Technology
...and
rewarded, will invariably rise-up to meet the free
market demands of society. It is in this realm that
Artificial Intelligence research and the resultant
expert systems have been forged. Much of the material
that relates to the field of Artificial Intelligence
deals with human psychology and the nature of
consciousness. Exhaustive debate on consciousness and
the possibilities of consciousnessness in machines has
adequately, in my opinion, revealed that it is most
unlikely that we will ever converse or interract with
a machine of artificial consciousness. In John
Searle's collection of lectures, Minds, Brains and
Science, arguments centering around the mind-body
problem alone is sufficient to convince a reasonable
person that there is no way science will ever unravel
the mysteries of consciousness. Key to Searle's
analysis of consciousness in the context of Artificial
Intelligence machines are refutations of strong and
weak AI theses. Strong AI Theorists (SATs) believe
that in the future, mankind will forge machines that
will think as well as, if not better than humans. To
them, pesent technology constrains this achievement.
The Weak AI Theorists (WATs), almost converse to the
SATs, believe that if a machine performs functions
that resemble a human's, then there must
be a correlation between it and consciousness. To
them, there is no technological impediment to thinking
machines, because our most advanced machines already
think. It is important to review Searle's refutations
of these respective theorists' proposition to
establish a foundation (for the purpose of this essay)
for discussing the applications of Artificial
Intelligence, both now and in the future.
Strong AI Thesis
Strong AI Thesis, according to Searle,
can be described in four basic propositions.
Proposition...
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