Can machines think?
Cautiously adopted. Thank you. Can computers think today with artificial intelligence, making many strides there is a widespread notion in the cultural imagination that future computers may start thinking and may even do thinking better than what human beings are doing so this idea that computers can think is based on two complementary misunderstandings one is what computers are and what thinking is to understand these two misunderstandings let's begin with what computers are computer is basically an information processing device now the information that is processed is analysed understood and made and used or experienced rather by someone different from the machine so for example a computer may tell us that a storm is going to come now and this storm is going to wreak havoc on the city storm processes the weather the computer processes the weather inputs from various sources and using quite sophisticated information processing algorithms it comes to a conclusion in terms of giving us a prediction but the computer does not express any of the fear horror terror that the reader will experience on reading the idea that there is going to be a deadly storm here just like a watch can help us understand the time but the watch does not understand the concept of time or the implication of it being a particular time so if we are supposed to be at a meeting by 12 o'clock and it is a very important meeting and if we are going to be late we look at the watch and it says 11.57 and we are at least 15 minutes away now we may be dismayed but the clock is not dismayed the clock does not experience anything so what this means is that information processing is different from information experiencing understanding this is vital so actually there may be greater processing power there may be greater complexity in a computer but the point is that no matter how complex a device may be or how much power a device may have ultimately ultimately the situation remains that it is simply electrical signals, electrical impulses pass into and out of electrical circuits and then they interact with any number of devices that may be connected indirectly or directly to that particular main device so the electrical impulses are unconscious the electrical circuits are unconscious and the devices to which they are connected are also unconscious so neither processing power nor complexity can actually make the computer conscious cannot make it think in terms of thinking is not just information processing which we will come to later but the point is when the processing power increases all that it means is that the number crunching capacity the speed with which electrical signals pulsate through the device increase speed with which zeros change to ones and one change to zero increases but that in itself does not demonstrate anything in terms of explaining either the significance of the zero or a one if the computer uses zero say a student is, say a gambler fails, loses his gamble and computer gives one, the gambler wins but the computer itself does not understand the significance of the zero or the one it experiences neither emotion at all so again the point is that the computer may do this processing at a very high speed which is what the power is about and it may do varieties of processing, it may take in a variety of information, put it through various stages and give it an output in various ways so the input processing and output can be made more and more complex by adding more and more gadgets to it so the speed and complexity can be increased but still it all remains unconscious now no matter how much a computer becomes complex or fast it's unconscious and it will remain unconscious because either complexity nor speed bring about consciousness now to understand the difference, let's now first understand what is thought now thought is the product of consciousness we observe, we analyze, we feel and all this is centered around thought to say that thought is not conscious is self-repudiating because we need to be conscious to say that we need to be conscious to say that thought is not conscious so thought involves an experiential element to it which is not present merely in information processing this is where a fundamental difference comes up between computers and human beings when the same word information is used for both so it's said that human brains and human beings at large are into information processing and so are computers but there is a big difference between computers that process information in terms of unconsciously run through the information and human beings who consciously feel impact of the information so for example if I decide to drive from central New Jersey to New York then I may think what is the best way to drive in my consciousness there can be a wide stream of awareness and I choose consciously from all that awareness to focus on one set of awareness to focus on some particular thing and when I focus on that thing then by that I understand what is the best way to move forward so in consciousness there is a capacity for a wide almost unlimited variety of awareness I can be thinking about what I did yesterday, what I will do tomorrow I can be thinking about what this person said, how this person dresses so when all this is in my field of awareness I draw my awareness from all that and then consciously focus what is the fastest route what is the easiest route, what is the best route to go from here central New Jersey to New York and this I who does this analysis who makes the decision to do this analysis is very different from the Google Maps software which may plan a route and give me the route so we sometimes call this software as a route planner or a route guide but people were travelling when before Google Maps came up and they also thought and they also analysed and they would come up, ok this path is likely to be crowded at this time so let me take this route now yes Google Maps may be able to do it with greater precision, it may be able to guide us in areas where we have not gone and so don't know much about but the fact is there is the volitional experiential intentional emotional aspect of consciousness and there is the informational processing aspect of consciousness so for example it is I who decide that I want to go to New York and then after that I use my information processing capacity to choose what is the best way to go to New York and instead of I using my capacity I might just look at Google Maps so Google Maps replaces and maybe supplements also supplements or supplants we could say supplants means it does better than my own information processing capacity but thought not all thought is computational computational means it is not just doing information processing so the intentional deciding so for example my car may be equipped with the best Google Map but the car itself will not decide oh I want to go to New York there has to be a person who has to decide I want to go to New York and the car it may be with the best computer processing software for mapping the territory it will not experience any of the emotions that I may experience when I think of say the statue of liberty or I think the twin towers that have fallen or any of the other landmarks in New York so the volitional aspect volitional or intentional aspect the fact of making a decision the fact of experiencing the information none of these can be experienced by machines and that's why as far as the machines are concerned about doing information processing they can do that better than human beings they are already doing that and they will do that in future also but as far as experiencing emotions is concerned as far as experiencing the impact of the emotion as far as deciding what to do particularly intention and emotion are aspects of thought that are very different from mere information processing and just because we human beings process information and machines process information does not mean that we are using information in the same sense for machines information is just units of data which are not either comprehended or experienced or willed for us they are comprehended and then we will to do certain things and then we feel certain things so that's why no matter how sophisticated machines become in terms of power or complexity they will improve only in the information processing capacity there is only one feature of thought the computational feature but the non computational feature of thoughts is forever beyond any beyond the reach of any scientific advancement thank you.