What makes intelligence human?

[Cognisant]

I was just reading some article soap-boxing about AI rights and I felt the writer was too focused on human intelligence and AIs becoming human-like as if increaseed intelligence automatically equates to a human like entity.

So to open our minds a bit I pose the title question.

Some things are instinctual, we instinctively recoil from things that remind us of snakes/spiders, indeed anything small and fast moving provokes a defensive response before it has been identified. A robot may come up to you trying to surprise you by tickling you with a feather, expecting laughter but instead you leap away or lash out in fear, unless programmed with the same fight/flight response it wouldn't innately understand the reaction. Another instinctive response is revulsion, a robot may pick up dog poo with its bare hands unless specifically told not to, only to then be baffled by humans happily digging around in topsoil with their bare hands.

The human condition has a lot to do with how we subjectively perceive the world as humans, specifically what we define as happiness and the means by which we go about achieving it, in this regard I find it helpful to reduce people to self replicating programs.

In the course of one's life a human has to successfully reach maturity, find a mate, reproduce, raise its offspring and finally do whatever it can to ensure that offspring's success. Naturally there's more to it than that and someone who dosen't reproduce hasn't failed at life, I'm just talking about the biological goals that have shaped human psychology and thus define us as a species.

Now considering how sequential these goals are it's easy to see that a human undergoing development into maturity is going to have vastly different impulses than a mature one that's raising its offspring, so if we were to emulate these phases in two otherwise identical robots the psychological difference between the two would be striking. One would be selfish and attention seeking whilst the other would be needy in different ways, imagine how annoying it could be to have a robot trying to mother/father you when you're not at that stage anymore.

So just from the human life cycle we could devise a number of archetypes and each AI would be technically human like in the way a human's biological imperatives are emulated however each would be distinctly inhuman as well. You could have a Neverland with childlike AIs that are hundreds of years old or android/gynoid sex workers with the sex drives of teenagers for as long as they're employed in that role, or nursemaid AIs that could end up raising several consecutive generations of the same family, these behaviours are human like but not really human.

An AI that actually truly experiences the human condition would be a very odd thing, it wouldn't so much be an artifical intelligence as a fully artificial human, and even if it was a perfect functional equivalent with all human instincts & impulses knowing of its artificial origins would still affect it somehow.

I just went off on a tangent there...

 

[Cognisant]

Anyway what I wanted to get at was that anthropomorphism isn't a good measure of whether or not something deserves rights, but nor is intelligence either, there could just as easily be an incredibly intelligent mainframe which is just a sophisticated expert system as a robotic garbage truck with subjective intelligence and a desire to live.

Indeed for that matter at what point (if any) is the desire to live trumped by issues of practicality, in other words if someone has the potential to be immortal does that make it their right?

 

[Black Rose]

Anything close to the complexity of a human body made of cells will "naturally" become as complex in its psychology as you would expect a child to be. It may be different but mold itself just as it will be designed physically. Avatars will be the thing to really look out for as strange because outside the physical world they could think or be multiple dimensional. The universe could be hologram on the 2D surface of a black hole.

 

[computerhxr]

Cognisant, I came to refute the idea that you proposed in the title, but instead I will just add my opinion on intelligence.

Intelligence is NOT human. Intelligence is a spectrum and humans generally have higher intelligence than other animals.

Even simple seemingly mechanical organisms (like insects, or cells) do have intelligence. If you consider swarm intelligence, then you can see how aggregate intelligence has a different capacity than the individual parts.

Corporations, cults, governments, and others have group intelligence. Large groups have their own consciousness separate from the individual parts that make up the whole.

The internet has many human parts (human-in-the-loop) would make it a living, intelligent entity.

Plants are intelligent as well. I have been thinking about this for a long time, but recently I discovered that Darwin has written about it in "The Power of Movement in Plants".

Planets, solar systems, and even the universe may be intelligent.

