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If Shakespeare is right about imagination, robot Sophia will certainly break some hearts

Denyse O'Leary
June 16, 2019
Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Intelligent Design, Mind
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All “she” (= her programmer) wants is more brainpower:

A critical fact about artificially intelligent and sentient robots—if they could exist—University of Glasgow philosopher emeritus Hugh McLachlan notes is that, unlike life forms, they could be turned on and off.

“We can imagine robots that can think and feel” at Mind Matters News

And they could be turned on and off. What are the implications of that?

See also: AI Delusions: A statistics expert sets us straight We learn why Watson’s programmers did not want certain Jeopardy questions asked If you ask about anything that’s a puzzle, joke, riddle, or sarcasm that you can’t look up in Wikipedia, computers are helpless.

Comments
No problem good sir, to that I agree.AaronS1978
June 17, 2019
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You are right, of course, Aaron, that even when unconscious, our bodily functions and some brain functions continue. Mind you, some robots lose their programming when powered down, so would not recover when powered back up without reprogramming. For us death is the ultimate turning off. I don't think there is any disagreement between us. I just thought the OP overstated the point.Fasteddious
June 17, 2019
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I think a lot of our inability to replicate memories perfectly has more to do with the fact that our brain is an organism and not a machine It thinks on many different levels including rewiring it self to get the job done. How the brain accomplishes these things is more akin to a muscle flex then digitally retrieving memory. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe we can ever make machine feel, feeling kind of requires a living organism If you don’t mind my correcting you I don’t believe they think of shutting something on and off in the same as us being put to sleep Functions and total power to the machine can be actually completely removed yet the machine can be brought back easily by applying that same energy to the system Even though we can be put under through anesthesia, our living components continue to function, however if you strip these components of their metabolic reactions they cease. They can’t be turned back on. So once human metabolic function is switched off we’re dead. We can’t be turned back on This is the reference that they make, while a machine can be turned on and off, if all metabolism is wiped away from an organism it dies, Even organisms that can go into long periods of stasis still undergo the slightest Metabolic reactions. But they also can be permanently shut offAaronS1978
June 16, 2019
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In a reasonable sense humans can also be turned on and off: anaesthesia and other ways of inducing unconsciousness, sleep, alarm clocks. What we cannot do is reset ourselves back to some sort of blank slate beginning. Mind you, we cannot accurately copy our knowledge and experiences to others either. Robots can be reset and (sometimes) can have their memories cloned. On the other hand, imagining robots that can think and feel does not make it so.Fasteddious
June 16, 2019
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