-Given it is an artifact, each program has a relation to the human mind as its maker.
Given it is a program, it is also within the class of programs and so none could be the maker of all of them, any more than a fire could light all possible fires (a flame can’t light itself).
-If artificial intelligence is intelligence, it is another intelligence alongside ours; if it is artificial it is subordinate to ours.
-But not all activities of agents and instruments are diverse, are they? Mowing, digging… even computing. Is it significant that these tend to be transitive actions, even the computing of a correct answer? So far as intelligence is productive, transitive, etc. it’s action might well be outsourced to machines. This might even go as far as having them write symphonies and books. But to relate to them as true or desirable, both which require self-awareness, is a very different thing.
Just Thomism 
James Chastek said,
December 1, 2015 at 5:35 pm
There are a lot of counterfactuals here, and they seem to rule out a lot of possible things the machine might say (or is it “say”?) Will it fear its own disassembly? Will it see identical programs as the same self? Will it be amazed at my own human transcendental existence, or pray to me as a god or see metal as its father? What would it say to this argument? The possible experience is too variable for me to declare now what I will think of it.
Another related problem: if we develop this Turing-tested AI and it says “I’m not conscious” would we reprogram it to say that it was? IOW what standard will we use to treat its responses about its conscious states as mistaken and therefore in need of reprogramming?
At any rate, human beings have a long history of imputing consciousness to things that lack it, from trees to idols to magic eight balls and ouija boards. Maybe AI will be the last great trick we play on ourselves. I’m reminded of the last episode of “Black Mirror” where a person became attached to a computer program that assembled responses to questions from the social-media posts of a dead loved one and spoke them back in the loved one’s voice. That seems to be both an instance of what you’re speaking of, and an objection to it.
Zippy said,
December 1, 2015 at 7:51 pm
I think Searle’s Chinese Room argument against the consciousness of AI is pretty much as irrefutable as arguments get.
Zippy said,
December 3, 2015 at 10:16 am
Autocorrect is actually a pretty good example of the state of the art, because it involves day to day interaction with large numbers of ordinary people in non-contrived circumstances in natural language. Siri is also a good example. Both of those are more real world than contrived research projects, and have vast resources behind them as I already mentioned: top minds, top equipment, top money.
Self-driving cars, not so much. They are great technology, don’t get me wrong, and impress people as a demo of cool technology; but they are basically a glorified industrial control system. I personally designed and built a simple autonomous vehicle as an undergrad decades ago.
Don’t misunderstand; tech is great. But computers will never, never, never, never actually become conscious. Strong AI is nonsense. And yes, I think it is provably nonsense (to the extent that much of anything is provable).
Zippy said,
December 1, 2015 at 7:53 pm
The “state of the art” in computer AI these days, with vast sums of money and rooms filled with hardware behind it, is autocorrect on a smart phone.
Make of that what you will.
James Chastek said,
December 2, 2015 at 6:13 am
I’m a total babe in the woods about tech stuff, so I can’t tell if this is serious. Really? Autocorrect?
Zippy said,
December 2, 2015 at 7:56 am
I was being somewhat tongue in cheek, but it wouldn’t be funny (to me at least) if there weren’t truth to it. I don’t know what happens in the AI labs in universities, but I know that it has orders of magnitude fewer resources – money, brainpower, manpower, warehouses of ‘cloud’ hardware and software, etc – than showcase features of smartphones. And Apple’s Siri (for example) can’t really tell when it is and is not appropriate to zip up your pants.
So I’m not too worried about Skynet becoming self aware and deciding to kill off humanity any time soon. AI is a conceit on the part of computer programmers that they are doing something anywhere in the vicinity of the equivalent dignity of parenthood.
Reubs said,
December 6, 2015 at 11:16 pm
“AI is a conceit on the part of computer programmers that they are doing something anywhere in the vicinity of the equivalent dignity of parenthood.”
perfect