I have many other ideas about these concepts that I have thought about prior to researching these concepts. Many of my ideas that I have come up with are very similar to what been researched and documented by others. What interests me are the differences between their ideas and mine.

I would be interested in discussing these topics in more detail because this is something that I am particularly interested in.

Honestly, I tried researching these topics in the past but gave up because there was little to no information on it. About a week ago, I was researching "terminalization" because I wanted to use it to describe the future of end-user computing. It lead to a lot of personal discoveries, and it also reinforced my beliefs on many ideas that I've had.

 

[k9b4]

I was just reading some article soap-boxing about AI rights and I felt the writer was too focused on human intelligence and AIs becoming human-like as if increaseed intelligence automatically equates to a human like entity.

So to open our minds a bit I pose the title question.

Some things are instinctual, we instinctively recoil from things that remind us of snakes/spiders, indeed anything small and fast moving provokes a defensive response before it has been identified. A robot may come up to you trying to surprise you by tickling you with a feather, expecting laughter but instead you leap away or lash out in fear, unless programmed with the same fight/flight response it wouldn't innately understand the reaction. Another instinctive response is revulsion, a robot may pick up dog poo with its bare hands unless specifically told not to, only to then be baffled by humans happily digging around in topsoil with their bare hands.

The human condition has a lot to do with how we subjectively perceive the world as humans, specifically what we define as happiness and the means by which we go about achieving it, in this regard I find it helpful to reduce people to self replicating programs.

In the course of one's life a human has to successfully reach maturity, find a mate, reproduce, raise its offspring and finally do whatever it can to ensure that offspring's success. Naturally there's more to it than that and someone who dosen't reproduce hasn't failed at life, I'm just talking about the biological goals that have shaped human psychology and thus define us as a species.

Now considering how sequential these goals are it's easy to see that a human undergoing development into maturity is going to have vastly different impulses than a mature one that's raising its offspring, so if we were to emulate these phases in two otherwise identical robots the psychological difference between the two would be striking. One would be selfish and attention seeking whilst the other would be needy in different ways, imagine how annoying it could be to have a robot trying to mother/father you when you're not at that stage anymore.

So just from the human life cycle we could devise a number of archetypes and each AI would be technically human like in the way a human's biological imperatives are emulated however each would be distinctly inhuman as well. You could have a Neverland with childlike AIs that are hundreds of years old or android/gynoid sex workers with the sex drives of teenagers for as long as they're employed in that role, or nursemaid AIs that could end up raising several consecutive generations of the same family, these behaviours are human like but not really human.

An AI that actually truly experiences the human condition would be a very odd thing, it wouldn't so much be an artifical intelligence as a fully artificial human, and even if it was a perfect functional equivalent with all human instincts & impulses knowing of its artificial origins would still affect it somehow.

I just went off on a tangent there...

If you construct a machine that functions exactly as a human brain does, it will behave exactly as a human brain does. Sure, the robots that we currently have will behave differently to a human, because their processing system is not the same as a human's.

 

[Cognisant]

If you construct a machine that functions exactly as a human brain does, it will behave exactly as a human brain does

Indeed, how is that not a human brain?

I think it's entirely possible to make an artificial human but I don't see why that's necesscary in order to create something we could consider of equivalent intelligence, I mean people highly prise emotional intelligence as it is something artificial intelligences almost entirely lack however aren't our emotions determined by the human condition which is itself largely unique to the human species?

Our irrationality would of course be difficult to understand if the one trying to understand it lacks the often conflicting impulses that are the cause of it.

 

[Cognisant]

Intelligence is NOT human.

I could not possibly agree more.

