3 "Real" Conscious Machines [WAS Re: Singularity: A rock 'em, shock 'em ending soon?]

From: Richard Loosemore (rpwl@lightlink.com)
Date: Tue Jan 17 2006 - 12:30:43 MST


Woody,

Focusing on the conclusion of your post:

> So maybe we should gather together a list of all the Contenders claiming to
> have built the first ever humanlike, intelligent machine, which some call
> Real AI, strong AI, AGI, or machine consciousness -
> 1. Artificial Lifeforms Lab LLC - my company, with a 2005 US patent pending
> (60/730340) for a conscious machine called a droid, being an android if
> human shaped or a metadroid if non-human shaped. In both cases they exhibit
> humanlike intelligence, so that we get odd forms of artificial life such as
> the "talking dog" and the "flying man."
> 2. Machine Consciousness Inc. - a company with a 2003 patent for "machine
> consciousness"
> 3. PIBOT - a company with a 2005 claim of building the ** first ever "Real
> AI" **
>
>
> If anyone knows of any other Contenders I sure would like to know ...
>
> Ken Woody Long
> http://www.artificial-lifeforms-lab.blogspot.com/

If you are seriously claiming that these three groups (one of them your
group) have built three "real" conscious machines, and are going to
publicly demonstrate them during 2006, then I challenge you (and the
other two) to say EXACTLY what level of "consciousness" you mean.

I throw down this challenge because in your message you have referenced
such a wide range of interpretations of the meaning of the word
"consciousness" that this poor little word has been debased down to zero
meaning. In other words, we are back to the good old fashioned idiot-AI
statement that a thermostat is "conscious".

Now I don't really have a problem, in principle, with such a broad
definition of consciousness (as a continuum of types of behavior that
range all the way from thermostat to superintelligence), but what I do
object to is people making grand announcements and then turning up to
the press conference holding a bimetal strip connected to a relay
switch, and asking me to applaud.

Maybe someone should pass this challenge on to Machine Conscious, Inc.
and Rick Geniale Enterprises: myself, I can't be bothered.

Richard Loosemore.



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