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Should we make Artificial Intelligences that (a) understand human emotions, or (b) simulate human emotions in their programming? Would it be wise to endow a machine with intelligence to the point of consciousness and not build in some sort of conscience, some sense of right and wrong? How could that be simulated in an AI?

I believe when we reach a certain level the computers will become part of our sences, like our eyes and ears. We will use them as extensions of ourselves. We might have many implants and changes to our shape even, but we'll stay in control. From the first stone-throw to moving a planet, in the vastness of time and space it is nothing. But now back to my reality... one or two spoons of sugar.

Sugar is bad for you. Try Stevia, it's "natural" without the sugar "highs and lows".

"Should we make Artificial Intelligences that (a) understand human emotions, or (b) simulate human emotions in their programming? Would it be wise to endow a machine with intelligence to the point of consciousness and not build in some sort of conscience, some sense of right and wrong? How could that be simulated in an AI?" Rose

That is an excellent question. Further, does a computer which understands human emotions actually experience the emotions or does it merely simulate it? What's the difference?
Giving a machine consciousness and a conscience: Whose would it be? I would hate to see computer intelligence used for ill purposes (ill is relative right?). But given humanity's infatuation with the macabre..
The idea of sentient computers is fascinating to me because.. it implies that WE then ARE GODS.

Sincerely,

The brain is ultimately also a machine. But we are mortal, so we should certainly build machines with the same capability as the human brain so that we can replace our mortal brains by these (practically) immortal machines. Ideally you want to have a machine that can download your brain content (i.e. the exact way all your neurons are connected to each other).

A person who has uploaded himself from his body to a machine will have a lot of freedom. He doesn't need a body to travel anymore. You can imagine that in the far future people will travel vast distances in outer space by sending their brain configuration information over radio from one solar system to another.

It's not clear to me that a brain downloaded to a computer is the same consciousness.

IIRC, Daniel Dennett (the philosopher) was talking about trying to create an editor that experienced emotions. I kinda think he was talking out his backside, but I'm not entirely sure.

The idea of robots/AI's as being extensions of us and of human essences being downloaded to machines sounds exactly like Kurzweil's prediction in "The Age of Spiritual Machines."

Ray Kurzweil is a certifiable genius, but the idea seems so far-fetched to me that I almost think he's playing a joke. It's not that he predicts it, but that he says it will happen in the next 25 years or so.

Even brilliant people make mistakes.

BTW, Kurzweil suggests that universe (at least our part of it) has been increasing in intelligence at an exponential rate and that machines are just an extension of that.

Moore's law was suggested by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel. It was an empirical observation that the speed of the processors doubled approximately every 18 months. That's the way it's usually stated - what it actually stated was that the # of transistors could double because the gates would be made smaller and smaller.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

Kurzweil (Age of Spiritual Machines) suggests that this exponential growth is actually an extension back into the time life first arose. Big Leap, of course, but he seems to have made a career of Big Leaps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

Moore's Law has a theoretical limit that is fast approaching - our existing computers will only ever go so fast. But there are two things we're doing to improve this - the first is distributed computing (like the internet) - this enables collaboration, but also more specific resource sharing. The other front is that we're considering other kinds of computation - including, chemical and biological computation, as well as quantum computing. These are not digital computing systems, though, they're analog. I'm not sure how the chembio stuff is going, but the most interesting possibility of the QC stuff is that many believe it will be able to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-complete

As has been pointed out, though, wide-spread QC is not a sure thing - primarily because of the problem of decoherence.

People have actually built QCs, though:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_1_20/ai_53501821

They're trivial and useless, but the first steps in digital computing were a long time coming as well.

Being honest, did many of us think that computers would become so ubiquitous and so all-encompassing in our lives twenty five years ago? It seems so natural to be using computers to run our homes and type out our thoughts that we take them for granted. Yet each of us has literally at our fingertips more computing power than put men on the moon and brought them safely back again. My coffeemaker can be prgrammed to have coffee, fresh and hot, ready when I wake every day. It used to be that the only way to have that was to have a parent or spouse who got up early enough to make coffee for you. Now your coffee maker can be programmed to do it for you and obligingly tell you what time it is as well so you know how late you are.

Given the strides computers have made in the last 25 years, I would not be surprised to see the momentum of discovery carry on to new and yet unvisioned heights. Human life in a computer brain is imaginable; it could become reality. I think 25 years IS a bit optimistic, but maybe not. I'd like to be around then to see. It will be interesting to say the least.

As soon as humans invent a computer program, that is intelligent enough to invent it's own computer program- we are the mercy of machines. The last thing we need to do is give them emotions and make them like us.

