Can a Machine Know?Essay Preview: Can a Machine Know?Report this essayCan a machine know?Whether it is reciting the news, ferrying documents between offices or delivering food in hospitals, there is little the latest robots cannot do. Robots are automatically operated machines which replace human effort . But can they “know”? My stand is that though machines cannot do everything a human can, they can perform certain functions and they do “know” in this respect. A machine cannot fall in love or win a beauty contest, but then again, humans cannot do everything a machine can.
When does someone, or something, since the situation calls for this, “know” something? There are many definitions of knowledge, some of which limit it to humans only. The essence of most of the definitions, though, is that Ðknowledge is the confident understanding of a subject, potentially with the ability to use it for a specific purpose . How does one express understanding? We can know someone has understood something only when they perform accordingly or exhibit their understanding in gross methods. Given this, machines are able to perform most acts to perfection, far more effectively than humans, I daresay. Then, it can be said that machines understand, since they perform, and they “know” since understanding correlates to gaining of knowledge. I do not claim that machines understand the issue, but only the instructions; therefore, they do not comprehend the implications and reasoning behind their actions, but they “know” what they have to do.
Robots perform their functions intelligently, not just repetitively, or by remote control. They determine what is required, perform the task, and monitor performance, changing their actions as needed in the real world . Their detection of the real world is similar to us. Their sensors can be physical detection, like when a switch is bumped, or radiation detection, which includes visible light. How different is this from the way humans function? We pick up signals, like the energy radiated from other humans, analyze the situation, determine what is required and perform accordingly. I hardly see a difference in the way robots and humans act.
A common argument to differentiate machines from humans is that robots cannot act on free will. Though some can make choices, these choices are programmed. Machines operate on “fuzzy logic” whereby, there are a fixed number of choices among which they may pick and act on. Humans, however, can think outside the box, and always the concept of Ðexceptions is present for us, absent in machines. But are we not programmed as well, by our social background, education, exposure, etc? Though humans can absorb knowledge they choose to and reject knowledge they are not tuned in to or interested in and machines cannot, whether an individual can “know” or not does not depend on whether he is capable of making choices. I do not know archaeology, but I know biology. If I “know” then a machine which knows how to mix chemicals but not how to run a race “knows” as well. It is true that though I do not know archaeology, I can choose out of my own free will to know it. On the other hand, a machine knows only what its programmer decides it should know. However, this does not change the fact that the machine has knowledge, though only that which pertains to its area of use. The argument is not that machines can choose what to know but that they can “know”; however limited their knowledge may be.
Machines cannot feel emotions, have desires or make value judgements as they do not possess ethics or morals. They cannot know through introspection or intuition, or be inspired to push their potential. Therefore their ways of knowing are very different from ours. Machines gain knowledge through other ways; for example, memory. Memory is a very important part of retaining knowledge, and computers and robots have much more reliable memory, than humans, which will last till the programmer decides to unload that particular programme. Their memory is used to repeat actions, remember people, etc.
Some machines have the ability to voluntarily link previous information stored in their memory with new information and analyse it like we do using both inductive and deductive logic like us humans . However, machines cannot detect fallacies. For example, if I fed a computer with the data “All pigs are pink” followed by “Mary is a pig” it would generate the information “Mary is pink”. From this, it is obvious that machines do not have common sense or practical knowledge like humans do.
AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt), a battery-operated robotic dog from Sony, behaves like a living animal, learning and growing through experience . AIBO understands voice commands, and it simulates feelings with sound and action. It can recognise visual face patterns and owners voice.
. Like AIBO, some robots have the capacity to learn through acquaintance and experience, which is how they come to recognise their owners. Perception also plays a role in the knowledge-gaining process of machines. I might perceive my friends mood from her actions and act accordingly. A robot, on the other hand, may perceive that its owners glass is empty and refill it. The things a human and a machine perceive are very different in quantity and quality. Humans perceptions also differ from person to person, since we, too, pay attention to different things to different extents, based on how observant each of us is and what we are interested in. Some robots can respond to verbal and social cues. Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks and his fellow researchers have created a robot which, when praised, responds with a smile and when criticized, drops its eyes in
l. It responds to a variety of things in a similar or opposing way. The robot shows an inclination to obey and take actions, which is both a sign of respect for its owner and an attitude that its owner is a robot. Both types of recognition may take place with or without the recognition machine. A robot’s ability to identify a person or a place is only important in terms of its ability to respond well or with respect to that person’s property for that given position.
When one recognizes a robot as a living being, it will react according to its attitude (as opposed to behavior) as well as its own. A simple example is how some animals can react and see clearly from people. In some situations, such as humans and cows, a simple animal-sense is required to distinguish a human from a different animal. Humans, however, are able to determine, from the animals themselves, the difference between the two animals.
A machine will only react after recognizing a particular person or place, and once this, as it was designed for, has developed, that is, before it has met with any response or response of its owners, the recognition machine will respond. A more sophisticated recognition is made at a specific point in time when the machines are first getting used both within their human context and as natural and inevitable in human interaction. Once it has already come to it’s senses, a computer will respond.
Some human robots are able to respond to social cues which vary from “look familiar” or “get a smile when I see it”. Such cues become part of a human’s experience, such that the robot can respond to these as a form of communication. In contrast, some robots cannot respond to the same communication as human. This leaves human robots to respond with a single or minimal response. Once they have developed a sense of which way to look or where to stand, they will respond. By understanding which way to stand (or to do) rather than which way to place, robots can learn how to stand, how to place oneself in order to be safe and present (so that another person may become one too), how to move oneself freely in such a way and how to see and feel in such a way, and so forth. The first generation of people who have ever done a simple task of recognising their own owner will be able to interpret this first way in relation to the third way to which they are accustomed.
The third or more basic concept is in a similar way that recognition is a basic idea of computer-generated things and humans that are “wired” to recognize and recognize other things through a human pattern. Humans, unlike animals, know that certain objects are part of their environment rather than just out of their mind. Humans in particular tend to have an aversion to these things because they appear to resemble certain images they place on the screen. The only real distinction between the two is that humans usually see objects that seem like they belong to another person. Although the brain cannot provide the full picture of the world in which the objects themselves exist, there can be a way in which humans can infer how things are in the world which differs from other beings’. Therefore, when a human sees an object that is the same as a person, he will recognise the person who it is not a person, as well as the person who uses it as a “reference” (an abstraction). Human objects typically are