Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!mirror!rayssd!raybed2!linus!mbunix!bwk
From: bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: a small subset of AI
Summary: Evolving an AI system toward self awareness and consciousness.
Keywords: Value System, Free Will, Self Awareness, Consciousness
Message-ID: <43104@linus.UUCP>
Date: 18 Dec 88 21:07:51 GMT
References: <1185@arctic.nprdc.arpa>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort)
Organization: Protoplasmics, Inc., Cleft Chasm, NM
Lines: 24

In article <1185@arctic.nprdc.arpa> huntley@nprdc.arpa (David Huntley) writes:

 > Can anyone tell me how AI on computers entails consideration of free-will,
 > self-awareness, consciousness, subconsciousness, unconsciousness or, in
 > short, non-biological human replication?

An AI system with limited processing capacity must make choices about
the problems it elects to contemplate.  The wise use of intelligent
resources calls for a Value System.  It is difficult to address the
issue of constructing a Value System without considering Free Will.

An AI system which takes as a goal the expansion and refinement
of its knowledge base needs to be able to monitor its progress
in knowledge acquisition.  Such an ability may be called self-awareness.

An AI system which has the power of agency (the power to alter its
environment) needs to distinguish between passively observed phenomena
and phenomena caused by its own activity.  This ability may be
thought of as consciousness.

As to non-biological replication, you might want to peruse von Neumann's
book, _On the Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata_.

--Barry Kort