With a Song in my Thoughts

I dislike getting up before I really want to, but during summer I have to, in order to physically manage to walk up to Starview and back.  This morning I walked With a Song in My Heart in my thoughts. For the past few days I have been ’conjecturing’ again about our concepts of Time. This being triggered, not only by my recent excursions into Artificial Consciousness, but, by an article in Quanta concerning the nature of Time [which I felt was in the same category as How Many Angels Can Dance on a Pin Head]. I’ll ‘Post’ my comments on that, later.  Anyway. I first noticed that I could ‘summon up’ the lyrics in order and with an associated pitch. When a lyric could not be recalled, the tune proceeded until lyric memory kicked in again.  I could easily repeat a section, sometimes recovering a ‘lost lyric’. I could change the tempo. I could sustain a note then proceed a tempo. I could change the key. I could not ‘hear’ the harmony, but I had some ‘sense’ of a change at moments where I know the change is exquisite. I realized that what I was sensing was not the same as if I hummed the tune. If I hum, I hear the actual sound in what’s left of my ‘good ear’. Of interest to me also, is the fact that I seem to be able to hum and hear the correct pitch; whereas, for the past year or so, sounds from the piano vary in pitch depending upon what key my brain assumes. This distressing condition might be due to fewer functioning ‘hair cells’ in the inner ear to properly convey pitch information to the brain. So much for my walk! Now to Break Fast.   

Cosmology

Most of what we each ‘know’ is accumulated by associating new information with information that we have remembered previously. Probably most of our knowledge is about the world around us; about how to deal with our environment. What are the dangers, what are the necessities? If we then become aware, as Carl Sagan would say, of the ‘billions and billions’ of things that are beyond our understanding, we are forced to recognize the existence of ‘something’ that is infinitely more knowledgeable and powerful than we. Since early times, mankind has created religions which seek to explain the unexplainable. As our knowledge base increased, the religions became more refined. Usually these religions offered some explanation of how the world was created and attribute this creation to some Supreme Being who, probably, should be worshipped. Beyond this, most then described how we each should act in our everyday lives to most please our Creator. In my mind, Cosmology is the newest religion, and it conjectures that everything was created by a ‘Big Bang’ when an infinitesimal point (of infinite energy?) explodes(?), eventually creating all this mass. The mathematics describe events from a few nanoseconds out to billions of years, thus eliminating the Seven Days story.  The Apostles of this religion have not yet specified how mankind can get along with mankind. All religions require that their adherents have Faith, so questions as to whence cometh the initial energy, etc., are left to that.

Curiosity

^{Curiosity may be the attribute upon which (conscious) Learning depends the most. So, can an algorithm be devised that can exhibit Curiosity? There is no Why function in Programming Languages. Curiosity seems to imply a Desire to determine Why something is or is not.  How can software cause a machine to ‘want’ to do something? To ‘care’ about something? Wanting and Caring are adjectives that describe some attributes of Consciousness and Self-Consciousness.}

^{What might be a simple aspect of a Why algorithm? Why is?  Why do? Why not? Why can? Why must? Why will?, etc.  Each of these are complex. What is the fundamental action involved in Why?}

Machine Awareness

Now that I can no longer carry intent from one room to the next, I find a new interest. I am overwhelmed by Consciousness, even more by Self-Consciousness, and extremely so when imagining Artificial or Machine Consciousness [AC or MC]. Pain, Pleasure, and an internal display of the surrounding environment, seem to be basic requisites. It would seem impossible to find a way to program pain in a machine. Basically, sensing pain is used by a system to avoid serious damage and even failure of the system. Pain is sensed at the location of the infliction, but requires input to the brain for the sensation to be realized. This brings forth the question of ‘caring’ … perhaps implying a desire for existence and for pleasure. So how would a machine be made to care if it becomes damaged? To ‘feel’ hurt? OK. For now, skip pain. How are we most aware of our own consciousness? In All the Light We Cannot See,  Anthony Doerr writes on p408  So how does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?  There is evidence that this visual display occurs in an area of the visual cortex,V1, where, if non-functioning due to damage, etc., people with blindsight still can sense objects and motion, but cannot ‘see’ them. We can certainly give a device blindsight! Present day video cameras record both a visual and an audible stream and, indeed, do tasks such as detecting faces, but it is not clear how to use such data to implement machine awareness. Overwhelming! So. Pick one care and devise a device that responds to that care. Well, CPUs are already programed to sense their operating temperature and to activate a cooling fan when needed.  Is this primitive awareness? Most certainly not.  The CPU doesn’t care if it burns up, its owner does. The automobile is a machine that has many correlates with living entities.  It requires fuel to work, it has a carburetor which inhales air, it has a fuel pump to circulate fuel and a radiator to provide cooling for the engine and warmth for the cabin, radio and phones for communication, and sonar and radar to allow guidance and the avoidance of external objects. Even so it is certainly not conscious. So, why would we need a machine with awareness? Perhaps to finally understand our own.

