None of us are going to be able to respond at this table if the artificial intelligence will develop consciousness or not, “It is a topic that goes beyond borders,” with these words, Federico Bermúdez Rattoni, researcher at the Institute of Cellular Physiology of the UNAM, began the discussion titled Advances and challenges in the neurobiology of cognition. Will artificial intelligence develop consciousness?, held on March 12 in the Aula Mayor of El Colegio Nacional.
In the first session of the cycle Universities for sciencecoordinated by the referee Jaime Urrutia Fucugauchi, Dionisio Meade, from the UNAM Foundation, and Araceli Rodríguez, from the Universities for Science Consortium, the neuroscience professor explained that the big problem with consciousness is that it is a dualistic topic, this means that, on the one hand, the word refers to a moral aspect used by religion; and on the other, it is a cognitive concept used by neurosciences and eventually by robotics.
He added that, for example, typical definitions of consciousness is being awake and perceiving an environment, it can also be knowledge and understanding of something, it is used in the ethical or moral aspect, or it can even mean knowledge of oneself, which results ambiguous. “The term consciousness comes from the times of Descartes when he said: 'I think therefore I am', then what comes first? The mechanism, biology and then philosophy, or is it philosophy first, because we have a brain and we can think, therefore we exist.
If it were the other way around, we could say that, eventually, robotics can achieve consciousness, if not, it will probably never have it.”
Taking the floor, Luis Pineda, from the Institute for Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems of the UNAM, referred to the test proposed by Alan Turing, in an article published in 1950 called Computational Machinery and Intelligence, a text considered the origin of artificial intelligence. “The article begins with the question: Can machines think? The interesting thing is that it is the first time that this question has been asked in a scientific and technological environment, outside of science fiction. Turing said that, by machine, he meant digital computers, that is, a human invention.
“Turing is very clear that human beings are not machines. He interprets the term think with the idea of seeking explanations, abducting, making decisions, planning, reasoning, learning and understanding, when we understand we are conscious. According to the Mexican psychologist, Turing proposed The Imitation Game, which consisted of developing a scenario in which a computer was disguised as a human.
Then, the computer began to engage in a conversation with a person, through language, and sought to convince them that it was a human, Turing He stated that the machine achieved its objective, the person had to attribute to it that it thought and understood.
“What I believe is that machines cannot have consciousness, because it requires a sufficiently developed nervous system, which they do not have. But, if we do not ultimately know what consciousness is, we cannot give it to the machines“These cannot be conscious, although, if we discover what consciousness is and share it with machines, they would no longer be machines, they would be something else,” the scientist concluded.
BORDERS. There is much to do and redo to stop so much destruction and forge better times…
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