Ok. Can you open your left eyelid exactly 1mm, by will? Or will a combination of other factors (programming) decide how much your eyelid will open?
The first option. Obviously.
Incorrect. I decide all the time. Please demonstrate my lack of decision making. You'll have to show not only what decisions I make but why they were not my decision to make and where they came from. Good luck.
Facepalms, huh? People get so sure of themselves.
I'm willing to bet it's much less a matter of figuring out how to do it, than other factors/resources.
You're so sure of yourself.. Pity me, and educate me somewhat.
Alright. I will. No one is anywhere near the creation of machine life. They aren't even trying in any realistic way. The closest thing we have is people like you speculating about what our future generations MIGHT be capable of. The only other thing that even comes CLOSE is biological and genetic engineering which is definitely not machine life by any stretch of the imagination.
Brilliant programmers are working on more and more advanced artificial intelligence that simply comes closer and closer to mimicking life accurately but at the same time does not come anywhere near it as every single choice it makes must be given to it before hand. There is no difference between a complex AI like you see in advanced robots like the ones they make at MIT and simple AI like the ghosts on Pacman. They respond to specific input with specific output. The only difference is the number of inputs vs. the number of outputs. And every single input must be correlated with every single output manually.
Is it? I thought for sure that birds had DNA.. And that DNA is what has the bird's programming for making wings?
Sure, lets pretend that's what I said. How does one grow a monitor?
Did you explain anything? I remember electricity on and off, but that's it.. Let me go back and look, after all, whatever you say has to be right.. And I should take what you say, and get it. Got that much.
Yeah, I did. I can go further if you are really that disconnected with computer technology that you've never heard of binary code and why it works.
Not sure. Do they still say a single cell?
Haha, so we had to start somewhere and why not in someone's robotics lab, eh?
I am afraid you can not.
Can you change your nature without using your nature?
What exactly does "changing my nature" mean? All I said is that I can ignore it at will. My nature notifies me that I am in pain and there is a neurological function outside of my control which attempts to move me away from that pain. And yet I managed to receive two tattoos without any mistakes. Funny that.
Still, although you are self-suficient, you are not your own cause. You didn't create yourself. I don't understand why you see any particular relevancy on the distinction between you being created by a natural process and robots being built by humans. If robots could learn and build other robots, would this be no longer an issue to you?
Having been created by other humans is a clear distinction, yes. And while the 'first cause' of my existence was not by my design, my current form is the result of many many many many causes afterwards. A vast majority of which were, are, and always will be under my control.
In the case of robots, yes. If they could learn at all I would stop arguing the point. The fact remains that they never gain any new information that is not given to them by a human being. And even when new information is given, a new reaction to that information has to be given to it as well. It has no understanding of the information. It all looks the same. Electricity on and electricity off.
I am not willing to engage into a possible free will debate...yet. So i will see where this line of reasoning is going to before i make a move on its regard.
Why can't a robot be programmed with the ability to change its likings?
Because it doesn't have "likings" to begin with, for one.
You can build a robot with arms and hands and a face and a tongue and a speaker in its mouth. Then you can program it to pick up an ice cream, pull it to its face and lick it, and then proclaim, "I LIKE CHOCOLATE! BEEP BOOP BEEP!" but you haven't really made that robot like chocolate. You've just made a machine for lifting ice cream cones, licking them, and speaking the words.
Lets take it beyond basics. Lets say you are a brilliant engineer and programmer. You could create a robot that looks identical to a human being. You could then program that robot to enter an ice cream shop and have an entire conversation with questions and answers with the clerk and ultimately select a chocolate ice cream to have, pay for it, and devour the entire thing with enthusiasm. You could even go so far as to give the robot the option of selecting any flavor the shop offers and allow it to randomly select one. You could even go so far as to program chocolate to be selected more often than any other flavor and program it to still try all the others and proclaim that it still likes chocolate more than any of the others after trying them all. You could EVEN go so far as to program it with flavors that don't even exist in the shop and make it ask for those even when they aren't available and make it pout every time the chocolate is missing or refused.
But no matter how brilliant you are, no matter how cleverly you design this robot's set of choices, it will never under any circumstances make a choice that you didn't tell it to make. It doesn't even recognize that it is making a choice at all. To the robot there is no difference between getting the chocolate and proclaiming that it loves it and not getting the chocolate and acting upset. It is just moving electricity from the power source to its components in the way you've designed it in both cases. It doesn't like either choice. It doesn't make any choice at all. Its YOU making the choice as the designer.