Flailing!

In my frustrating attempts at Human Know Thyself … I ‘suddenly’ realized that Consciousness isn’t on the AI agenda. DUH! It seemingly is an attribute only in highly developed Living creatures. AI is about Intelligence that is or may be possible in non-living entities. So.  All of the attributes of self-awareness available to human and animal thinking are not available. The questions that I ask myself now should be confined to definitions of Thinking and Learning that can be realized in the absence of self-awareness. Artificial Consciousness will have to wait its turn.

It would seem that the ultimate goal of machine thinking is to reach some conclusion based on available information.  And, perhaps perform some further act in response. I have postulated that the simplest act of thinking is just making a decision.  Hopefully then higher order thinking can be accomplished by additional layers of decision making. Artificial or Machine Learning [ML] should not involve what we consider as ‘Knowing something’ since it will lack Awareness.

Thinking, Learning, and Machine Intelligence

Meanderings into Artificial Intelligence without much prior knowledge is certainly an adventure, to say the least!   I've posted my early thoughts as the 2nd entry on the Musings page.

Levels of Machine Thinking

If making a simple decision based on stored instructions can be considered as the most fundamental form of machine thinking, what capability should be added to go to the next level of thinking? Is it possible to provide  control algorithms that would permit the device to make some choices on its own, perhaps based on newly stored data or upon trial and error until it gets some expected result?

Humans and animals can be influenced in such situations by being rewarded for making one kind of decision or punished for choosing the alternative. BUT.  How does one reward or punish a machine?

Computers don’t know anything. Despite having huge amounts of information stored in its memory banks, a computer just waits for instructions telling it how to retrieve and manipulate this information.  As an example, it has no concept of what a number is. Surprise! Yet numbers are the basis for all of its actions. If one Opens a word processing Application [App] and  types ‘3’, a 3 shows up on the display and a 3 can be printed by a connected printer. The keyboard contains a rudimentary computer that encodes each keystroke with a number from a look-up table [ASCII] that is sent to the word processing App. If one types ‘three’ the computer receives ’74 65 72 65 65’ [octal] and the App displays ‘three’ by converting the ASCII numbers back to text. [Octal is a shortcut way of writing a binary number. What is really sent for ’t’ is 0100 1010].  If a user Opens a Calculator App it accepts only ASCII values which represent numbers on a keyboard.  If one addresses a computer vocally; such as, “Siri, what is three?” {Without knowing the details] Siri examines a stored dictionary and speaks the entry, “three, a cardinal number, equivalent to the sum of one and two; one more than two.”  There is no App with which one can enter … Computer. Learn what three is. 

I’m convinced that just the process of storing data does not, in itself, constitute Learning. We need to learn what a Learning Algorithm should be able to do.  Certainly ‘understanding’ is part of Learning and probably a constituent of Consciousness, but how would one code it?

On Artificial Intelligence

Just at the time in my life when I can hardly put two thoughts together, I have become intrigued by a few Luddites who would stop explorations in Artificial Intelligence [AI] fearing progress in an Intelligent Machine may allow it to improve itself far beyond human intelligence and thus become a danger to mankind.

My first response is, as I have remarked elsewhere; “We are doing what we are designed to do.”  Live with it.

My second response is that, in the foreseeable future, at best AI will become able to clone parts of itself … but will need that Xmas eve nemesis of parents … Some Assembly Required  [SAR] to be applied, or not, by mere humans.

As for sexual reproduction, which aids in infusion of new abilities … if the machines get there, I want to go along.

It is most likely that machine thinking will be directed by built-in read-only algorithms to seek only improvement in controlled areas of thought. So.

Relax! Enjoy the benefits to come!