Friday, January 24, 2014
It's All About the Know-how. I Think.
Building on yesterday's excellent discussion, and remembering, always, the importance of holding ways of knowing to only their own standards of proof, let's consider for Tuesday what it means to think. We do it all the time, and even actively work at doing it in new ways, but I wonder both if it's necessary to know how to think and whether or not we can explain what it is we're doing when we think. Consider first, please, this article on the abject failure of A.I. Then read about one person's determination in the fight to progress. My Knowledge Question: to what extent is it necessary to know how to do something to be able to perform the action? Please answer that from the perspective of each article and extract your own KQ from each article. This writing (focused and mechanically sound) is due Monday at 9:30pm.
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To know, to some extent, is the ability to perform its self. It all depends on defining for the specific knower, what exactly it is they perceive from the performance or execution of any given knowledge. From Auerbach's point of view, just because a computer can perform, it does not necessarily have the same definition as a human knowledge to do so. Auerbach contemplates another factor to the knower, and their ability to perform what they know. However, to define both the words "know" and "perform," one will find that the two in fact go hand in hand:
ReplyDeleteKnow:
(1) to have (information of some kind) in your mind
(2) to understand (something) : to have a clear and complete idea of (something)
(3) to have learned (something, as a skill or a language)
Perform:
(1) to do an action or activity that usually requires training or skill
(Merriam Webster Dictionary)
Looking at the last two definitions of "know" and "perform," brings in the concept that Hofstadter dove into. If knowing and performing are to be taught and to learn to do, then there is no outside factor that separates human and technological knowing--because technically humans teach computers what they know, resulting in both knowers, knowing the same information.
On the other hand, returning to Auerbach's theory, one may consider that outside factor--the first definition of "know." "To have (information of some kind) in your mind," demonstrates the separating factor that mind in human terms and mind in nonhuman terms is a different form of knowledge. This I believe is the idea of will and conscience: human minds posses these elements naturally and subconsciously, while computers must be taught if they will ever be able to perform such ideas.
KQ1: To what extent must we look at knowledge in different knowers separately, to conclude that the knowledge is the same?
KQ2: To what extent does the knower effect the definition and range of ability, of the knowledge they have?
I think there is a clear cut difference between knowing how to do something and actually being able to executing an action. One may argue however that in order to perform an action one has to know how to do it. However consider the simple action of breathing. We are constantly doing it often not even realizing or thinking about it. As soon as we are born we start breathing. But not because we simply open our mouths to inhale or exhale means we know how the respiration process occurs. This is similar to the perspective of David Auerbach in his article about the thinking process. We think all the time but never actually stop or concern ourselves about the actually process of thinking.
ReplyDeleteWith these in mind, I don't think it is very important to know how to do something. In fact there are many things including the ones mentioned prior that we do without necessarily knowing how to do it. Reasoning from Douglas Hofstadter’s perspective in his article when we understand how to do something we are in a position to better execute it. Thus, it is quite important to understand certain processes that we perhaps passively do. In a more practical example let us consider writing; the simple action of placing pen on paper and moving it. When I started the process about 15 years ago, I held my pencil with my entire hand instead of placing my fingers in key areas to get a good grip of the pencil and control it. Though I was not doing it the ‘right’ way, the fact still remains that I was doing it. I was placing pencil on paper to created lines. The fact that I was already doing it did not necessarily mean that I should not learn how to do it in a more effective way, but I was doing it. This shows that knowledge about something is not necessarily important to carry out the action.
My knowledge question from the first article by Douglas Hofstadter is: What determines whether a certain area of knowledge is necessary or not?
My knowledge question from the second article by David Auerbach is: How can knowledge cloud our perceptions of reality?
From the perspective of David Auerbach, it is not necessarily important to know how to do something to be able to perform it. When speaking of computers who have the ability to think and perform actions just as humans do, he only speaks of their ability to carry out that action. He does not seemed to be bothered by the question of whether or not the computer understands what it is doing. He explains that he believes that there is a difference between everyone’s perspectives on the meaning of ‘artificial intelligence.’ For him, artificial intelligence seems to entail nothing but the doing of the action. Auerbach dreams of a computer that carries out a task at hand with knowledge of what it is really doing. Yet he believes that because the computer is carrying out the task, it is thinking about what it is doing. The fact that the work is being done by an inanimate object is incredible on it’s own, and its understanding of what it is doing is irrelevant to the concept of thought.
