ROBOTS 121
and to give meaning and structure to their "lives," or else they will find
themselves paralyzed with infinite possibilities.
ARE THEY CONSCIOUS?
There is no universal consensus as to whether machines can be conscious, or even a consensus as to what consciousness means. No one
has come up with a suitable definition of consciousness.
Marvin Minsky describes consciousness as more of a "society of
minds," that is, the thinking process in our brain is not localized but
spread out, with different centers competing with one another at any
given time. Consciousness may then be viewed as a sequence of
thoughts and images issuing from these different, smaller "minds,"
each one grabbing and competing for our attention.
If this is true, perhaps "consciousness" has been overblown, perhaps there have been too many papers devoted to a subject that has
been overmystified by philosophers and psychologists. Maybe defining
consciousness is not so hard. As Sydney Brenner of the Salk Institute
in La Jolla says, "I predict that by 2020-the year of good vision-consciousness will have disappeared as a scientific problem
Our successors will be amazed by the amount of scientific rubbish discussed
today-that is, if they have the patience to trawl through the electronic
archives of obsolete journals."
AI research has been suffering from "physics envy," according to
Marvin Minsky. In physics the holy grail has been to find a simple
equation that will unify the physical forces of the universe into a single theory, creating a "theory of everything." AI researchers, overly influenced by this idea, have tried to find a single paradigm that would
explain consciousness. But such a simple paradigm may not exist, according to Minsky.
(Those in the "constructionist" school, like myself, believe that instead of endlessly debating whether thinking machines can be created
or not, one should instead try to build one. Regarding consciousness,
there is probably a continuum of consciousness, from a lowly thermo-
and to give meaning and structure to their "lives," or else they will find
themselves paralyzed with infinite possibilities.
ARE THEY CONSCIOUS?
There is no universal consensus as to whether machines can be conscious, or even a consensus as to what consciousness means. No one
has come up with a suitable definition of consciousness.
Marvin Minsky describes consciousness as more of a "society of
minds," that is, the thinking process in our brain is not localized but
spread out, with different centers competing with one another at any
given time. Consciousness may then be viewed as a sequence of
thoughts and images issuing from these different, smaller "minds,"
each one grabbing and competing for our attention.
If this is true, perhaps "consciousness" has been overblown, perhaps there have been too many papers devoted to a subject that has
been overmystified by philosophers and psychologists. Maybe defining
consciousness is not so hard. As Sydney Brenner of the Salk Institute
in La Jolla says, "I predict that by 2020-the year of good vision-consciousness will have disappeared as a scientific problem
Our successors will be amazed by the amount of scientific rubbish discussed
today-that is, if they have the patience to trawl through the electronic
archives of obsolete journals."
AI research has been suffering from "physics envy," according to
Marvin Minsky. In physics the holy grail has been to find a simple
equation that will unify the physical forces of the universe into a single theory, creating a "theory of everything." AI researchers, overly influenced by this idea, have tried to find a single paradigm that would
explain consciousness. But such a simple paradigm may not exist, according to Minsky.
(Those in the "constructionist" school, like myself, believe that instead of endlessly debating whether thinking machines can be created
or not, one should instead try to build one. Regarding consciousness,
there is probably a continuum of consciousness, from a lowly thermo-