Can Machines/Computers Think Essays - Cognitive Science, Cognition

Can Machines/Computers Think? Can computers, robots, and software agents can literally be said to think? Humans think, chimps think, dogs think, cats and birds think. But do computers? For example, If computers can be made to think, then does that mean that humans are a kind of robot and their brains a kind of computer; a neurocomputer? One of the deeper issues here is that the term thinking is ambiguous in at least two ways: it can include being conscious of one's environment (surroundings), one's personal feelings and thoughts, etc., or it can mean cogitate, learn, plan, and solve problems, where these latter terms pick out mental events that may or may not be conscious. The idea that machines could think occurred to the very first computer builders and programmers. The Turing t es t is a test for intelligence in machines. In 1950, Alan Turing published, Computing Machinery and Intelligence where he described a game he called the imitation game involving a human judge conversing only in written text with a second human and a language-using computer, each hidden away in separate rooms (3 rooms total). The point of the game is for the computer to converse in such a human-like way with the judge that the judge cannot tell the second human from the computer. The computer wins if the judge cannot tell which conversant is the human and which the computer is. Turing's point is that, were a computer to successfully and repeatedly pass such a test, we should then regard the computer as intelligent on the human level. To date, no computer has passed the Test reliably and often. While we don't know what thought or intelligence is, essentially, and while we're very far from agreed on what things do and don't have it, almost everyone agrees that hum ans think, and agrees with Descartes that our intelligence is amply manifest in our speech. Along these lines, Alan Turing suggested that if computers showed human level conversational abilities we should, by that, be amply assured of their intelligence. Turing continues, We may now ask the question, what will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?" This test may serve, as Turing notes, "to test not just for shallow verbal dexterity, but for background knowledge and underlying reasoning ability as well, since interrogators may ask any question or pose any verbal challenge they choose". Regarding this test Turing famously predicted that in about fifty years' time by the year 2000 it will be possible to program computers to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will have no more than 70 per cent chance of making the correct identification after five minutes of questioning. It is important to recognize that Turing proposed his test as a qualifying test for human-level intelligence, not as a disqualifying test for intelligence. So, from the failure of machines to pass this test, we can infer neither their complete lack of intelligence nor, that their thought is not up to the human level. Nevertheless, the manners of current machine failings clearly bespeak deficits of wisdom and wit, not just an inhuman style. Still, defenders of the Turing test claim we would have ample reason to deem them intelligent - as intelligent as we are - if they could pass this test. The extent to which machines seem intelligent depends first, on whether the work they do is intellectual or manual. Let's say that Turing is correct, and that it is imaginable to build a computer that can imitate human intelligence in such a way that it is indistinguishable from real human intelligence. Can we then conclude that the computer indeed thinks? The difficulty with questions like this is, what do we mean by thinking? What do we need for genuine thinking to occur? Consciousness? Understanding? These are not the same things. I am not always conscious of what happens in my mind, and when I am conscious of things, it may well be that I don't understand anything. According to philosopher John Searle, it is understanding that we are after. Let's follow Searle in this respect,