Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Artificial Intelligence, Feelings and Choices




I am in agreement with philosopher John Searl when it comes to artificial intelligence. There is a belief that exists however that humans are programmed by society and education to perform certain tasks which can include learning to speak a language or very simply brush your teeth. The difference between the programming of artificial intelligence and programming of a society or humans is that we have a choice and we have feelings. We have a choice to stop and think before we act. A computer just simply responds as quickly as it can. It may come up with the right answer to very logically based questions, but it cannot think about whether it is right or wrong scientifically or morally for that matter. Humans can be programmed as children just like a computer ( go to church, go to school, don’t watch too much tv,) but when the child becomes an adult, they may choose to learn new ways of being in the world. My second point is feelings.  How would a computer know what something feels like? It only knows the information that it’s told. Sometimes for example when it comes to feeling love or not we have no real control. Where does this come from? What is it? I believe it is much more than just a mental state that produces a function. These things we call feelings such as love, will never be felt by artificial intelligence. 

1 comment:

  1. You capture some important respects in which this analogy does not hold.

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