stay with me bright eyes

Ngaw, made for each other.

skarter boongs

Punched in the face by angry abbo guy.

"oh uh, how do you spell observatory again? I forgot."

This is where I spend my Sunday afternoons now, as well as other random days of the week when I feel like it.

The Nature of Robots in Relation to Understanding and Intelligence

In this essay, I will first attempt to clarify what understanding and intelligence is, that is, what is the criteria for something to be intelligent and possess understanding. Then, I will argue that robots can never have capabilities of understanding and intelligence by showing clear distinctions between those that are known to have posession of both, or of one or the other, and those which do not. Also, I will investigate Searle’s ‘Chinese Room’ thought experiment, and how I believe it holds true for Weak AI, and thereby not genuinely posess intelligence or understanding.

To be intelligent is to be posessive in the faculty of thought and reason. To be understanding, likewise is said to have intelligence as a prerequisite and thereby comprehend the matter at hand. So what of these two accepted lingual representations? Just how does a robot display these qualities? A robot will of course be able to analyse and interpret information that it is given, and in following that logic, whereby it has demonstrated that, it does indeed seem to be posessive of those qualities, hence, it posesses understanding and intelligence. This seems too shallow for me, and so I will further persue the issue with “genuine”. Does it, by analysing and interpreting information display genuine understanding and intelligence? By genuine, I speak of posession by an innate nature, not posession by which it has simply been ascribed to externally, and that it must extensively demonstrate those qualities with flexibility and ease. Now that I have setup the basis of investigation, I will now move onto why it can’t posess those qualities.

It is commonly said that humans posess intelligence and understanding. So common, that here I will use it as an axiom, to describe the essences and compare what robots seem to or do lack, in terms of understanding and intelligence.

To compare understanding, I will assume that in order to demonstrate comprehension of ideas and information, there needs to be some form of engagement or response that is closely related to that idea or peice of information. In saying that, let us imagine that I say to my friend “I really wish I could fly to the Moon” and he responds with “ Yeah, me too”. This will be the basis on which I think demonstrated an understanding. Now, consider the responses of a robot, and for the sake of the argument, has had every possible response that has keywords “wish, moon” and “fly” programed into it, so that it is able to form intelligent ( assume first that it is capable of both faculties) responses. Does this indicate a genuine understanding of what I said? To observants, yes, the robot would seem to have completely and genuinely understood my statement and responded intelligibly and appropriately. Were I to recieve the same response from my friend as with the robot, then clearly it should posess a genuine understanding. However, let us now consider this. Does the robot actually want to as well? Did it really know of the implications of exclaiming such a statement in return? So, then if maybe one day it did, could it have acknowledged that want as satiated? I think not.But then I would recieve such objections like: “Because you have said intelligence was a prerequsite of understanding, then therefore in assuming it understands, it is also reasonable and capable of thought. Hence, the robot is able to think of what it means to want that, and display some acknowledgement of the feat.” To this, I would still ask, does it actually want to? But if we were to assume that it has thought about flying to the moon and thinks that yes, it does want it, then I conclude that the root of the problem lies within posession of intelligence. However, I still think this provides insight into the very subtle differences in ‘true’ understanding and ‘simulated’ understanding between parties, that is, acknowledgement of circumstances and implications and responding appropriately to those, therefore strengthening the need for intelligence as a prerequisite.

In taking a look at the ‘Chinese Room’, Searle’s argument lies within the boundaries that syntax is not sufficient for semantics, and hence a robot ( by which I will say is the system of software and its hardware parts ) can’t understand. The Chinese Room describes a situation of where Searle is able to translate Chinese into English via a set of instructions of which he does understand and uses it to manipulate those Chinese characters. He sits in an isolated room of which the only forms of communication is done via Chinese in the form of slips of paper. He concludes that the room does not understand Chinese ( even though it shows extensive and flexible capability in manipulation of characters) because he himself cannot understand. However, I think it is plausible to think that the room should display understanding just as how a sentence or this essay displays deeper understanding of knownledge whereas Searle, simply a part of the room, likewise a single character or word, does not complete the picture. My point is that, it should be irrelevant whether Searle himself understands,because a character is unable to give understanding by itself also.

Now I will like to take a look into posession of intelligence. A robot as was described earlier as software and hardware, posesses qualities that can be recognised when looking upon it as a whole. It seems ridiculous to say the hardware components posess any sort of mental state without the presence of software so I will limit my argument towards the software side.

Software as we know are a set of rules/numbers of which the hardware parts manipulate to form other recognised rules/numbers which allow a robot to function. I will now choose to relate this back to the Chinese Room. Each number, 0 or 1 is meaningless by itself, just as a single squiggle is meaningles to Searle and his instructions. So by taking this into account, the view that ‘the room’ holds understanding even though he could not, remains true, and that it seems ill conceived that because he, the physical entity – likewise hardware, likewise singular characters – does not understand, the system does not. So the system does have understanding and in consequence, intelligence. However, I would not go so far as to say it displays genuine attributes. The system is simply mocking something that is far more complex and extensive, and in posession of the faculty of learning whereas the system does not. I believe that it is in that distinction, the capability of adapability that seperates genuine intelligence from simulated, and thus consequently, genuine understanding.

In conclusion, a robot may display intelligence and understanding, only so far that it is simply simulated and programed to do so. It cannot genuinely have such faculties due to its reliance of being limited by instructions and incapablility of learning. But, were a robot built to be have every faculty of a human, how then can we still distinguish between them and us? ( apart from obvious physical differences).

we're going out tonight

SOME STUFF I ATE TODAY

In the past 15 hours I've consumed:

- Bowl of Light n Tasty Triple Berry cereal
- Bowl of noodles

- Cup of strawberry milk

- Generic chocolate-covered-vanilla-ice-cream block

... In conclusion, not a lot.

IN IT.

i wish i thought of this

"it seems simple - but if you don't have structure then no matter how good your points are you aren't going to get a band 6 for your essay

structure your paragraphs like this:

S- statement/topic sentence

E- evidence

X- explanation

Y- why? why did you include this point - link back to the question"

Taken off someone off Bored of Studies.