is it possible for a computer to gain self awareness

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
if it was aware it could ignore input orders and do what it wants

not necessicarily, awareness and volition are not the same thing.

For instance, in a symptom called "alien hand syndrome", ones own hands act to grasp objects completely without any awareness, and in diseases like parkensons, MS or any type of motor cortex damage, one loses a large part of their own ability to act, but they are still aware. Damage to pre-motor areas would disrupt a person's ability to plan and initiate action even further, while no real loss of awareness would be seen.

EDIT: even as a caveat to this, the same book mentioned below talks about a Mars Rover that shut it self off rather than performing an action that might have harmed its arm.

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
would it learn english from the internet and comunicate?

The ability for something to be able to describe what it is like to be itself is one of the ways we describe awareness philosophically. In Apes, we can see this when they look in a mirror and can tell if a person has drawn on their face. So, technically, no, an ape has an idea of what it is like to be itself, and can tell when that is changed, and they do not have a sophisticated system of communication that even approaches language.

there would also need to be some inherent motivation to communicate in the computer. Nature evolved humans to be social creatures, this computer might just be satisfied being aware (in the human brain. awareness and motivation are two seperate systems, so like language and volition, are discrete from eachother) or at least, given it has no needs, would have no drive to satisfy this.

Also, provided the computer has no ability to alter its own settings, and is simply aware it exists, even if it wanted to (which makes no sense unless we built it to want to) it couldn't program into itself unless we gave it that ability.

However, a little terrifying caveat to this comes from Everything is Going to Kill Everybody by Robert Brockway:

Overarching fears about robitics - like the worry that they could jump their programming and go rogue - should really be taken only from a trusted source. Luckily, a report commissioned by the US Navy's Office of Naval Research and done by the Ethics of Emerging Technology department of California State Polytechnic University was insigated to study just that. Here's what the report says:

[quote]There is a common misconception that robotics will do only what we have programmed them to do. Unfortunatley, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to a time when... programs could be written and understood by a single person

That quote is lifted directly from the report pressented to the Navy by Patrick Lin, chief compiel. What's really worrying is that the report was prompted by a frightening incident in 2008 when an autonomous drone in the employ of the US Army suffered a software malfunction that caused the robot to aim at exclusively friendly targets.[/quote]

basically, the software that would go behind making the aware computer might have errors that cause any number of unknown phenonenon.

Originally posted by inimalist

EDIT: even as a caveat to this, the same book mentioned below talks about a Mars Rover that shut it self off rather than performing an action that might have harmed its arm.

also what if we build this "self aware" computer that would have "ape like awarenes" like you said.
eventually we would program computers to build other computers. would they start to evolve because the self aware one is building them?

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
i dont think thats self awareness,
example some computers would shut off if you try to hack it.
doesnt mean its self aware its just protocall

ok, but you asked if computers could ignore inputs, which it appears they can do now.

the rover was not programmed to shut itself off in that situation, nasa officially said it was "neat"

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
also what if we build this "self aware" computer that would have "ape like awarenes" like you said.
eventually we would program computers to build other computers. would they start to evolve because the self aware one is building them?

a robot with ape like intelligence will not be able to build or design anything.

for that you would need computers on par with humans, which would mean some need of abstract symbolic understanding and communication (language) and we are decades from anything close to that.

Originally posted by inimalist

a robot with ape like intelligence will not be able to build or design anything.

for that you would need computers on par with humans, which would mean some need of abstract symbolic understanding and communication (language) and we are decades from anything close to that.

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
not ape like intelligence,but "ape level" awareness
its still a super intellegent computer.

those two can't be separated. To become more aware, an ape would need to increase in what we deem is intelligence.

Originally posted by inimalist
those two can't be separated. To become more aware, an ape would need to increase in what we deem is intelligence.

or are computers different?

Originally posted by inimalist
those two can't be separated. To become more aware, an ape would need to increase in what we deem is intelligence.

But we are all apes.

show me the solid evidence^

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
show me the solid evidence^

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/apes/Classification.shtml

^isnt that mainly theory

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
^isnt that mainly theory

What, taxonomy?

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
^isnt that mainly theory

Is the Duey Decimal system theory?

In other words, the categorization of plants and animals is a system made by humans that reflect a commonality between species that we see in nature. Under that system, humans are cataloged as an ape.

Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
wouldnt base on that, a super intelligent quantum computer would become aware at super intelligence levels?

or are computers different?

no, because computational power is not the same as human intelligence, as I said to Shakya:

Originally posted by inimalist
the second is that understanding awareness is not simply a problem of not having enough power. Human consciousness is based upon the interconnected nature of our neurology, and its constantly changing interconnectivity. At this point, it might be more accurate to describe the problem as being one of cracking the neuro-code, or how patterns of activation represent coherent states of awareness, rather than just needing something with 10000x the power.

We would need a significantly more powerful computer if we ever wanted to simulate human awareness through an artifical brain (with billions of artificial neurons), and that specifically might be made easier with a quantum computer, but with the ever constant advances in micro-processing, a super-computer of some kind may also prove just as useful. Even then, we need more understanding of the higher areas (Frontal and pre-frontal regions, parietal lobe, some of the temporal-cortical pathways) before simulating them is going to provide much more data than fMRI anyways.

intelligence isn't the ability to just crunch numbers fast. Calculators can already do that much better than we can.

Human intelligence comes from the ability to integrate the present through multiple sensory organs, its relevant emotional content, past experience and future predictions. All of these have independant systems within our brain, that work together to create what people refer to as intelligence (not IQ, but you weren't talking about IQ anyways). Just having more computational power wont make you intelligent in that way, it makes you a better calculator

It is possible. It's just a question of when.

no way... go activate the rest of your brain..lol...do you realize how many functions your brain performs...pentium wishes..lol...just think on your brain and get back to us...awesome computer(the brain) ...thats not used much..lol..in my case anyways ...but come on...doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out we are built better than anything we can build..haha ..find religion...haha..actually I honestly believe in particle physics science but oh well...I sucked in science...somebody was smart enuff to make us...lol...go figure for a millennium...lol..or let the collider run!..haha

Colossus, you may find these sites interesting:

http://singinst.org/overview/whatisthesingularity

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/492d76d2f173e

The second site is, of course, fiction. The first site...there's interesting and plausible speculation here, though personally I find it too "linear" in its predictions, thus IMO it's prone to those "outta left field" surprises life is famous (infamous?) for.

I think most predictions about the Singularity as it applies to both AI and/or Transhumanism are greatly embellished. Or, rather, overly optimistic. Still, it is fun to speculate about, especially since it is plausible speculation rather than strictly fictitious.

I've always assumed AI's were possible to make but I'm not sure they would be self-aware. Instead I think they would just continue updating and improving itself beyond that of scientific ability.

Originally posted by Liberator
I've always assumed AI's were possible to make but I'm not sure they would be self-aware. Instead I think they would just continue updating and improving itself beyond that of scientific ability.

What do you mean by "improving itself beyond that of scientific ability"?

Well like, it would find faults in itself and just build on them, improve them beyond that of which the scientists thought capable.

I don't know much about computers so I'm most likely wrong.