Artificial Intelligence and Awareness

‘I Robot’ - Remember this movie ?

Robots made up of intelligent software, want to overtake human beings and rule the earth, bla bla bla

The key is artificial intelligence, software that could mimic human intelligence and by the sheer processing power of the processors even overcome(?) human intelligence.

Some fear that one day computers will be more intelligent than humans. Artificial Intelligence will take over human intelligence. Then the computers/robots feel that humans are less intelligent than they are, and hence will take over humans as the dominant species(?!). Asimov suggested what is called Asimov’s laws to be embedded into the robots to ensure that robots never take over humans.

The Asimov’s laws are the fundamental laws which a Robot should always obey while executing any action. The robotic software should have these laws at the fundamental level preventing a robot from executing any action which violates any of these laws.

These are the Asimov’s laws

Law #1: A Robot should never harm a human being.
This ensures that a robot can never even think of anything which is dangerous or harmful to humans
Law #2: A Robot should follow all commands given by a human, provided first law is not violated.
This ensures that a robot always obeys to humans, but at the same time cannot be used by one human against other humans.

Law #3: A Robot should always protect itself, provided first and second laws are not violated.
This ensures that robots can save themselves in adverse situations, but not at the cost of a human life, and not at the cost of not following a human order.

Later on Asimov also inluded a Zeroth law, an even more fundamental law than the above three, and this says
A Robot should always protect the human race

And First law was modified as
A Robot should never harm a human being provided Zeroth law if not violated.
In other words, the Zeroth law ensures that robots not only are prevented from doing harm to human race, but also ensure the protection of human race. So tomorrow if there is an alien attack then Robots will fight the aliens as per the Zeroth law. OR say some wicked human tries to carry out a nuclear explosion which wipes out a large part of this planet, then the Robots will terminate that human, because the modified First law says that ‘A Robot should not harm a human only if Zeroth law is not violated’, in this case since the wicked human is causing a potential danger to human race, Robots will observe that Zeroth law is being violated by his action and hence will terminate him.

Looks like a science fiction? Well, for me it is common sense to hardcode these four laws as the basic of all robotic actions in every robot that we manufacture. Probably a more detailed and refined version of these laws will be more practical.

Now lets look at a more fundamental level. When we say Robots want to take over humans, or computers become more intelligent. What do we mean ?
Does it mean that Computers will be able to mimic or simulate intelligence on par with human intelligence ?
OR
Computers will become really more intelligent?

My view goes that Computers just mimic human intelligence and are never truly intelligent. Why ?
My view dates back to those days when I used to think about a true answer for the meaning of life. In my +2 classes my professor asked a question.
Define Life.
A very tough question indeed. If we say things that move on their own consist life, then plants dont do so. (Except for some slow motion trees which over a period of years slowly move by spreading out their roots far away and cutting of older roots)
The text book answer was reproduction, things that can produce forms of their own. Things that can multiply and evolve.

I was not satisfied though. I used to think at a more fundamental level. For me being alive meant, being aware of one’s existence. ‘Awareness’ is the key. I know I am alive because I am aware of my existence. So my definition of life was ‘awareness’, textbook definition was ‘reproduction’.
My professor then was surprised by my answer, he asked me ‘Do you think bacteria or plants are aware of their existence’ ? I replied, ‘they have to be, probably the mechanism is different, we have brain, they have something else, Jagadish Chandra Bose had shown that plants have feelings and respond to things like music, heat etc. To respond they have to feel and to feel they have to be aware’.

Lets apply the textbook definition and my definition of life to Computers.
If we go by textbook definition, well computers/robots can be created which create more robots and computers. That is not a difficult thing to do. We just have to write programs which tell how to manufacture another robot/computer. So can we now say that since robots can manufacture more robots, robots have life ?

I dont think so. Because my definition is being aware. Awareness leads to information, interpretations, thought and then to actions. Key for robots to think that they are more intelligent, and are slaves of humans and hence should overpower humans and build an empire of their own, results from the feeling of ‘being ambitious’, ’sense of slavery to humans’, etc. But to get all these feelings first the robot has to be aware of its own existence, which I think is the essence of life, and since Robots DO NOT HAVE THIS AWARENESS I conclude that robots or software only mimic intelligence coded in them by the truly intelligent humans.

My assumption is based on the fact that ‘Awareness is a proprietary of life, and only natural life possesses awareness, and that awareness is not a byproduct of neural network or the process of being able to think’
Because if awareness results from the ability to think, then well robots could also gain awareness as they are able to think. Please note here that when I say ‘I am aware of my existence’, I mean that I am truly aware of it, not that I have some boolean variable which says that ‘I exist’
So forget about having some variable stored in a robot to tell it that its aware, that will be again mimcking awareness, not actual awareness

To summarize, my current views are that artificial life based on artificial intelligence in the form of computers, robots, software or what not is not true life or true intelligence, but only a simulation of life or intelligence, just like the way computers simulate a nuclear explosion, weather, flight etc