The Age Of Spiritual Machines

[journyman161]

Math is nice but it can't predict the moments of genius that solve major problems. I don't know if you or he are aware, but people have been reverse engineering the human brain in both hardware & software for several decades & so far, none of them have achieved the Turing test. They get close with normal conversation but the ability to fool a human in such an area isn't a real indication of intelligence.

AI has come a long way but still it isn't 'intelligence' in the way normal people understand it. Self-awareness is a whole new level of complexity above what is currently possible. It may even be (think of the site you're on) that true intelligence is not achievable at all unless a soul or spirit inhabits the vehicle to give it consciousness.

As for predictions, some of the most reasonable & well-backed ones are still not on the horizon. Where are our personal Flyers? Some are only now coming along after being predicated for the 1960's. What happened to the video watch/phone? Even straight science ones haven't come to pass. Just why haven't we got people living in Space yet?

Computers are amazing & they have come a long way - at school I used a slide rule - when calculators came along, we were banned from using them in exams, & they weren't programmable in the slightest. But Kurweil is extrapolating from the past & projecting that into the future &, without reading the book, he is assuming that intelligence & consciousness are just more complex versions of the AI we have.

[Tempestinateapot]

Geek

[CFTraveler]

That's funny I was just reading a book that mentioned Kurtzweil and the other guy who runs his website, and was going to quote something interesting that someone else said about them. But maybe I won't....
I know---wussy.

[Akashic_Librarian]

Has anyone seen Ghost in the Shell. I imagine it will be like that. I doubt if we could ever manufacture a Soul. Only the illusion of one. So I doubt that Machines could ever become Wiser than us. They may become smarter Logically, but they wqill lack the ability to see spirituality. I think :-S


< EDIT>PHG is there a reason your now Tempestinateapot lol. Good name BTW</EDIT>

[CFTraveler]

Oh please don't make her tell it! <gags>
Let's just say she got food poisoning and deleted herself in her delusional state. Then decided to make a fresh start with that new lovely name.

[asalantu]

Frankly, I hope he's wrong.

Why..!! After all, we are machines, too.

Sincerely,
Ángel

[Tempestinateapot]

2 week long food poisoning = delirium. As Cf said, you don't even want to know.

I think we can clone humans and build oober intelligent machines. There's always some soul around who will want to take it for a test drive.

[CFTraveler]

Frankly, I hope he's wrong.

Why..!! After all, we are machines, too.

Sincerely,
Ángel

That exactly is the attitude that forces me to jump into this issue.
The idea that we can build something to transcend us goes to the very idea of what we think being Human is, as Angel so simply expressed in the above example. Thanks to the technological age, we have come to the scary conclusion that we are only quantities. We have framed our reality into the idea that everything is a resource that can be used for rationalized ends. We have no intrinsic value- just resources to be used! This is why we have created weapons of mass destruction, have poisoned our environment, and continue to come up with ways of destroying ourselves and the earth with it.
Every time we come up with something that helps humanity, we come up with something that harms us. This is because we don't value being or consciousness. We only value speed, efficiency, quantity based information, or things. That's also why every time we create a way to make less work for us, we create new ways for us to use our time. We create needs that didn't exist before because we don't value ourselves except for the machine we are, so we create labor for ourselves. We don't work on the quality of our lives, and we make fun of those who do.
Why do you think there are ghettoes? Surplus human resources. Manpower. We have no value!
Do you think for a second if we build an AI intelligent enough to outthink us they'll let us continue to exist? No. Because we will teach them that quantity, speed, output, things is what matters, and since we will be obsolete, will be considered a waste of resources. And what do you think will happen?
While we continue to think of ourselves as thinking machines meant to produce, we will eventually create something that will transcend us, and if it inherits our materialistic ethic, they won't even think twice about obliterting us. That simple.

[asalantu]

Frankly, I hope he's wrong.

Why..!! After all, we are machines, too.

Sincerely,
Ángel

As a matter of fact, CF, my viewpoint is not as simplistic as previously quoted. Although human brain is roughly modelated (by scientists) as a neural network (basically at gray matter level), consciousness is at a finer level. Trascend neuro-chemical-electrical waves but is nearly correlated and there are a strong correlation between them. But, to date, is overlooked by scientific measurement techniques (aka instruments like brainmappers). Consciousness is result, apparently following scientist opinion, of whole brain activity.

I remember a quote from ancient British Psychic Society President (former Sir Oliver Lodge). Once he sayd: "Or are we nonmortal beings or we aren't, science cannot bring light about our destiny, but certainly must not obscure it". We Astraldynamic's forists have proof of things beyond physical awareness and hence physical understanding. My viewpoint about such fact is no more nor less than: when appropiate time comes, apparently nonphysical phenomena will be thoroughly quantified by evolved quantification means (aka scientific instruments). Is question of time, but that time, of sure will come. Firsts scientist must to evolve reaching the awareness that there are more than that its relatively advanced detection systems reveal to them. Remember, a science like physics is that wich deals about nature laws. And, from my viewpoint, all is natural, nothing is supernatural. Is only a question of to make to evolve our viewpoints in order to mature and to deal with such phenomena.

But about controversial thread subject (spiritual machines era), is opinion from mine machines will grow reaching real consciousness. Why not..? Our bodies are superb advanced machines. But our bodies are not the Universe/God main aim. Holymen allegedly supports such primitive idea. Catholic holymen (despite any religious-political concern and apologize my proposal) postulates things like: "flesh resurrection" but such paradigm is so rough as scientist's paradigm, nothing has to do with spiritual concerns. Only spirit accounts. The rest are only matter of illusion. Physical body relevance is a mundane illusion. An illusion derived from a material viewpoint of selfrelevance and selfish, founded of course in our transient unability of perceive higher things like those revealed to us through NEW technique. Physical body is only relevant because it allows us to birth, to experience physical pain, psychological suffering, spiritual uncertainty, illness, death; things only achievable at physical existence.

Sincerely,
Ángel

[Drellix]

I think it is possible for a machine to have a soul. Perhaps all that is required for a soul is conciousness. I mean is it that far out there that a machine could have a soul? If we are spiritual beings temporarily inhabiting physical bodies, why couldn't there be spiritual beings inhabiting machine bodies? It would be just synthetic based neurons instead of mammalian circutry. Maybe if machines become a process reflecting on itself, it creates a soul. I mean if you can consider your own existence, doesn't that create a soul? If thought exists on one level, doesn't it exist on all levels? I dunno. Its just my opinion.

Dispite that there are limitations to this becoming possible presently, once the processing power is acheived it will be possible. It doesn't seem plausable now, but in ten years people may be rethinking their opinions on the matter. And the thing is, is that people wont even notice that it has happened. I think to myself sometimes that my generation is going to be the last that remembers what it is like not to have the internet. Computers are essiential in just about every industry now. All in a very short period of time. And the speed of change is getting faster and faster.

Imagine what it would be like to become a machine. I already think enough, I couldn't imagine processing things millions of times faster. Maybe machines will just go bonkers from thinking and destroy themselves.