i just had an hour long debate with two of my grad school friends about artificial intelligence.
my advisor purports that one day computers will be doing all the math, and will be thinking on a higher level than us, so scott asked me why that doesn't seem to especially bother me. if my advisor's prediction of the future is true, we'll all eventually be out of jobs as mathematicians, and i should be worried.
i responded that i'm not particularly worried because i'm not 100% convinced that artificial intelligence, in the sense of consciously independent machines is guaranteed to happen, and even if it did it would be so off in the future as to be unreal. i'm not arguing that it's impossible, but i'm skeptical about whether it's guaranteed. mostly, because i'm not 100% sure what "creativity" really is. scott or eric would define it to be something algorithmically complex and computationally irreducible, but still realizable out of a sufficiently complex program. whereas i'm not convinced one way or the other that it's something that can be automated.
halfway into the conversation (eric and scott both believe conscious machines will happen, eric puts it a at least a hundred years away though), eric commented "oh! of course! you refuse to believe in AI because you're religious! that would kinda negate your whole idea of soul."
which bothered me but took me 15 minutes to phrase myself. honestly, religion didn't enter my mind in the conversation until he threw out that idea. my response?
i believe that there's a physical world that we interact with daily, and the physical world contains many abstract concepts, a moral code, etc., but that there's a whole other spiritual world as well. what makes humans have a "soul" is that we have a spiritual world analog, whereas i don't think that dogs, insects, etc. have a spiritual world analog. the question of AI doesn't become a religious question to me unless thinking machines somehow have a spiritual world analog, which i don't think they would. so to me, the key question is still: "what is creativity? is it algorithmic, given a complex enough computational environment? or it is independent of computation and can be simulated, but not wholly redeveloped?" i'd need to be convinced that creativity can be an emergent property of an automated system before i believed 100% that conscious machines are possible, and i'm not convinced yet.
what do you think?
(or have i scared you all away from words? :P)
life, the universe, and everything... or at least my parallel version thereof
About Me
- lara =)
- i just finished my ph.d. in math. i'm usually studying, but easily distracted by stars, chances to play with my digital camera, and roadtrips.
super exciting upcoming events!
- san antonio, texas: june 2008
- new zealand!: june 2008
- moving to indiana!: july 2008
currently reading...
- mental floss magazine, may/june 2008 issue
- A Certain Ambiguity by Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal
favorite quotes
- strenuous intellectual work and the study of God's nature are the angels that will lead me through all the troubles of this life with consolation, strength, and uncompromising rigor. ~albert einstein
- Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind. ~Albert Einstein
- when i was young, i forgot to laugh. later when i opened my eyes and saw reality i began to laugh and haven't stopped since. ~soren kierkegaard
2 comments:
So I think it does have something to do with belief in God, but not in the way that Eric phrased it. Belief in God means that miracles can and do happen. It means that creativity is more than a complex algorithim and rather a gift of God. God used God's own creative power to make the universe and all that is within it, and as a Christian we believe that the power to create and be creative comes from God. This means that while computers will likely become more and more complex, it is hard to think of AI as having the same power of creativity because AI is our creation and not God's.
This might not make complete sense, but I wanted to respond a little at least before staff meeting started!
i fully agree that God used his own creative power to make the universe and all that is within it, but i also would contend that our creativity is a pale reflection of his. what's to say that human creativity isn't a very complex algorithm?
i'm not convinced that it is, but i'm not convinced that it isn't either. and if creativity is just a very complex algorithm, then who's to say that machines won't eventually have it as an emergent property.
i would say that creativity on the scale of God's (true fully-fledged creativity) is not duplicatable by machine. but if our creativity is a pale reflection of God's then, perhaps it is complicated, but not so complicated as to not be eventually duplicated.
i still think that the key difference between humans and animals is that we have a soul/spiritual analog. if (human) creativity is a complex algorithm, then i see no reason why it can't be duplicated in machines. what i don't think we can do is to impute a soul/spiritual analog into a machine, which is why i don't think it's a religious issue.
the question to me is still "is creativity an computationally irreducible algorithm?" i know a lot of people who would say YES, and resoundingly so.
i would say "fully developed, real, true, Godly creativity" is not.
but if we really are a "pale reflection" of Him and much smaller than Him in every way, what is to say that human creativity isn't? i don't know, and i think it's a very good/tricky/deep question.
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