WEEK 6 - The Computer and the Brain - 2ESDAYS

We were really amazed by the foresighted and precedent opinions on the relationship between the computer and the human brain. Von Neumann found that the parallel processing of a great number of neurons in human brains gives human a remarkable power to process information while Turing found that both modern digital computer and nervous system are both electrical. Both of them mentioned Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine and Lady Lovelace (Ada Byron)’s conclusion that “a computer cannot think creatively.” and “the machine can only do what we tell it to do.” Until today, the machines are still not able to jump off of this rule completely. Turing concluded that the machine can be equal to the brain only when they start to realize what they have done and they are doing it because of their own thoughts and feelings. Maybe the machines in the future may have self-awareness, however, we can never prove it. According to solipsism, “the only way by which one could be sure that a machine thinks is to be the machine and to feel oneself thinking.” In Turing’s fifth arguments from various disabilities, he mentioned that the machines can never have characteristics like beautiful, friendly, have initiative, and have a sense of humor, etc. If we take a look at some recently created robots and AI, their external looking can definitely be described as beautiful, and they can be programmed to be friendly and have a sense of humor. Turing asked at the start of his article that, “Can machines think?”. We believe this question can be rephrased to “Can machine imitate if they are thinking?” And this is also the emphasis of the Imitation Game - it doesn’t matter if the machine is actually thinking, instead, can it pretend to be conscious. We also find the test is meaningless as chatting through machine only shows a very little aspect of information and thinking. The machine functions like a filter that affects our cognition of the information. The interpretation of the same information varies even during human to human communication. Turing’s opinion was too focused on human thinking, he thinks intellectual thinking is the only thing that matters and ignored how important is embodiment and sensations to human. However, the example of Helen Keller was well-made to bring up the connection between the child machine and the children whose senses are being disabled. Both articles finished up on singularity and had an impressive prediction of the outlook of the machines.