Monday, August 6, 2007

"Programming"?

This is more of a random thought than anything, but a lot of people were talking about how even if AI makes a human-like choice, it is still just working on the basis of a program which is originally created by human intelligence. I was just thinking that maybe human intelligence is also just "programmed" as well. It's hard to figure out the exact difference between AI (hypothetically, at this stage in our tech) making choices and acting like a human due to it's programming and humans acting according to our own programming.

I'm not necesarily talking about god or a higher power (though those things are both something to think about), but it is true that we have innate abilities, pre-dispositions, instincts, and intrinsic limitations and talents. Where do these things come from that provide the basis (the 'g' factor, perhaps) for everything we do? We take what we have been intrinsically endowed with and combine it with new knowledge in order to think, act, interact, and decide. Is it so different when we endow a computer with this same basis, then 'teach' it and see if it can also do these "human" processes?
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2 comments:

Gavin Shafron said...

You make a fascinating, and very philosophical point. From my understanding of Artificial Intelligence, one of the reasons cognitive psychology is applied to the formation of the field is that so much of our models of human cognition are similar to that of a computer program, all you have to do is think back to the attenuator or filter model to get a good idea of this. It is hard for me, however, to think of all of humanity as a series of preprogrammed automatons, simply carrying out their original programming. While the aforementioned statement is a very real possibility, as all humans are essentially evolved animals (if you are like me, and believe in evolution), I feel that humanity, and the complex interplay of emotion, perception and cognition amounts to more than a simple computer-like program, and most definitely a race of beings that are far more complex than any of us understand.

August 9, 2007 at 12:39 AM
noah said...

i think every living thing is programmed, DNA is essentially hard-coded material that gives tells us what we are able to do at a fundamental level, then rest we tend to take care of but we do definitely have genetic predispositons

August 15, 2007 at 3:12 PM

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