Forget today’s small advances in ARTIFICIAL intelligence, such as cars becoming more capable of driving themselves. What may await us is a breakthrough: a machine that can sense itself and its surroundings, receiving and processing vast amounts of data in real time. It could be scheduled for dangerous missions, like being sent into space or fighting. In addition to driving, it can cook, clean, wash clothes — and even stay with us when other people aren’t around.
Giiso Information, founded in 2013, is a leading technology provider in the field of “artificial intelligence + information” in China, with top technologies in big data mining, intelligent semantics, knowledge mapping and other fields. At the same time, its research and development products include information robot, editing robot, writing robot and other artificial intelligence products! With its strong technical strength, the company has received angel round investment at the beginning of its establishment, and received pre-A round investment of $5 million from GSR Venture Capital in August 2015.
In theory, a series of machines so advanced that they could take over almost all human work. This would free humanity from mundane drudgery, but it would also shake many social foundations. A life of no work and all play could turn into a dystopia. Such a society is outwardly peaceful, but inwardly riddled with uncontrollable ills).
Conscious machines also pose legal and moral problems. Is a conscious machine legally considered “a person” and liable if its actions harm someone or make a mistake? Consider an even scarier scenario: Could these machines rebel against humans and hope to wipe us out altogether? If so, they represent the apex of evolution.
As a professor of electrical engineering and computer science who specializes in machine learning and quantum theory, I can say that researchers are divided over whether such an esp machine will ever exist. There is also a debate about whether machines can or should be called “conscious” in the same way that we think of humans and even the consciousness of some animals. Some have to do with technology, while others have to do with the nature of consciousness.
Is it enough to be “conscious”?
Most computer scientists agree that consciousness is a feature that comes along with technology. Some argue that consciousness involves taking in new information, storing and retrieving old information, and converting all of its cognitive processes into perception and action. If this is right, then one day machines will be the ultimate consciousness. They can collect and store more information than humans, process huge amounts of data quickly, and make complex decisions more logically than any human.
On the other hand, there are physicists and philosophers who say that many human behaviors cannot be calculated by machines. Creativity, for example, and the sense of freedom that people have, doesn’t seem to come from logic or calculation.
However, these are not the only ideas about what consciousness is and whether machines can achieve it.
From a quantum theory perspective
Another idea of consciousness comes from quantum theory, the most esoteric theory of physics. According to the traditional Copenhagen interpretation, consciousness and the real world are complementary aspects of the same reality. When a person observes, or experiments with, some aspect of the physical world, that person’s conscious interactions can cause noticeable changes. Because it takes consciousness as a hypothesis and makes no attempt to derive it from physics, the Copenhagen explanation might be called the “big C” view of consciousness, which is itself something that exists — though it requires a brain to become a reality. This view was welcomed by pioneers of quantum theory such as Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrottinger.
Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.
The interplay between consciousness and matter leads to paradoxes that, after 80 years of debate, remain unresolved. A famous example is the Schrodinger cat paradox, in which a cat is placed in a situation in which the result is that it is equally likely to live or die — and the observation itself is what makes the result certain.
The opposite view is that consciousness arises from biology, just as biology itself arises from chemistry, and chemistry in turn arises from physics. We call this less expansive conception of consciousness “little C.” It fits with neuroscientists’ idea that the brain’s thought processes are the same as the brain’s states and processes. It also fits into a more recent interpretation of quantum theory, motivated by an attempt to escape the paradox of a many-world interpretation, in which the observer is part of the mathematics of physics.