ReplyDeleteKQ: Does an action provoke any form of self-knowledge or any knowledge at all?
From the perspective of Douglas Hofstadter, understanding is everything in designing a computer that needs to be ‘thinking.’ Hofstadter believes that if the computer is unaware of the actions he is performing, it is not thinking in the way that we wish it to think; it is merely programmed a certain way to carry out its job. Hofstadter wants to work to find a way to have computers understand exactly what they are doing and why. He believes tat they will be thinking when they can chose what action is necessary at any given time without any assistance. To Hofstadter, this qualifies as thinking. He does not believe that simply performing a task is thinking, it is only something that you have bee taught to do.
KQ: How does one draw the line between one’s understanding of something and one’s belief that was forced upon him?
The Abject failure of A.I.
ReplyDeleteAccording to this first article, it’s not at all necessary to know how to do something as long as you can achieve the desired result. Artificial Intelligence computers and research have taken the path that creates a processer with an extremely fast processing speed, but doesn’t unveil the mysteries of the human mind. It produces a lot of money and has helped the human race leap forward to our goal of knowing everything, but it has strayed away from what was once the real purpose of artificial intelligence; to figure out how humans think, conceptualize, and make connections in a way unique to our species (maybe). So basically we can perform actions without knowing how to do them, but that’s kind of like taking a shortcut through a dark, dank cellar and missing out on the wealth of knowledge that lies the long way around.
The Fight to Progress
The other article makes a similar point. Hofstadter’s ideas behind discovering artificial intelligence were to use a kind of trial and error method to discover the ways we think and make connections. His theories and research have produced, and even kick started, the same results that typical A.I machinery such as Google use today. However, where the end goal for Google was to create the super-processer, the end goal for Hofstadter is to use the results to discover the process. Therefore I took the same conclusion from both articles; we don’t have to know how to do something to perform an action, but we can use our actions to work backwards and discover the process, which in the end yields more wisdom anyway.
KQ 1: Does knowledge lie in the results or in the process?
KQ 2: What is it about human knowledge that makes it specific to humans?
“To what extent is it necessary to know how to do something to be able to perform the action?”
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I would like to state my definition of “think” or what it means to “think”. In my opinion thinking can be defined as deeply and analytically pondering on every aspect of a particular situation.
For the first article, the abject failure of A.I, David Auerbach a writer and software engineer highlighted the knowledge on computers and their artificial intelligence to perform functions. Throughout the article he depicted that computers do not necessarily think about what they are doing, but their artificial intelligence given to them by man enables them to carry out many functions beyond human knowledge. In regards to the knowledge question, even though computers don't necessarily think about what they are doing, by artificial intelligence they still know what they are doing. In other words, the intelligence given to them by man, enables them to know whether artificially or not how to carry out specified tasks. Artificial intelligence enables computers to know how to solve problems without them having to thing about it. So it is to a very large extent that it is necessary to know how to do something to be able to perform it. If the knowledge question was to be reconstructed perhaps to say “To what extent is it necessary to think about something you know how to do to increase the efficiency at which it is done (KQ)?” maybe my perspective on artificial intelligence would change, because it would evolve from knowing how to do something to putting thought into something you know how to do to increase or develop independently new methods of carrying out tasks.
For the second reading, I chose the article entitled Why is the American Dream Dead in the South? This article referred to the” American dream” in the perspective of Matthew O'brien as the upward mobility of people living in poverty in the United States. Interestingly, On Sunday I attended a diversity summit where inequality due to the lack of upward mobility and classism in the United States was the theme. The article stated that upward mobility was mainly hindered because of race, segregation, inequality, family structure and social capital. Also based on the fact, that there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, causing there to be the very rich who have so much money that at times they don't know what to spend it on, and the very poor that does not have enough money to provide for themselves. Based on the knowledge question, in this case I also do think to a very large extent that is necessary to know how to do something before taking action. In this case, the statistics show exactly why inequality in upward mobility exits, this knowledge can cause many individuals to look into their situations, try to solve them or gain help to increase their upward mobility. Also the knowledge provided in the article also gives individuals who may not be deeply affected by upward mobility knowledge that pursuades them to form programs to rally for upward mobility. As positive as this sounds, many people have chosen to ignore this knowledge which causes upward mobility to still be a very dominant issue in America. Therefor my knowledge question for this article is; “To what extent can your thoughts or knowledge hinder you from being able to take action?”
