Computers are conscious? (Ponder with oozyism), page 1

I'm not sure where you get the notion that somehow consciousness is "passed on" to people. What do you mean, passed on? For that matter, what do you mean by "conscious"? We throw that word around a lot, but what does it actually mean?

You *could* say that all matter is "conscious" to some degree, and that we humans experience it in a higher degree than, say, a rock. At least, we think we do. That sort of reasoning, however, is somewhat sterile and futile.

Alan Turing had an idea about how to test a computer for "intelligence", which may or may not be the same thing as consciousness. He said a computer could be considered "intelligent" if, in a test, you wouldn't be able to distinguish the computer's behavior from a human's. So, OK, you put the computer in one room, and a human in the other. Someone is connected to them using a keyboard (so the human has to type). The tester can ask questions about things, and then examine the answers. If the tester is unable to tell which is the computer, then you can say the computer is "intelligent".

The computer would have to be programmed to mimic the behavior of a human, of course. So, when asked a math question, it might hesitate, take a certain amount of time to give the answer, sometimes get it wrong, and so on.

The computer would have problems handling natural language. This is getting better, but we're not there yet. It would tend to flounder around if there were ambiguous questions or sequences of questions. Humans would be perfectly able to know what you were asking, but the computer often wouldn't. For instance:

Q: What is the 'soup du jour'
A. That's the soup of the day.
Q. Yes, but what is it?
A. It's Thursday.

Here the computer missed the intent of the question, was to ask what soup was available, not to define 'soup du jour'. Then it misunderstood what 'it' referred to, offering the name of the day instead of the name of the soup for the day.

You can program around such problems, but it is very difficult to foresee all such ambiguities and plan or them. Language just has too many surprises, and we're so used to the quirks we don't even think of them.

There are some programs that give the appearance of consciousness or intelligence. My favorite is Eliza, which is supposed to act as a sort of computer therapist (not actually used in therapy, but only as a demonstration of the concept). Eliza sounds convincing in the short run. As you talk to it, it asks you questions based on what you said. It sometimes asks something that sounds intelligent or important. However, it's just repeating your own words, with profound-sounding questions.

> Hello, I am Eliza.
* Hello.
> How are you today.. What would you like to discuss?
* Conspiracies
> Tell me more...
* Why? Are you one of them?
> Why are you interested in whether or not I am one of them?
* Because if you're one of them, then you will try to brainwash me.
> Does it please you to believe I am one of them, then I will try to brainwash you?
* No, it's very scary.
> Are you saying no just to be negative?

Already it misunderstood the 'no', as my being negative. A human would probably last longer before you decided they were a computer.

The important thing here is that Eliza is a program specifically designed to mimic the behavior of a human being. The program was intended to mimic a conscious being. You can actually download this program and run it on your own computer. How cool is that?

I don't see that this program passes the Turing Test. I don't see it as "conscious" or "intelligent". Then again, I don't know a good definition of either of those words.

But let's say that Eliza is actually conscious or intelligent. The next question is, *what* is conscious? The program, or the machine? Well, the machine does nothing without the program, is not "conscious" in any sense of the word. So, is it the program?

If that is the case, what is the program? Is it what's on the disk, or is it the code used to make the file on the disk? Where, exactly, is Eliza? What is it?

Are we, perhaps, each a sort of intelligent program, running on our human body hardware? If so, then we must have been programmed by Microsoft, that's all I can say.

But seriously, I think that we need to really get a much better idea of what it means to be "conscious", before we can say whether a computer could be.