The Future of Artificial Intelligence: Can machines become sentient (self-aware)

We still cannot fly. We had to change the meaning of "fly" to something that we can do, before we were able to fly. In the old sense, flying the way birds do it - we cannot do that.Can we change the meaning of "sentience" to something that computers can do? Presumably we can, if we find that useful.Let me respond in the form of a few questions:
1: Could we, in principle, build an artificially sentient system?
My answer - yes, sure. I don't see anything magical going on.2: Is that principle computation?
My answer - no. I might be part of a small minority there, though I sometimes suspect that the majority of mathematicians and computer scientists are actually very skeptical of AI but choose not to engage in the public debates.3: Is that principle intentionality (the issue that John Searle attempted to raise in his "Chinese Room" argument).
My answer - no, though that might at least vaguely point in the right direction. With the last two answers, I am probably a minority of one.4: Is it even worth doing?
My answer - no. If it were easy to do, it would be worth doing for what we would learn in the attempt. However, it is going to turn out to be very hard, perhaps prohibitively hard. So there is no real payoff for building an artificially sentient being. Beside, the old fashioned way is more fun. I have at least given a bit more detail of my thinking above.AI, as currently done, is mostly an attempt to automate epistemology (the "theory of knowledge" from philosophy).
Epistemology is mostly nonsense.

On top of that, these connections can change over time so that some patterns are reinforced while others atrophy. Neurons themselves can change the threshold needed for them to fire. The brain physically adapts to input. If we are going to copy the human brain for AI then we need a system that can physically change over time in response to input.One interesting system is the field-programmable gate array. This processor allows the programmer to change the actual wiring in the chip. You can actually evolve functional arrays through randomly changing the connections and selecting for functions.

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Dr. Adrian Thompson has exploited this device, in conjunction with the principles of evolution, to produce a prototype voice-recognition circuit that can distinguish between and respond to spoken commands using only 37 logic gates - a task that would have been considered impossible for any human engineer. He generated random bit strings of 0s and 1s and used them as configurations for the FPGA, selecting the fittest individuals from each generation, reproducing and randomly mutating them, swapping sections of their code and passing them on to another round of selection. His goal was to evolve a device that could at first discriminate between tones of different frequencies (1 and 10 kilohertz), then distinguish between the spoken words "go" and "stop".

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This aim was achieved within 3000 generations, but the success was even greater than had been anticipated. The evolved system uses far fewer cells than anything a human engineer could have designed, and it does not even need the most critical component of human-built systems - a clock. How does it work? Thompson has no idea, though he has traced the input signal through a complex arrangement of feedback loops within the evolved circuit. In fact, out of the 37 logic gates the final product uses, five of them are not even connected to the rest of the circuit in any way - yet if their power supply is removed, the circuit stops working. It seems that evolution has exploited some subtle electromagnetic effect of these cells to come up with its solution, yet the exact workings of the complex and intricate evolved structure remain a mystery (Davidson 1997).
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This type of set up has always intrigued me. It even seems to have analogy-like features: "In fact, out of the 37 logic gates the final product uses, five of them are not even connected to the rest of the circuit in any way - yet if their power supply is removed, the circuit stops working. It seems that evolution has exploited some subtle electromagnetic effect of these cells to come up with its solution,".

All well and good, but I wasn't saying we didn't agree on what sort of sentience we're discussing. Having agreed that we're talking about human-level sentience, we still have no idea how this comes about. how can we know whether we'll be able to artificially reproduce it when we don't know how or why it happens naturally?

Which is kind of the point I was trying to make. When a human refuses to do something based on self-interest, or for any other reason for that matter, there's no reason to assume this isn't simply a deterministic product of the wiring of our brains.

Ok, I accept the argument that it would prohibitively difficult (though not impossible) to accomplish this feat in the near future (say 20-50 years down the road given our current technological and political status). However, let's say we did create a human-like sentient machine 50 years down the road. How do you think this would play into our idea about religion and morality?I am curious about this on a religious level.
If a machine could make independent, rational and sometimes moral decisions, would Christian’s and other religious people think that these sentient machines would need to be saved? Would they think they are capable or worthy of being saved?
Would they think they are moral agents or just imitations of God's creation by disobedient humans?Thought this would be interesting discussion as well.

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One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. - Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." - Carl Sagan"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

Good answer. I am curious to wonder if our level sentience is a natural byproduct of evolution and how common it is. Considering we only know about life on this planet this is currently an unanswerable question. However, the question arises, if other species i.e. dolphins, elephants, etc were able to evolve without the impedement of human beings, would it be natural for them to evolve a more sentient level of cognition?Also, can we develop a machine mind that mimics the natural evolution of the biological mind. If so than this may be the key process that will help synthesize a human-like sentient machine mind. Who knows but it is an interesting discussion.

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One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. - Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." - Carl Sagan"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

There would be a lot of anger from the religious right, perhaps even an attempt to assassinate the scientists involved. It would call into question their idea of a spiritual soul.Beyond that, it gets pretty hard to guess what would result.

Which big word did you not understand (or bother to look up)? Also your name catsci isn't listed over at the gameknot.com chess site.Edited by CosmicChimp, : clarity

You realise that this, like neural nets, can achieve exactly nothing that conventional hardware can't, right?

What's a recursive simulaion? What makes a complex system 'very highly resolved'? What are the subunits? How are they 'combined'? Where does the criteria for improvement come from?I don't know shit about this shit Okay, I did a quick google on "recursive simulation" and found:

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Recursive simulation involves a simulation, or an entity in the simulation, creating another instance of the same simulation, running it and using its results.

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How's that work? Do they "layer" the simulations or are they more like "side by side"? I took one computer science course and just hated it. On top of that, my stuff never compiled well They musta ousted me from lack of participation.I guess I'll make another one. But I didn't like getting my ass handed to me in chess. Also, I've been playing this goofy brower based RPG. Although, the good thing about those chess games is that the timeframe is all up to yourself.

The part that interests me is the ability to rewire the processor on the go. This is something the brain does as well. As far as I know the CPU in your standard home PC does not do this.

Yes, it is. That's just my opinion, of course. It is actually a controversial issue. Some people believe it is an epiphenomenom (a mere side effect of no practical use). That's a lot harder to say. We can't even compare two humans, so how could we compare a human and a whale? IMO, sentience is not an end in itself. Rather, it is part of the way we function. What is distinct about humans, say compared to elephants, is the extent to which we form large interactive social groups. A substantial part of our cognitive abilities are a component of that social adaptation.

Seems to me like you'd need the sentience to form the sufficient social grouping and visa versa. A catch-22.But once the ball started rolling, they'd feed off each other and you'd get the snowball effect that we seem to be the result of.

I agree that sentience is a by-product of evolution of the brain however I do think self-awareness definately has an effect on our own evolution both past and present. Without sentience we would have no science/culture/etc. True. It is a very subjective and hard to grasp concept. Agreed. Ake 'culture' though some higher intelligent animals have some rudimentary forms of this. Basically accumulated extrasomatic knowledge passed down from generation to generation.

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One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. - Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." - Carl Sagan"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World