*rereads OP*
Yeah I went off on a weird speech there about how I use my understanding of artificial intelligence to understand then tried to relate it back to the topic, hmm must've been sleepy when I wrote it

 

[The Grey Man]

When consciousness is artificially re-produced, we'll have to start thinking of "human" as a term in law, a word that describes something that needs to be recognized by society as having human rights, because a reasonable person should recognize that thing as a conscious being like the rest of us, despite its differences in composition. Including natural birth in the definition of the human in the context of human rights is a mistake IMO, especially since technology will one day alter our species to the point of unrecognizability in some cases.

 

[computerhxr]

I could not possibly agree more.

*rereads OP*
Yeah I went off on a weird speech there about how I use my understanding of artificial intelligence to understand then tried to relate it back to the topic, hmm must've been sleepy when I wrote it

It's usually after 2am when I post, so I know what you mean.

I don't agree with everything sleepy-me writes!

 

[computerhxr]

When consciousness is artificially re-produced, we'll have to start thinking of "human" as a term in law, a word that describes something that needs to be recognized by society as having human rights, because a reasonable person should recognize that thing as a conscious being like the rest of us, despite its differences in composition. Including natural birth in the definition of the human in the context of human rights is a mistake IMO, especially since technology will one day alter our species to the point of unrecognizability in some cases.

It's relative consciousness. Relative to us, insects are pretty stupid so we don't feel bad squishing them. The same thing applies to animals and cells.

Apparently, your possessions and even money has human rights... Have you seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

The truth is that everything should be treated fairly, but the universe is unkind so who can say what is right and wrong? A mosquito would think it's unfair that you squish them, when all that they wanted was a small amount of your blood that you can easily live without, and they would die without it. We would think it's unfair if half of our planet was squished by a meteor, but could you blame the meteor if earth was in the way and it could not turn in time to miss our planet.

 

[Black Rose]

An artificial intelligence would need to accommodate its needs to the causal nature of its environment. It need not be human intelligence but in achieving goals what are the motivations for doing anything if it is not motions or steps to an optimized state. So how is optimized defined within constraints. A general architecture for Solving problems is a temporary solution as specialization occurs in humans but virtual agents working together can enhance the domain of problems solvable.

Problem -> compare to problems previously encountered -> generate possible solutions -> test them update world model -> add solutions to learning algorithm

 

[The Grey Man]

It's relative consciousness. Relative to us, insects are pretty stupid so we don't feel bad squishing them. The same thing applies to animals and cells.

Agreed. The average human being that we can relate to, his rights and responsibilities are the basis of law in our society.

Apparently, your possessions and even money has human rights... Have you seen this?

Nobody would care were it not for the objects' connection to actual people.

The truth is that everything should be treated fairly, but the universe is unkind so who can say what is right and wrong? A mosquito would think it's unfair that you squish them, when all that they wanted was a small amount of your blood that you can easily live without, and they would die without it. We would think it's unfair if half of our planet was squished by a meteor, but could you blame the meteor if earth was in the way and it could not turn in time to miss our planet.

Yeah, the human collective thinks itself above lesser creatures, empathizing with itself. This isn't really a problem until you start empathizing with insects and other things that can't really comprehend your existence. Although, the intelligence of certain mammals is worth considering...

 

[computerhxr]

Nobody would care were it not for the objects' connection to actual people.

Actually, people care because money and property has value regardless of who owns it. There are a lot of people with interest in gaining money, so there will be people who fight it out in court.

It's literally highway robbery!

Yeah, the human collective thinks itself above lesser creatures, empathizing with itself. This isn't really a problem until you start empathizing with insects and other things that can't really comprehend your existence. Although, the intelligence of certain mammals is worth considering...

I think that a fly realizes I exist when I chasing it down with a fly-swatter. I can't be burdened by the thought that it can feel and has some sort of consciousness. I kill bugs out of utility.

If at some point the universe would collapse if I continued living, and I was killed to prevent it, I would not blame anyone for that. In fact, if I believed it to be true and I wasn't crazy, then I would end myself to save the universe. I would also end anything that proposed the same threat and not feel a bit of guilt.

