[Xmca-l] Re: Interesting article on robots and social learning

[David H Kirshner]

The other side of the coin is that ineffable human experience is becoming more effable.
Computers can now look at a human brain scan and determine the degree of subjectively experienced pain:

In 2013, Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, took the logical next step by creating an algorithm that could recognize pain’s distinctive patterns; today, it can pick out brains in pain with more than ninety-five-per-cent accuracy. When the algorithm is asked to sort activation maps by apparent intensity, its ranking matches participants’ subjective pain ratings. By analyzing neural activity, it can tell not just whether someone is in pain but also how intense the experience is.

So, perhaps the computer can’t “feel our pain,” but it can sure “sense our pain!”

Here’s the full article:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/the-neuroscience-of-pain

David

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael
Sent: Tuesday, July 3, 2018 8:16 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Interesting article on robots and social learning



It seems like we are still having the same argument as when robots first came on the scene.  In response to John McCarthy, who was claiming that eventually robots can have belief systems and motivations similar to humans through AI John Searle wrote the Chinese room.  There have been a lot of responses to the Chinese room over the years and a number of digital philosopher claim it is no longer salient, but I don’t think anybody has ever effectively answered his central question.

Just a quick recap.  You come to a closed door and know there is a person on the other side. To communicate you decide the teacher the person on the other side Chinese. You do this by continuously exchanging rules systems under the door.  After a while you are able to have a conversation with the individual in perfect Chinese. But does that person actually know Chinese just from the rule systems.  I think Searle’s major point is are you really learning if you don’t know why you’re learning, or are you just repeating. Learning is embedded in the human condition and the reason it works so well and is adaptable is because we understand it when we use what we learn in the world in response to others.  To put it in response to the post, does a bomb defusion robot really learn how to defuse a bomb if it does not know why it is doing it.  It might cut the right wires at the right time but it doesn’t understand why and therefore is not doing the task just a series of steps it has been able to absorb.  Is that the opposite of human learning?

What the researcher did really isn’t that special at this point.  Well I definitely couldn’t do it and it is amazing, but it is in essence a miniature version of Libratus (which beat experts at Texas Hold em) and Alphago (which beat the second best Go player in the world).  My guess it is the same use of deep learning in which the program integrates new information into what it is already capable of.  If machines can learn from interacting with other humans then they can learn from interacting with other machines.  It is the same principle (though much, much simpler in this case).  The question is what does it mean.  As we defining learning down because of the zeitgeist.  Greg started his post saying a socio-cultural theorist be interested in this research.  I wonder if they might more likely to be the ones putting on the brakes, asking questions about it.

Michael

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2018 7:04 AM
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Interesting article on robots and social learning


Does a robot have "motivation"?

andy

________________________________
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 3/07/2018 5:28 PM, Rod Parker-Rees wrote:
Hi Greg,

What is most interesting to me about the understanding of learning which informs most AI projects is that it seems to assume that affect is irrelevant. The role of caring, liking, worrying etc. in social learning seems to be almost universally overlooked because information is seen as something that can be ‘got’ and ‘given’ more than something that is distributed in relationships.

Does anyone know about any AI projects which consider how machines might feel about what they learn?

All the best,

Rod

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu><mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Greg Thompson
Sent: 03 July 2018 02:50
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu><mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Interesting article on robots and social learning

I’m ambivalent about this project but I suspect that some young CHAT scholar out there could have a lot to contribute to a project like this one:
https://www.sapiens.org/column/machinations/artificial-intelligence-culture/

-Greg
--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu<http://greg.a.thompson.byu.edu>
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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