lecture 1

Question 1

externalizing a piece of cognition

Abacus

Answer 1

o Earliest thinking tool
o Made by Sumerians to outsource mental processes
o This way we extend our mind and make it more powerful

Question 2

Mechanical Turk

Answer 2

First idea of machine being able to think

it was an illusion (dwarf in the machine)

Question 3

analytical engine

Answer 3

 Allowed you to write a computer program that would tell the machine to do mechanical operations
 Was never built bc they did not see practical use of the machine

Question 4

Ada lovelace

Answer 4

First person to actually write a specification to generate Bernoulli numbers

Question 5

turing machine

Answer 5

a machine that can handle all computable functions

the original idea of the turing machine is a machine that draws/erases 1s and 0s based on algorithms

Question 6

Boolean algebra

Answer 6

 mathematical implementation of logic

 proposition has a value of 1 = true, or 0 = false

Question 7

computational theory of mind

Answer 7

thinking consists of computations

reasoning can be thought of as realized (not caused by) in the brain

this leads to the computer metaphor “mental processes are to the brain what software is to hardware”

Question 8

turing test

Answer 8

when a compute cannot be distinguished from a human being, it passes the turing test and you have to conclude that the computer has consciousness

Question 9

strong AI thesis

Answer 9

we will eventually be able to build intelligent, conscious computers

WILL be conscious

Question 10

the Chinese room

Answer 10

John Searle

Argues against the strong AI thesis

Just executing the right computer program in itself cannot create consciousness

The turing machine does not and cannot think because it doesn’t know what it’s doing

syntaxis, not semantics

Question 11

strong AI
weak AI
artificial general intelligence (AGI)

Answer 11

• Strong AI
  AI WILL be conscious
• Weak AI
  AI is useful to study the mind
• Artificial general intelligence
  AI that is generic in its operation

Question 12

2 types of responses to Searle

Answer 12

1. There is something in the room (or the room itself) that has a rudimentary form of conscious thought
   a. There is something about the system/elements of the system that has conscious thought
2. The argument shows that the turing test is not reliable: a system can pass the turing test without conscious thought

Question 13

The psychology of the Chinese room

Answer 13

All commentaries focus on cognition, separated from affect/motivation/goals.

The consequence of that would be that if you were to build a computer with mental states and consciousness, you would have to find a way to make it feel things and motivate it.

Without affect, is thinking even possible?
o To ask the question ‘will computers ever be conscious?’ you have to ask the question ‘will computers ever have affect states?’.

Question 14

AI winter

Answer 14

 Period where nobody believes in AI anymore

Question 15

late 1990s AI spring and summer

Answer 15

1. computing power and memory had increased
2. Much more data became available

By training neural nets on these large amounts of data, AI suddenly became reality

Question 16

Process and product

Answer 16

 Products of AI can be indistinguishable from those of humans
 Though the process of creating this is different from humans

Question 17

Problem of other minds

Answer 17

How do we know other people have a mind like our own

Answer: their behavior is not just similar to ours, but generated in the same way as well.

Question 18

singularity

Answer 18

When AI becomes smarter than us, when AI can develop AI itself

This would lead to tremendous acceleration