Um ... Rob, I write programs all the time that generate other programs. They aren't intelligent at all. It turns out that for some kinds of problems - particularly when there are things that could change or things that are unspecified, it's a lot easier to do this than to write a program that encompasses all the possibilities.

Random thoughts:
There's also a fun angle to this. There used to be a game called core wars that used a language called red code. You could write programs that would copy themselves all over the place (well, that was one strategy). When I taught computer science, I'd have my students write simple red code compilers (in assembler and in pl/i). Another thing fun thing is the old, "program that outputs a copy of itself":

My solution in C is at http://geocities.com/elbillaf/repeat.html

But there are better versions available that are ascii/ebcdic - independent.

I'm not aware of many other people who do this (programs that write programs) where I work, but I've been doing it for ages - and I've met a number of other people who have used similar approaches over the years.

BTW, most modern chips are designed - and to an extent - tested and debugged in software. Computers are being used to help create more and better computers. A question is to what extent that process is able to be automated.

"Yet each of us has literally at our fingertips more computing power than put men on the moon and brought them safely back again." Rose

1948 AD to 1951 AD The first commercial computer -- UNIVAC

As the Encyclopedia Britannica says: "A renaissance of logical studies came about almost entirely because of Boole and DeMorgan." Every answer is either true or false.

What will computers have enabled humanity to do in, even, just 50 years from now?

Sincerely,

While perhaps an obvious point, machines and computers are an extension of the human brain. A point worth remembering when we consider whatever it is that machines/computers allow us to do.

I think that Steve Grand is probably correct when he says that we are more likely to toward biological design than we are likely to move toward machines for extra computing processing power. As a process of making this shift in using biological computing/machine power is it possible that emotions would be one result? Emotions develop over time in biological organism, and perhaps this would be no different for AI whose development closely follows that of biological organisms.

Yes, I also find the ''25 years'' unbelievable. But he then, he is making money out of his ideas, and someting happening 25 years from now is a more exciting idea than someting happening 250 years from now.

I think that what matters for consciousness is whether two systems are equivalent in the sense that you can map the possible inputs and outputs of one system to the other and vice versa. So, I can interact with you but I could also interact with a digital version of you and I shouldn't notice any relevant differences between the two systems.

Count Iblis II mentioned the human brain and its memories and thought patterns may some day be encoded and used with computer hardware, this is a concept iv personaly been very keen on learning more about.

A question for you all: Would you trade your god given flesh for Computer made machinery??

I don?t see the significance of flesh nor do I see the reasons to keep it, it?s limited and has many pitfalls... but then there is the sensory benefits. .
But they to could also be simulated and amplified.

if I was given the chance to "trade-up" I would, no hesitation what so ever we are talking about eternal life, or at the least perpetual consciousness . . . well until the next virus/server crash or "we" are intercepted and recored or modded to be difrent by a 3rd party all our current internet problems, only we are the ones really getting screwd with . . . now im not so sure

OMG can't you people talk about logic stuff. O_O; this AI crap must stop life cant exist within a scripted program!!!. >_<

"OMG can't you people talk about logic stuff."
Evidence indicates you would not realize logic from nonsense.

"this AI crap must stop life cant exist within a scripted program"

It's unlikely you know anything at all on the subject. Your ill-informed opinion is duly noted.

"this is Nonsense lol. the world can't create a living Machine (stop watching SCI-fi movies.) I live in the "real" world.

Is that just a hunch, or can you back it up with logic?

There have always been people who thought we would never fly, never get to the moon, never travel at the speed of sound, never circumnavigate the world in a day or two.

That's not evidence that "they're" wrong this time, but it does suggest we ought to be careful before asserting what's possible and impossible. I doubt that we'll have "machines that think" in my lifetime, nor even in the lifetimes of my children, nor even perhaps in the lives of their children - but one day, I think it will come.

Your problem is in the assumptions you make, both of which seem reasonable, and either or both of which might be false:

1) You assume that programs are scripted and that scripted is the same as deterministic.
2) You assume we are not.

It's far too early to think that we can't ever figure this out. Don't forget that a lot of ideas started with literature. Icarus flew millenia before Orville and Wilbur did, and Jules Verne shot us to the moon almost a century before NASA did.

TFF, going back to what I said about programs that could write programs...

I meant programs that simulated intelligence to the extent that the program was like a human and could think up it's own program and make it.

Since intelligent robots will be used to relieve humans of boring and repetitive tasks like coding etc... the intelligent robots will be free to plot against us unsupervised.