To be able to answer the question, I think that I need to rephrase the knowledge question: To what extent is it necessary to understand how to do something to be able to perform the action?
ReplyDeleteTo answer the knowledge question from the perspective of the first article about how AI grew up and left home: One does not need to understand how to do an action before being able to perform it. For example, mathematical formulas are used but they are not necessarily understood.
My knowledge question from this article is: How can subsymbolic apply to all the areas of knowledge?
To answer the knowledge question from the perspective of the second article: It is nearly impossible for one to not know how to do an action to be able to perform it. Hofstadter has been trying it for years, without success. There is still difference between real thinking and representative thinking.
My knowledge question: what is the limit to artificial thinking (i.e., what can real thinking do that artificial thinking cannot?)
Well, thinking is just thinking to me. I don’t really feel that there is a need to know how or why we think. It is just something that happens. Its not necessary to know how to think because thinking come naturally. It is a natural thing that human do. We do it subconsciously and consciously. You can't explain what it is we are doing when we are thinking because the answer to that is that we are simply just thinking. Maybe there is some chemical wonder that happens when we think but, is that really needed to know that we think? I think that as long as we know that we have thoughts, and ideas and that we think then I don’t see a reason to explore the idea of thinking when just the thought thinking and why think is so complex and almost impossible to understand. The human brain is one the most complex, confusing, abstract part of the human body, so trying to understand what it does and why is so far fetched. I mean, somethings are just not meant to be understood and I think the brain, which hold thought is one of them.
ReplyDeleteThe articles really got me to think about robots and how were are kind of really asking them to take over the world. Maybe I watch too many movies but, it all just seems to likely. We are going to find a way to make computer think like we do, and at first we will think its great; finally we had found the answer. However, is human have a mind of their own, and we made machines to do the same, then the machines will have minds of their own. Right? So, when this happens well want all the machines to go away because they will become technologically advance and then we will think machines shouldn’t have minds of their own; they should not be superior to us. Well, too bad because it will too late by then. Machines would have taken over the world. Now, I don’t want to seem like an oppressor for the advancement of artificial intelligence but, I think that science is going to far when it comes to thinking and the articles show this. I mean one guy has basically dedicated his life to making sure computers or some machine thinks like a human (and thats great for him). For me that seems a bit too much. The articles go on about finding the source in our brain that tells us to think or hold the thinking key. Why can’t we just think to think? Why does there have to be a logical answer for everything that happens in the world? Artificial intelligence could be the death of humans or could be the advancement of humans but, I think that this game to find the answer is too much of a gamble.
KQ1: How can knowing how to think affect our knowledge on the world?
KQ2: To what degree can knowledge about knowledge help or condemn the human race?
David Auerbach’s perspective, in the first article, is that it is not necessary to know how to do something in order to perform the action. He brings up the interesting point of artificial intelligence in the form of computers. Computers, with their ability to provide information quickly and from sources all around the world, the process of thinking, in a way, is distorted. He states, “Without the drive toward concrete environmental goals, representation of knowledge in a computer is meaningless, and fruitless. It remains locked in the realm of data”. Computers make connections for us, they make it easy to just search up, ‘when did Abraham Lincoln die?’, and they give us the answer; but we haven’t actually taken the time to research this ourselves and find our own sources, we haven’t read about it and made connections to other things and formed our own thoughts and ideas. All we have is that date that he died. This is the same for the fact that they computers are programmed to do what they do; they don’t actually think about it. Computers have helped society advance, but from David Auerbach’s point of view, they have made is easy to not know how to do something in order to do it.
ReplyDeleteKQ - to what extent does the representation of knowledge affect the the process of the knower’s thought about said knowledge?
Douglas Hofstadter brings up a similar concern. He, like Auerbach, agrees that computers that are just programmed in order to complete something without actually thinking about what its doing, is what society needs to steer away. However, he does have hope for artificial intelligence with the use of computers. Hofstadter is working to design a computer that actually knows how to think. He thinks that there could be a way for computers to understand the things that they are doing and why, and this is how they will think. So they will be knowing how to do somethings to perform an action. Hofstadter wants to prevent the increasing use and development of computer searches and quick processing that eliminate the process of thinking. Both articles express concern over the computer and the role it plays in human thought, understanding, and action.
KQ - to what extent is the knower affected by the purpose of intention of the knowledge?
