The Limits of Artificial Intelligence

We recently abandoned our home offices during working hours to see Ex-Machina, a fascinating tale about artificial intelligence. The story is well written and the acting excellent. The fact that the three main actors are virtually unknown in the U.S. added to the reality, since we didn’t have to get past the idea that we were watching a famous actor or actress playing another role. That made it easier to drop the sense of disbelief and get into this compelling story of advanced artificial intelligence in the form of a very human-like robot that becomes more clever than its creator.

In Ex-Machina, we have a robot that apparently possesses a sense of self-awareness. However, according to Korean quantum physicist Daegene Song, that will never happen. According to an article published in techswarm.com, Song has shown that computers will never be able to duplicate human consciousness or be programmed to do so. The reason, he says, is that consciousness doesn’t exist in the brain.
By representing consciousness mathematically, Song’s quantum computer research shows that consciousness is not compatible with a machine. Among conscious activities, the unique characteristic of self-observation cannot exist in any type of machine,” Song explained. “Human thought has a mechanism that computers cannot compute or be programmed to do.”

An article in Unknown Country notes that the neuroscience community has been working for many years to replicate consciousness in a machine by increasing the number of pathways between memory chips, but now it appears that, no matter how large the machine brain, it will never be self aware. A general assumption among scientists is that consciousness is a side-effect of brain activity, but Dr. Song’s math suggests that this cannot be true. If he is correct, then a fundamental change not just in science is implied, but also in the way we view ourselves. It would appear that consciousness may be something that the brain accesses, but does not generate.

In a related study of consciousness, described  in phys.org, physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff tussle with the same issue in their study of consciousness.

“The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?” ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review.

“This opens a potential Pandora’s Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, ‘proto-conscious’ quantum structure of reality.”

If these scientists are correct, we might not have to worry about self-aware robots taking over the world. But we’ll still potentially have to deal with programmed robots following the coded orders of their makers. Who knows what they might eventually be capable of doing.

Source : synchrosecrets