Thread:Seol404/@comment-26180030-20190102210002/@comment-27328974-20190106033422

Seol404 wrote: "Learn" as in copy and mimick, they aren't human nor are they persons Cope, they can't have love and compassion because love and compassion are not tangible, physical concepts. They mimick but they do not possess, they are lifeless inside. you can claim that they function like humans, but they are not genuine, they are all fake, they are soulless. The human brain does not funtion like a computer Cope, and computers do not funtion like human brains, you can have a connection to a machine, but a machine can not have a connection to you. At the way things are like currently, yes, I must agree with you. But looking at the way things are progressing, we can't be so certain they're going to be the same way. Let's look at the simplest life forms there exist: bacteria. Bacteria are the smallest units of life that we can say for sure are life forms (I don't want to start an argument on if viruses are life forms or not). They are auto-sufficient, so they don't have to rely on other organisms to survive themselves, and they have no brains, so they can't think, they don't learn, they don't have emotions, everything that is associated with not having a brain. Since they don't have a brain, they need actions to be essentially "pre-programmed" into them so they can survive, and that's where DNA comes in. Sure DNA doesn't actually encode any instructions for any actions, DNA doesn't say "if there is too much heat in your environment, move to somewhere cooler", but it does have "recipe guides", if you can say that, on making proteins that do react with heat, and for making proteins that trigger the cilia to move (I do not know much about biochemistry, so I can't really go any deeper in this topic). These are functions that happen automatically in a cell, outside input is not necessary to make a bacterium "run", in a way.

Now let's look at humans. Humans also have DNA. When a person is just conceived, day 0, it's called a zygote, and it's a single cell. Even though it is a single cell, it is another organism, completely separate from it's parents, it is an individual. Since it is only a single cell, it obviously does not have a brain, no thoughts, no emotions. But its DNA sequence is completely different than that of a bacterium. While both humans and bacteria both have genes that trigger the production of proteins that trigger cell division, humans have genes that produce proteins that prevent those daughter cells from separating. When bacteria split, their daughter cells are separate organisms; when human cells split, they stay together, and they're part of the same organism. Human DNA has genes that produce proteins that trigger cell specialization; as the embryo develops more and more, cells start to specialize, seemingly (at least to me) randomly. Cells can spontaneously become muscle tissue, fat tissue, neural tissue, etc. Nothing is telling them (except for their DNA) to specialize, they just do.

Now here comes the link with computers. Humans are the way they are due to their DNA, and the way the environment interacts with the proteins produced by that DNA. We "run" through the chemical reactions that occur in every one of our (living) cells. We are "programmed" with our DNA. But this programming doesn't determine what we think. Our genes and the proteins produced with our genetic instructions form our brains, and therefore our thoughts, or rather, how we think. Our structures in our brains give us the capacity to think like persons, and if our genetic information caused our brains to form differently, it would cause us to think differently. This is why things as simple as autism and as severe as schizophrenia exist, because their brains are structured differently, and different proteins are being produced. If a persons' emotional brain centers don't develop correctly, they don't know how to feel (for example, people with Asperger's have difficulty emphasizing with other people). This also has some implications: since people can feel different things depending on their brain structure, this means that emotions are just chemical interactions that occur within the brain, and nothing else. We feel happiness, sadness, anger, curiosity, fear, etc. because our brains' form gives us this ability to do so. All of this could be considered our base "mental algorithm" that gives us our ability to think the way we do. As for the way we learn, arguably, we do learn by mimicking, although not just that. Infants learn their parents' language(s) by looking at them, and by (trying) to imitate what they say. Toddlers copy their parents doing chores. Adults imitate people that can drive to learn how to drive themselves. The thing is, unlike current artificial intelligence, we can attach meaning to the things we learn, and transfer those ideas to other, disconnected, concepts and actions; but like some modern artificial intelligences, our mind comes empty, outside some "base" instincts and possibly ideas (if infants have these) that are pre-determined (for example, infants aren't taught to look at other human faces, they just do so automatically). I know artificial intelligence can't do these things now, but as we learn exactly how our brain and our mind functions, there's no reason why it won't in the future. As for these things being "genuine" or not... well, let me ask you some things. Assuming the the average human is a person, and that the way humans think and act is considered personhood, then, what's the difference between an AI that acts like a human, talks like a human, functions like a human, thinks like a human, and is otherwise indistinguishable from a human—and a person? In other words, if an AI is indistinguishable from our current idea of a person (a human), wouldn't that just make them a person? If a human has feelings for a conscious artificial intelligence, the AI says they have feelings for the human too, the relationship functions like a human-to-human relationship, and the relationship is stable, does anything else matter? Does their internal "genuineness" even matter? What makes us "genuine"? What requirements have to be met to "be genuine"? I don't want to talk about souls because then this would become a religious discussion and I don't want that, I'm agnostic

I'm sure i had more things to say but I'm pretty fatigued for writing so much. Sorry if this took so long to post, and that it's so long, i just wanted to express my entire argument in a way i hope you'll understand. Also, sorry if i rambled, i tend to do that too much