Our entire focus of TOK is how to think and ways we can use it to our advantage. I find this discussion point very interesting. For most the time I think, I’m not consciously making the decision to think. The fact that our brains can think on their own is an amazing fact to dwell on. I don’t personally think that we need to “know” how to think. Our understanding of knowledge seems to convey that we do. When we use language, we think in terms of words and phrases. I do, however, think that we can easily think without language. When humans are infants, not yet able to speak, they are still processing and taking in information of the world around them without conscious thought (so we think). It’s only natural that we use our brains to think. An essential example of this would be human emotions. For instance, when a person stubs their toe, they simply react, thinking that their toe now hurts. That person did not have to go through a process of actively deciding to think their toe hurts. This can be seen with many emotions and feelings such as hunger and pain.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading the article about the failure of A.I , I found an interesting perspective on technologies “thoughts”, or lack of them. Our society is very advanced in technology, but we still cannot figure out how to make it think on its own. This evidently leads us to believe that we don’t even understand our own thought.
In the second article we read, The Man Who Would Teach Machines how to think, a similar perspective is brought up. Hofstadter thinks that for a computer to think, it must be able to do this on its own, unprompted. I agree with this point. To think is to make your own thoughts and decisions. I’m torn between the two articles a bit in theory. While I believe that we can think on our own, I also believe that to create our own thoughts, we must do it consciously (besides natural behaviors and emotions).
Knowledge Question 1: To what extent does our consciousness of thinking affect our knowledge?
Knowledge Question 2: Will technology in the future affect the knower’s knowledge and understanding of thinking?
The abject failure of A.I.
ReplyDeleteIn this article, it basically talks about the development of the artificial intelligence and the obstacles people have faced during the process. It is said that in the 1940s and 1950s, artificial intelligence seemed to a viable field, “researchers turned to formal symbolic processes”. The researchers started a brand new field just because of an inkling of possibility of artificial intelligence. Through that process, there were numerous problems came out, such as the inaccuracy of the Cyc Project. Although at the beginning, the project had a lot of loopholes and was really far away from its goal of being an “expert system”, it improved over time gradually. From this example, I think that it is not necessary to know something thoroughly before you try it. It is definitely feasible to start to perform the action only with a little bit of understanding and make corrections through the process.
KQ: How do people collect knowledge from mistakes?
The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think
This article is mainly about the life of Douglas Hofstadter, who is “the men who would teach machines to think”. There are a lot of information about how Hofstadter is as a person or as a scholar. Like all the other people who work on artificial intelligence, Hofstadter always corrects himself and changes his ways of approaching the goal of creating machines with human consciousness. Once again, Hofstadter did not know much about A.I. when he first started to study it. Through the process, he ceasely learns more. This also shows that it is not necessary to know how to do something thoroughly before putting it into action. When one is in the process of achieving a goal, he or she can learn more and have a broader vision things than people who limit themselves in prior plans or mindsets. Hofstadter raised a lot of unconventional ideas and belief, which is resulted from his open-mindedness. These are not originated from what had known before he started his career in A.I. Such amazing things came out when people don’t have much knowledge before performing the action. It is further supported that it is mostly unnecessary to know how to do something to perform the action.
KQ: To what extent can a person’s personal life and character affect his or her works?
In the perspective of David Auerbachs article, “A.I. Has Grown Up and Left Home”, answers the question “To what extent is it necessary to know how to do something to be able to perform the action?” by saying one does not have to know how to do an action thoroughly before preforming it. Auerbachs article talks about Artificial Intelligence and its relation to computers. Computers are products of the human brain. Humans have programmed them to complete tasks, access information’s, and hold knowledge. Essentially, a computer, or any type of technology nowadays is another version of the human brain, but on repeat. Thus, a computer does not necessarily understand why it is researching, accessing, or shutting down, however it knows how to do it, and so it does. This shows that in the perspective of Auerbach, one does not need to know how to do something in order to preform the action it is being asked, it simply preforms.
ReplyDeleteThe knowledge question I can extract from this article is: When using artificial knowledge, to what extent is on gathering knowledge or using knowledge if they do not understand why there are doing a specific action?
