Computational Intelligence and Consciousness

Eduardo César Garrido Merchán

In recent years there have been many advances in artificial intelligence, especially in the field of automatic generation of texts and images that sometimes compete successfully with human productions. In light of this, the media, and even some scientists, have rung the bells announcing that we are on the verge of creating conscious artificial intelligence, which would compete with human beings as our equal. But others believe that this goal, if it were possible (which is not clear), is much further away than some think.

In an article signed by Eduardo César Garrido Merchán and Sara Lumbreras and published in the journal philosophies with the title Can Computational Intelligence Model Phenomenal Consciousness, the authors review Bertrand Russell's analogy, which asserts that consciousness and intelligence are closely correlated. In other words, any entity that possesses consciousness will also possess a high level of intelligence, and vice versa. In a way, this analogy is similar to the Turing Test, which is much better known.

Fred Saberhagen versus the Turing Test

Alan Turing

In 1950, the English mathematician and chemist Alan Turing tried to define the conditions so that it would be possible to affirm that a machine is capable of thinking like us. For Turing, this will be achieved when the machine is capable of deceiving human beings, making them think that it is one of them. This test is called the imitation game. I have talked about this in a previous post in this blog.

In 1956, Arthur Samuel of IBM built a program to play the game called draughts or checkers. The program kept information about the moves in the games it had played, which was used to modify its future moves (in other words, it learned). In a few years, after playing many games, the program was able to defeat its creator and played reasonably well in official championships.

That same year, during a summer course held in Dartmouth College, John McCarthy and other computer pioneers coined the term artificial intelligence. Getting their hopes too high, they predicted spectacular advances for the next ten years, which did not take place in the time envisaged, but much later. I have also written about this in another post.

In 1963, science fiction writer Fred Saberhagen published the first story of his famous series about the berserkers, autonomous and intelligent space fortresses created by an ancient extraterrestrial civilization to exterminate intelligent life wherever it appears in the galaxy. This story, titled Without a thought, is an answer to the Turing Test and a brake to the unbridled hopes of the inventors of the term artificial intelligence. This is the plot of the story:

The Turing test

Alan Turing

In 1950, in an article published in the Mind magazine, Alan Turing wrote this:

I believe that in about fifty years' time it will be possible to programme computers, with a storage capacity of about 10⁹, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent. chance of mating the right identification after five minutes of questioning.

Why precisely 70 percent? Because studies conducted, where some persons tried to deceive about their sex another person who couldn’t see them, gave that result. In seventy percent of the cases, the persons who had to guess if they were being cheated found the correct answer. In other words, what Turing said was this:

If the machine were able to deceive human beings, posing as human, with the same ease with which a human being can deceive another, it should be considered intelligent.