The Machine

[stevebowers]

Why should the humans create AIs with such a strange psychology? In my opinion we should deliberately give them the capabilities (memory, cognitive abilities) of a baseline human baby and the social skills of a baseline human baby first.

These are noble goals for an AI program, but they are likely to be a lot trickier than we think. The human mind is the most complex thing we know of at present, and researchers are barely scraping the surface of this complexity. Even if we can make realistic human minds they will need a decade or more of education before they are really useful.

By the time we can emulate human behaviour and human learning patterns in an AI, we will probably find ways to make a wide range of useful minds that only vaguely resemble humanity. Perhaps these non-human minds will resemble the minds of ultra-complex insects, or of schools of fish, or meta-conscious search engines; but with proper programming these non-human minds will be able to hold conversations with humans.

As far as the Turing Test goes, I think this is not that good a yardstick for detecting a sentient AI. Human behaviour can probably be closely emulated using a very large database of human behaviours and a set of fairly complex rules on how to choose between them. To tell the difference between a true sophont AI and a semi-conscious intelligence or even a completely unconscious one, it might be necessary to observe such a being for years or decades.