Similarly to Auerbachs perspective, Hofstadter agrees that one does not need to know how to preform an action simply to preform it. However, he does believe that technology should be able to have that ability. “A Google that knows, in the way a human would know, what you really mean when you search for something.” this is Hofstadter’s vision- a machine that knows the human mind and understands the action it is preforming. It is interesting to me that he does not believe that humans need to know the action they are preforming, whilst developing a computer that thinks. This reminds me of a new movie that has come out, “Her”. (Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4) Essentially, in a world, very similar to ours, the first every A.I device has been developed. It knows you and everything about you, but can also talk to you. The main character ends up falling in love with this machine. The main point is that there is a machine that reminded me of what Hofstadter is talking about. It is very interesting to think about a device that not only does, but also knows. Then I think about a world were computers would know more then humans, but the twist would be that they would know not only more, but just as much, so essentially humans would have no power of machines. The knowledge question I have extracted from this article is: To what extent is it possible to create something that understands without understanding yourself?
Based on the articles I read, there are different answers to this question. To know how to do something so that one is able to perform the same action, depending on one’s take on the situation, could be completely necessary or could have minimal significance.
ReplyDeleteIn Auerbach’s article, he has made a significant point which was that we as humans, think all the time without realizing that we are thinking and without attempting to understand how our process of thinking occurs. From what I was able to understand from this article is that it is in our nature to think; we constantly have ideas streaming through our mind, but how those thoughts get there, how we use those thoughts, and how we decide to execute the knowledge we have repeatedly ingrained in our mind is beyond our understanding. Auerbach provides the viewpoint that clearly explains one does not need to know how to do something in order to be able to do that specific “thing”. His main source of proof for this idea is that we do not know what it means to think, we (so far in the scientific world) have not learned what it means to think. Thinking is a concept well out of our understanding and or grasp in today’s society where people cannot explain what thinking actually means and how it occurs.
KQ: To what extent can a knower’s understanding of thinking and the process thereof, affect the knowledge which he/she knows.
In some ways, Hofstadter agrees with Auerbach in that he too believes that we as humans, in general, do not understand thinking and understanding and their processes. However, he has faith in this idea of artificial intelligence which he feels will prevail eventually with the help of technology. However, he also believes that in order to make a computer be able to think, it must be able to do this on its own without being programmed too, it must be able to think on its own as a reaction in some ways. I believe, that Hofstader would also agree that knowing how to do something is not exactly the most important aspect in being able to conduct the action, but, I do think that he would agree that such knowledge and understanding would be very beneficial. Therefore, he is extremely intrigued in understanding how we as humans can understand, and looks to computers to help us understand how we can make something else think, and ultimately understand why we think.
KQ: How can a knower spark thought (and or artificial intelligence) in something that is not naturally inclined to think? How can knowers make something else think, if said knowers have minimal knowledge about the concept of thinking and understanding?
To humans, thinking comes naturally, so when we are put in a situation where we have to explain how to think and understand what it means to think, it becomes hard for us. Personally, I believe that it is not necessary to know how to think because it is natural for us, but it helps to understand and study thinking, especially because we as a race are still not certain about what thinking really is. I found that the two articles had different views on the idea of Artificial Intelligence. In the first one, I got the idea that at one point, Artificial Intelligence was a failure because humans beings do not even understand the process of thinking themselves. So, in the perspective of David Auerbach (author of the first article), It is completely necessary to know how to do something to be able to perform the action. You need to fully understand how the mind physically carries out the action of thinking first before you teach a computer how to think. This is how Auerbach justifies the inability of technological devices, such as Cyc to properly execute the process of thinking. Cyc can draw inferences from a certain set of information, but cannot use reasoning to support itself. Cyc seems to have something missing that keeps it from being able to think. It just processes information already given to it. Auerbach thinks that because we do not understand what it is to think ourselves, we create machines that we believe will ‘think’, but in turn do not.
ReplyDeleteMy knowledge question from this article is:
Is artificial intelligence really artificial and intelligence if it only calculates ideas that humans input?
I think that the main difference between the first article and the second one is that there are different definitions of the word “think”. I think that this article uses the term more loosely, because it uses Deep Blue, an IBM computer who beat the “chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov” as an example of thought. MAny would say that Deep Blue did not think, it just decided which was the best way to win using information that it already had on how the game would go. I find it interesting that in this article, this is referred to as thinking. In a way, it did think because “it would consider its opponent’s responses, its own responses to those responses, and so on for six or more steps down the line. With a fast evaluation function, it would calculate a score for each possible position, and then make the move that led to the best score”. The human facing the computer in the battle was essentially doing the same thing, just at a slower rate and that person was “thinking”, so logically, the computer was too.
