(November 5, 2016 at 5:50 am)Mathilda Wrote:(November 4, 2016 at 7:31 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Well, you may have a greater understanding of something like intelligence but if the definition of intelligence is about comprehension and you're talking about things that have nothing to do with comprehension then we're not actually talking about comprehension.
That's not a useful definition in the field of artificial intelligence.
Let me demonstrate this by asking a few questions.
What does it mean to comprehend?
We know what it means to comprehend. We only need to consult the nearest dictionary for that.
An A.I. never may be able to actually understand or comprehend anything... but it is artifical intelligence. It's a simulation, it just has to behave as if it comprehends. You're only ever going to get pseudo-intelligence with an A.I.... unless it develops more human like intelligence... and even then it would be hard to distinguish 'genuine comprehension' from simulated. But that's only like the philosophical zombie problem where we have no proof that other humans are actually conscious or whether they just seem that way... and at the end... does it matter? What matters is whether the A.I. behaves as if it comprehends, or whether people behave as if they're conscious.... worrying about whether it 'genuinely comprehends' is a waste of time.... it's like worrying about if there's any 'real qualia' or 'real figment' or worrying about if there's any noumena or thing-in-itself.... at the end of the day empricism and phenonmenology is what matters (as well as logic and reason... Harris' conclusion follows from his premises, strawmanning a bunch of things he didn't say isn't really relevant... and that happens to him a lot).
