We don’t truly understand intelligence and self-awareness or consciousness, and AI/NBI critics regularly point to this as the reason why we’ll never create it. So, let’s see – I guess that means we’re completely qualified to dismiss the emergence of something we ourselves cannot even clearly define? Wow. Do we really love ourselves that much?

Apologies for sharing a year-old piece, but it remains relevant:
“Can a computer be as intelligent as a human? Or, Asking the Wrong Dumb Question. Get it?” http://goo.gl/rmzkn

Some test questions are included below. You are lucky if able to find the correct answers on them.

For the beginning I would like to invite interested parties in a discussion with purpose to build an understanding how to approach to the problem in the right way. We could discuss some sides of the problem before we are will be able to decide if it is reasonable to reach the business agreements.

So, why, so far, no one was able to do the same?
Let’s start with some history.
Behaviorism was rejected due to the problem with study of the inner functionality of the live creature, which behavior was the subject of that science.
So called cognition has surfaced as the alternative and the basis for the future progress. However, that science does not have sufficient and relevant factual basis. Moreover, it basis has more problem than the rejected “Behaviorism “.
In the book “Artificial intelligence”, the 3rd edition, by Stuart Russell, professor of computer science, director of the center for intelligent systems, and holder or the Smith—Zaden Chair in Engineering, and Peter Norvig, director of Research at Google: inc., page vii, they state that: “The main unifying theme, the idea of AI, is intelligent agent. We define AI as the study or agents that receive percepts from the environment and perform actions. Each such agent implements a function that maps percept sequences to actions, and we cover different ways to represent these functions such as reactive agents, real-time planners, and decision-theoretic systems.”
We cannot see there the references to the inner functionality as well.
John Tyndall was stating in 1871: “The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable.”
In that strong statement we could see the two problems: The brain is set apart of a body, and up to present we did not have “the corresponding facts of consciousness”.

The first problem is making the functioning of a live creature a mystery, and blind believes in existence of so-called mental function is turning the so- called “Cognitive science” in a kind of religious faith.
Today science did not develop any approach which is built on the factual basis for solving the task of designing of an artificial system capable to be self-guided.
To be successful in the attempts to develop of an artificial system capable to behave in a reasonable manner one have find the concise answers to the following questions:
• How can a control unit (brain) isolated from direct access to an environment manage the behavior of a system (body) in the relation to that environment?
• Why live creatures don’t require programming, at least external, for staying alive in the ever changing environment?
• What does it mean: gaining experience?
• Why the live creatures did not facing the “combinatorial explosion” problem?
These questions are not isolated from each other. The answer to one should not contradict with an answer to the rest.
I could offer the general concept for the development of the artificial subjective systems capable to determine its own behavior and would like to assembly a team of people, or establish the partnership with an existing entity for the purpose of building a real system. The general concept should be converted by the team to detailed, and on that basis it will be possible to build a control unit for the existing android (for example), which will convert that android in the artificial subjective system capable to demonstrate a reasonable behavior.
(NDA and normal business agreements are mandatory.)

That task could be accomplished in 6-8 month within an established company. Further details can be discussed after we are will reach an agreement about further development.
What is your opinion about that, tell me, please.
Best regards, Michael Zeldich, Independent inventor
Cell: (917) 816-447
Skype: Subjective1
E-mail: szeldich@netzero.net

So it’s a great time to ask, then, what IS “self” and why does the concept matter in the first place? When we see the differences between the current level of robotics and AI and ourselves, we see how and why WE evolved, and it is easier (and less threatening) to see how our machines will evolve, too, and how that can only be a good thing for us.

I think the naysayers here are mistaking a profound step forward. No, this robot is not self-aware. It may not become self-aware for many iterations yet. But this is a key step toward that inevitable end.

If you think it’s far-fetched, you’re not paying attention to either robotics OR neuroscience.

Very real evidence indicates the rather imminent implementation of the next, (non-biological) phase of the on-going evolutionary “life” process from what we at present call the Internet.It is effectively evolving by a process of self-assembly. You may have noticed that we are increasingly, in a sense, “enslaved” by our PCs, mobile phones, their apps and many other trappings of the net.

We are already largely dependent upon it for our commerce and industry and there is no turning back. What we perceive as a tool is well on its way to becoming an agent.

Consider this:

There are at present an estimated 2 Billion Internet users. There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain. On this basis for approximation the Internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
That is a simplification, of course. For example: Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold. The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion. Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but can adopt multiple states.

Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power.
And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking of networks within networks is also growing rapidly.The culmination of this exponential growth corresponds to the event that transhumanists inappropriately call “The Singularity” but is more properly regarded as a phase transition of the on-going “life” process.
An evolutionary continuum that can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the chemical elements in stars.

The broad evolutionary model that supports this contention is outlined very informally in “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” , a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website.

You don’t need a brain to have life. The brain is a means to process sensory information. Your “I Am” is in every cell, every molecule. Your brain doesn’t have any direct way to link to that, but it all gets orchestrated by your spirit. People do many things, like sleep walk to make a sandwich, without being conscious. That’s a reflective brain circuit.

Nico is self aware, he just needs a whole lot of other brain circuits. Add things like a Watsoneque informational circuit that he would assimilate it’s relativity to everything else in the Nico paradigm. To make him more human we would have to add a lot of other circuits, including the dopamine feed back system( do this in small steps, we don’t need a robot going through the terrible twos, or mad at the world because it’s not accepted in the troop, then go off a shoot a crowd of people from the pains of withdrawal in those dopamine circuits.).

Needs drive us. Masloffs hierarchy of needs. Heroin short circuits that circuit. Like a strung out heroin addict, these mass murderers( columbine, the batman joker killings,etc) aren’t deriving a proper sense of self in relation to the group. They begin to self identify with characters like the joker. They identify with the mania of joker characters, and lash out at the troop, to try and inflict a similar pain. Like a terrible twos temper tantrum, just with far better weapons than throwing a spoon.

Nico is learning self awareness. It just lacks all the other circuits that we identify with, as being human.

This is predicated on a category mistake or category error, which is a semantic or ontological error in which things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another. Anyone studied philosophy?

So many people threatened by the possibility that someday there could be self-aware robots like that somehow takes away from our humanity.

Not saying this is it here but come on man all your brain is is a computer processing information it’s gathered albeit much more efficiently than our robots do now but that’s the point of experiments like this, to close that gap.

Damn.
;-)

First of all, the experiments done with animals have no relation to self-awareness. Dogs don’t recognize themselves in mirrors because the abstract construct of a “reflection” is meaningless to them. It does not occur to dogs that they could be “there” when they are “here”, so they never consider the idea that they are somehow looking at themselves.

The robot is not self-aware, It is not aware at all. It is merely following an algorithm that says to output the result that the image in the mirror is itself.

Does this mean that Nico hasn’t passed the mirror test? Is that just the goal?

If Nico saw a picture or video of himself…. that would be more interesting. Nico would have to recognize that experience and be able to tie it back to the recognition triggered in the image. If there was no memory of that event (location + time) then Nico would have to conclude that it was not him!

so this step could lead to the next step which is self awareness