[WMCoolmon]

How do you define sentience, Lib?

You mention genetic technologies and cloning, which were both things that people believed were 'God's domain' in the past, but which have been done successfully in at least one or two instances. How is sentience any different?

[Liberator]

I define sentience as the indefinable element that puts Humans above other forms of life(even the Great Apes).  Some animals are intelligent, some incredibly so.  Some are capable of amazing displays of emotion.  Some are even capable of recognizing themselves in a photo or mirror.  But with all that, there is some element of Humanity that eludes scientific quantification and/or qualification.  That is sentience.

[pyro-manic]

Hmmm. So you can't define it then?

I think that true AI will be created (give it perhaps a century or so), but as long as the Laws are implemented, then there's nothing to worry about. Ideally, the machines would turn out as somthing like the Minds from Iain Banks' Culture novels.

Without the Laws, though, we're going to get a very nasty surprise.

[Flipside]

Sentience is, to a certain degree, knowledge of 'Me', though most creatures have this, humans are among a small group that seem to have a long-term grasp of the phrase 'Not me anymore' or 'Dead Me'.

Humans seem to take it a step further though, we dream up the concept of 'revenge', of which there have been few proven cases in other species. Yet our history is absolutely covered in it The blessing of technology always carries it's own curse, in this case it was the written word, and the holding of grudges. Maybe that is where we will go wrong? Maybe we will transfer memory from upgrade to upgrade, keeping the old AI 'Personality' but allowing it to learn to the point where it can become too aware of the information it has access to? For it to start to develop a concept of what is 'right' and 'wrong' and how it has changed depending on the needs of the times? How much logic would it take to compare the situation of slaves history? But the real big question is 'how long would it take for a machine to care?.

[vyper]

[q]ut, no matter how advanced the processing array or complex the programming routine, it is simply beyond Man's capability to create a sentient machine.[/q]

There is no limit to man's ability at any one moment save time itself, he will always learn to overcome.

[Liberator]

He can make a machine to seem sentient, to emulate different behaviors.  But a machine cannot be built to comprehend the concept of Me and recognize that it exists in more than the now.  Part of sentience is the understanding that there is more than Now.  Animals can seem like they understand, but their memory only extends to Man == Good, Man == Bad and other assorted Object specific behaviors.  They will remember you feeding them or being nice to them, but that is associated with you in the Now not that you were nice yesterday or last week.

[Flipside]

Well, animals can recognise patterns, if you put food in the same place, at the same time every week, you can be pretty sure after a few weeks the animals will be there waiting for you when you get there.

Man is different as in he would probably be waiting to mug you of all the food, so that he can be the guy with the food instead.

I think simply because we don't understand how the concept of 'Me' and 'Not Me' works does not mean we will never find out in the future. Our greatest asset is our media, and Artifical Intelligence is born of that same Media.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Liberator
I define sentience as the indefinable element that puts Humans above other forms of life(even the Great Apes).  Some animals are intelligent, some incredibly so.  Some are capable of amazing displays of emotion.  Some are even capable of recognizing themselves in a photo or mirror.  But with all that, there is some element of Humanity that eludes scientific quantification and/or qualification.  That is sentience.

If you can't define sentience, then you can't define what is not sentient.  Likewise for intelligence; this is the inherent problem faced by both philosphy and artificial intelligence (amongst others).

Regardless of whether sentience itself can be defined as the work of a supreme diety or dieties, or whether it is an effect of some biological / physiological / environmental process, so long as we cannot define it, we cannot claim to be ablse to say whether or not we can create it.

Also, it's very easy to 'miss' intelligence by characterising it in terms of human behaviour and perceptions; how can we really judge the intelligence and sentience of sea-life, for example, when we cannot even experience that environment as they do?

Anyways, everyone knows humans are only the 3rd most intelligent species on Earth.

[Bobboau]

well if you'r going to define sentience as the thing man kind will never be able to create, or that wich cannot be defined, then Yeah, I guess we'll never make it.

though with this sort of thing I don't think well be directly makeing it ether, I do think  however we will make the thing that makes the thing, a program capable of learning and modifying it'self doesn't seem outside the grasp of humanity, and that + time is all it needs.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Liberator
I define sentience as the indefinable element that puts Humans above other forms of life(even the Great Apes).

That's just a cop-out. No matter what scientists do, no matter how smart a computer you'd simply say that it lacks that thing and claim that it's therefore not sentient.

Doesn't matter if the machine can compose three different arias at the same time depending on its mood while similtaniously taking and passing the Turin test you'd still claim it lacked a soul and therefore wasn't sentient.

Then again you'd probably say the same if someone thawed out a neanderthal and taught it to speak English.