So speaking for the author of this article, humans make it not necessary to know how to do something to be able to perform the action. For example, “Google Translate team can be made up of people who don’t speak most of the languages their application translates.”
My knowledge question from this article is:
To what extent is our interpretation of the word “think” important to whether technology has the ability to think or not?
To what extent is it necessary to know how to do something to be able to perform the action?
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I personally think that for most of the times, anybody has to know what they are doing before they get to perform the action. For example, I can write well because I know how to do so. But we also have to consider that most of the actions we perform do not necessarily come from the knowledge we have of doing them. In this case, I can say that these actions are those that just occur without our mind conscious or without requiring us to think before we can act. For example, whenever something tempts to hit our eyes, we blink and yet we do not recognize that we have blinked. This is not because we know how to blink, but I can say that it just occurs naturally. We can as well relate blinking to yawning or any other involuntary action. Most of the times we carry out action without having much knowledge of why and what we are doing. This explains how it is not necessary to know how to do something in order to perform the action.
According to David Auerbach, we do not have to know how to do something in order to be able to perform it. He proves this by mentioning about the computers. Auerbach explains that even though the computers carry out a lot of logical actions, they do not really know what they are doing. First of all, the computers do not even have to think about what they are doing, so how can they have the knowledge of the actions that they perform? Coming back to what I find true, most of the actions that somebody does not know, can be carried out without them having the knowledge to perform those actions just as Auerbach describes. I have a knowledge question though, “ If thinking enables us to do all the voluntary actions that we do, what enables us to do the involuntary actions that we perform?”
For Douglas Hofstadter, thinking is crucial for enabling the performance of one’s desired actions. Hofstadter describes that the computers carry out action without thinking and that he has been trying to find a way of creating thinking computers. For if the computers carry out action without thinking, this means that if he invented thinking computers, they would be able to carry out the better actions since they would be having a sense of what their users require from them. In this case, it would be easier for the users since the computers would immediately carry out the actions that their users expect them to do. My knowledge question from this is, “Is thinking always necessary for us to perform or right desired actions?”
Sorry, my last question is, " Is thinking always necessary for us to perform our right desired actions?"
DeleteI would like to examplied myself. I am the person who prefer to have a well plan before actually executing the action. I try to be rational. However, everyone has emotion and people express it consciously. When a melancholy happened thing is mentioned, people may feel upset but unable to explain the reason.
ReplyDeleteFrom the article of “The Man Who Would Teach Machines To Think”, it disproves that people should know the theory. Even though, it mentions that Deep Blue bested the chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue took its advantage of quickly calculating the consequence of all the possibility. But Garry Kasparov was more likely to use reasoning. It also gives an example of Google Translate. It did not work when there was no literary context and grammar rules. The machine lacks emotion. The author claims that although Google Translate knows each words mean, it does not make sense in real life. The life story of Douglas Hofstadter is very interesting. When he was a kid, he could not explain the theory of the “toys” that he played with, but by the influence of his parents, his interest in Artificial Intelligence grow, so he started to study Artificial Intelligence.
Knowledge Question: to what extend we can say emotion is kind of action?
From the article of “A.I. Has Grown Up and Left Home”, the Cartesian theater was improved to have subsymbolic which I assume that close to emotion.
Knowledge Question: can emotion be formed?
According to the first article, the ability to know how to do something has little to do with the ability to perform the action. A computer can be told to do something, and then precisely do it. For example, I am typing my letter keys, and the computer is producing the letters I want. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the computer knows how to think. If it did would that mean that it would predict what letter I was going to choose next? The computer has been programed to create something when a button is pushed, but that doesn’t mean it understands why, or it asks any other questions relating to what it has just done. It can’t rationalize, or think about what it’s just done. It just does it. It’s programed that way because humans decided it.
ReplyDeleteDoes a something’s ability to process rationalize data more valuable than something’s ability to repeat any given fact?
The writer of the first article, Hofstadter, agrees with the first article in the sense that they both agree that something doesn’t have to know how to do something in order to preform it. Hofstadter believes in technology though, and he wants to make a computer that can understand what it’s doing. He just doesn’t think it’s possible because we as humans are still quite unclear on what it means to think, and how we think. That’s the problem. We want to create something that understands, but we can’t understand our self. Do we leave it to the computers to teach us? Is that even possible, seeing as right now we have to program all of a computers knowledge.
If a knower is living, is it thinking? Vice Versa. Is “to think” mean “to be alive?”