Essay V

Please note that this essay will be written in class Thursday, 12/9, from 8:00-10:30; as per the syllabus, it is worth 400 points. You may bring a single 4x6 inch handwritten notecard and pencil and pen with you to class, but nothing else. I will provide the paper and exactly one of the following prompts, verbatim, (in addition to an extra credit prompt):

1. The Imitation Game

Recall that the Turing Test is predicated on the proposition that

The perfect imitation of intelligence is intelligence.

The trouble, as the otherwise odious Nathan correctly points out in the film “Ex Machina”, is proving artificial intelligence. Caleb describes this as the 'chess challenge': Does the chess-playing computer know that it is playing chess? Analogously, does Ava know it has bested Nathan at his own game? Proving AI is challenging indeed!

We have considered two important reasons for thinking that Ava is a false positive:

• The Chinese Room Thought Experiment: Ava behaves as if she understands, holding conversations and interacting with people as if she does. But as Searle's Chinese Room Thought Experiment demonstrates, it might just as well be that she mimics understanding (perhaps perfectly) without actually understanding, just as Searle-in-the-room can pass the Turing Test in Chinese without understanding Chinese in the slightest. Thus Ava can pass the Turing Test without understanding she's passed the test or even grasping that she is taking a test in the first place.

• The Case of Mary: Ava behaves as if she is fully aware of her surroundings, carefully choosing clothes to wear, drawing drawings to (it seems) impress Caleb, and seeking to people-watch on a busy street corner. Thus Ava seems intelligent in part because she gives all the behavioral evidence of enjoying subjective experience (having pains, pleasures, conscious awareness of her immediate environment, feelings for Caleb, etc.) There is, it seems, something it is like to be Ava, and Nathan has figured out how to program her so there is, but how? If, as we learn from the Case of Mary, it is possible to know all the physical facts about color and color sensation without knowing what it is like to see the color red, for instance, then what it is like to see the color red is not a physical fact for Ava--or us, for that matter. Thus Ava can pass the Turing Test without there being anything whatsoever it is like to be Ava. She can express having feelings, thoughts, and experiences in passing the test without actually having any feelings, thoughts, or experiences.

In this essay, explain 1) the Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence as Turing originally conceived it, 2) the Chinese Room Thought Experiment as an argument that the Turing Test is too weak, and 3) the Case of Mary as an argument (again) that the Turing Test is too weak. Let us stipulate that your explanations must be sufficiently clear, concise, and well-written that anyone not in the class or privy to the movie Ex Machina would be able to follow them. Note that this is more challenging than it may seem. Writing for someone brand new to these concepts is never easy. You would do well to sprinkle your explanations with lots of well-chosen examples so as to make it concrete for the reader. Further, it helps to understand the motivation in each case. Why use the Turing Test, for example, and not just a standard IQ test? What point is Searle trying to make with the Chinese Room Thought Experiment? Why is it a Chinese room in particular? Why is the Case of Mary so troubling, not just for the Turing Test, but for we ourselves as well?

Finally, put it all together: In light of your cogent, well-articulated discussion of the relevant arguments, is the perfect imitation of intelligence intelligence? Justify your answer.

2. Beam Me(?) to Mars!

Consider the following new technology:

For Stelios, the teletransporter is the only way to travel. Previously it took months to get from the Earth to Mars, confined to a cramped spacecraft with a far from perfect safety record. Stelios's TeletransportExpress changed all that. Now the trip takes just minutes, and so far it has been 100 percent safe.

However, now he is facing a lawsuit from a disgruntled customer who is claiming the company actually killed him. His argument is simple: the teletransporter works by scanning your brain and body cell by cell, destroying them, beaming the information to Mars and reconstructing you there. Although the person on Mars looks, feels and thinks just like a person who has been sent to sleep and zapped across space, the claimant argues that what actually happens is that you are murdered and replaced by a clone.

To Stelios, this sounds absurd. After all, he has taken the teletransporter trip dozens of times and he doesn't feel dead. Indeed, how can the claimant seriously believe that he has been killed by the process when he is clearly able to take the case to court?

Still, as Stelios entered the teletransporter booth once again and prepared to press the button that would begin to dismantle him, he did, for a second, wonder whether he was about to commit suicide ...

--From Baggini, J. 2005. ''The Pig that Wants to be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher.'' London: Penguin Group.

Suppose you are the judge in the court case resulting from this lawsuit. You have to decide whether to find for the plaintiff or TeletransportExpress. What would your judgment be, and why? Now, being a careful judge who is well aware of the possibility of an appeal of your decision no matter which way you decide, you want to be sure to anticipate all of the counter-arguments which might be posed against the arguments you've given for your judgment. In light of the exotic and difficult nature of this case, what counter-arguments should you consider, and what should you say in response to them in writing your judgment?

3. Pluck's Bowl of Tulips

In class we examined the Problem of Induction by first distinguishing between Induction to a Generalization (IG), which we encountered at the start of the semester when we discussed the difference between inductive arguments and deductive arguments, and Induction to a Particular (IP), which seems to more closely mirror the everyday on-the-fly inductive inferences we make about about what we expect the world to be like given our experience to date of it. The problem, I suggested, can be boiled down to a simple argument:

Now consider the following scene: MacCruiskeen, a scientist, is watching the sunrise. She's accompanied by her close friend Pluck, a student of philosophy.

Pluck: Beautiful sunrise.

MacCruiskeen: Yes. And right on time, too.

Pluck: Yet there was no good reason to expect it to rise this morning.

MacCruiskeen: But the sun has risen every morning for millions of years. Of course it was going to rise this morning as well.

Pluck: There's no reason to suppose it will rise tomorrow, either. In fact, it's just as sensible to expect that a huge million-mile-wide bowl of tulips will appear on the horizon instead.

MacCruiskeen: I agree we can't be certain the sun will rise tomorrow. Some cataclysmic event might destroy the earth before then. But it's very unlikely that anything like that will happen. The probability is that the sun will rise, surely?

Pluck: You misunderstand me. I'm not just saying we can't be certain that the sun will rise tomorrow. I'm saying we have no more reason to suppose that it will rise than we have to suppose that it won't.

MacCruiskeen: That's absurd. The evidence—such as the fact that the sun has risen every morning for millions of years—overwhelmingly supports my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, too.

Pluck: You're mistaken.

--Adapted from Law, S. 2003. "The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking." New York: St. Martin's Press.

To be sure, we all share MacCruiskeen's sentiment: Pluck's insistence that we have as much reason to believe the sun will rise tomorrow as we have to believe that "a huge million-mile-wide bowl of tulips will appear on the horizon instead" is, as she puts it, absurd.

Your task in this essay, however, is to defend Pluck as ably as you can. In particular, explain why Premise (2) in the Problem of Induction is true. That is, why can't IP be justified inductively? Further, why is Premise (3) true? That is, why couldn't we invoke the laws of nature or causation generally to deductively justify IP? [Hint: Recall for this latter question our discussion of Hume on causation and his notion of the constant conjunction of events.] Be sure to illustrate your explanations with specific, well-crafted examples.