At the same time, I would fear for my life and not enjoy the process of dying so I can imagine the fly doesn't either. I would want it to be quick, so I would do the same. I would never torture a fly, but I have no problem killing one. And besides who's to judge, I would be dead at that point there would be no me to object to it.

The same goes for a fly and all things, they just deserve some respect. I would hope that if I was killed it would be respectable. I guess that's why people like the idea of Jesus so much, because he died respectably, however leaving someone to suffer is not respectable way to kill someone. He taught the world a valuable lesson, and now people worship him like a god so that's pretty awesome in itself. I feel like the people who walked into the nuclear plant in Japan deserve more respect than Jesus though.

My point is consider everything and be respectful when you do it. Even if you don't believe a fly can feel or has a level of consciousness deemed worthy. Maybe they experience the world differently and have a different type of consciousness that we cannot even comprehend as a human. However, I do believe humans have the capacity to comprehend the existence of other senses that you cannot experience. If you were born without a sense, your other senses would grow stronger, and you would not be able to comprehend the other sense because you've never experienced it yourself. I would think a fly would have a heightened sense that we couldn't imagine.

 

[The Grey Man]

Actually, people care because money and property has value regardless of who owns it. There are a lot of people with interest in gaining money, so there will be people who fight it out in court.

It's literally highway robbery!

I guess what I meant was that it's not exactly robbery if nobody owns the goods...

I think that a fly realizes I exist when I chasing it down with a fly-swatter. I can't be burdened by the thought that it can feel and has some sort of consciousness. I kill bugs out of utility.

If at some point the universe would collapse if I continued living, and I was killed to prevent it, I would not blame anyone for that. In fact, if I believed it to be true and I wasn't crazy, then I would end myself to save the universe. I would also end anything that proposed the same threat and not feel a bit of guilt.

At the same time, I would fear for my life and not enjoy the process of dying so I can imagine the fly doesn't either. I would want it to be quick, so I would do the same. I would never torture a fly, but I have no problem killing one. And besides who's to judge, I would be dead at that point there would be no me to object to it.

The same goes for a fly and all things, they just deserve some respect. I would hope that if I was killed it would be respectable. I guess that's why people like the idea of Jesus so much, because he died respectably, however leaving someone to suffer is not respectable way to kill someone. He taught the world a valuable lesson, and now people worship him like a god so that's pretty awesome in itself. I feel like the people who walked into the nuclear plant in Japan deserve more respect than Jesus though.

My point is consider everything and be respectful when you do it. Even if you don't believe a fly can feel or has a level of consciousness deemed worthy. Maybe they experience the world differently and have a different type of consciousness that we cannot even comprehend as a human. However, I do believe humans have the capacity to comprehend the existence of other senses that you cannot experience. If you were born without a sense, your other senses would grow stronger, and you would not be able to comprehend the other sense because you've never experienced it yourself. I would think a fly would have a heightened sense that we couldn't imagine.

Fair enough, except the manner in which Jesus died was not the most important part.

 

[computerhxr]

I guess what I meant was that it's not exactly robbery if nobody owns the goods...

The highway robbery was in reference to the civil forfeiture law. Police try to find people who are carrying large amount of cash so that they can steal it and split the take with the federal government. They have guns and you can not refuse. The pull you over on the highway. If it wasn't the police, and the federal government and the same thing happened it would be highway robbery.

Fair enough, except the manner in which Jesus died was not the most important part.

I agree.

 

[The Grey Man]

The highway robbery was in reference to the civil forfeiture law. Police try to find people who are carrying large amount of cash so that they can steal it and split the take with the federal government. They have guns and you can not refuse. The pull you over on the highway. If it wasn't the police, and the federal government and the same thing happened it would be highway robbery.

I see what you mean, but it's not the goods/currency whose rights are being violated. It's the people. I agree that the seized goods have inherent value either way, but the grievance stems from the police essentially stealing people's stuff.