about the German Code machine, we can see how important Turing Posts can be to so many different aspects of deciphering inputs.  The problem is that a human being can take a punch in the shoulder and the result will be physical or emotional pain.  A turing post could not really take those feelings into consideration, but might just generally result in a punch back.  There are no specifications to allow the machine to decipher messages, just to output them to allow us to decipher their meaning.

Using the Scribbler robot has been an amazing introduction to the world of robots. In the past few weeks we have gone from doing simple commands like moving forwards and backwards, to drawing pictures and performing random flip the coin simulations. The Scribbler very much resembles the robotic vacuum that most people have seen on the Home Shopping Network. We are able to control it by programming certain commands into the computer software and downloading it into the robot. I have learnt a new way of thinking because of the Scribbler. I know this may seem weird, but asking a robot to perform a function is much more step by step than asking another human to perform that same function. We have to configure wheel speeds, directions and time lengths, instead of simply saying do this or do that. Even in what we would consider the simplest tasks, the Scribbler forces our minds to think in a very deliberate and calculated fashion.

One interesting think I read is in the story Data Miners from Time magazine. It writes about how computers can find patterns in certain data and might even be able to be applied to the war on terror. I think this is really interesting, and at first thought that it would only be possible for large very powerful machines, but I think it would be interesting to see what kind of capabilities Scribbler could have if it had a memory. One thing I always wondered, and is mentioned in several readings, is whether or not the robots can get a “personality of its own.” Whether or not past actions affect a robots future behavior? This is interesting to question, because there are so many robots that are more and more like humans, so will there come a day when Artificial Intelligence takes over.

Shell shocked from last night’s snowfall, I sit here trying to write my first blog, but can’t help but wonder where our mild winter went. Just two days ago I was ready to bust out my shorts and t-shirts. I guess it is to be expected when going to school in New Jersey. My name is Blair and I am a junior economics major, with a certificate in French. I am from Montreal, Canada, and although I am used to this sort of weather, do not especially like it. I play on the men’s ice hockey team, and am a member of Cottage.

I decided to take this course because not only did the write up look interesting (especially for an A.B. student uninterested in spending countless hours looking at a Petri dish or counting molecules), but the idea of learning about computers without doing any programming seems too good to be true. I just read a book called The New New Thing, by Michael Lewis (Princeton grad), and it talked about Jim Clark (Founder of Netscape etc.) and the boat he built that is completely computerized. Amazing things are being done with computers, and although I do not have a clue, or the patience, to sit down and write lines of code, I would like to learn more about the final products. I expect that the future has a lot more in store for us, and I wanted to learn as much as I could before it is too late.

Update 2:42 pm on 2/12/06: I use a Dell Inspiron 700m.  It is a great computer that I recommend to anyone.  I especially like it’s size, small enough to bring to class and not be a hassle.  Even has a place for a memory card, which is key when using a digital camera.