This Entry was Written by a Machine

Alan Turing based his research on what separates machines from man, but I think the real question is: what separates man from machine?

The greatest criticism about Turing comes from people who find humans to be spontaneous: actions and movement that are unpredictable, and occasional mistakes in logic. When thinking about these things, a computer almost seems to be too perfect: always on task, and errors only in code.

In lecture, Alex Sévigny jokingly asked if we knew if the person sitting next to us was human and not a robot. This got some laughs, but there is underlying truth. Why can't we be classified as machines? In fact, we fit the mold almost too perfectly not to be.

Have you ever watched a squirrel? Its movements are so sudden and mechanical; it is responding purely to instinct. We can tell just by looking at it that it is not really self-aware. It would probably not be hard for someone to program the behaviour of a squirrel. In this sense, a machine could literally BE a squirrel. We know the code: run, pause, climb tree, pause, chase other squirrel, pause, etc.

So, fine, we can make a machine behave like a squirrel. Big deal, right? It's a squirrel: of course a machine can replicate the behaviour of, pretty much another machine. This is just the starting point, though. The main point is that, though a squirrel is very mechanical, it is not alone there. There is a gradual movement of consciousness and intelligence as you go up. For instance, a bird's behaviour might be slightly more aware, and then a dog's would top that, then cats, etc.

This is not a quantum graph; this is a very gradual slope, all the way up to humans (you can argue in your own time whether we're at the top). So, in theory, if you could accurately predict the behaviour of a squirrel, then why not a bird? The code for behaviour would get more and more complex as you go up, but there is no dividing line, no sudden jump where you can be sure that some animals are and some animals aren't self aware. To claim that there IS a dividing line right at humans would be, as Turing wrote, "a solipsist point of view" (Turing 81).

Human beings have an insanely complex code for behaviour, which takes in so much information from the environment to make decisions. They're the little things; behaving in different social atmospheres, different stresses, different concerns. When you add it all up, it makes that every movement we make is constantly being monitored by our brain, and we react in real time. This is what causes us to be "spontaneous" and seemingly make errors in judgment.

This video is a quick look at humans from an observer's view. What to take in is how we consistently separate ourselves from animals, even monkeys, and cite various hollow reasons of why we are superior: thumbs, self awareness, etc.



The spontaneity is caused because we cannot predict it, but that is only because we could not possibly write the code for our behaviour. However, since we could perceivable write the code for the behaviour of lower, more instinctive animals, and since there is a gradual curve up to self-aware humans, it is most likely that even we are based on our instincts, though they are more covered by the millions of inner processes that monitor us.

So, are we machines? I would say yes. If you consider us to be "thinking", then so are machines, at a level maybe similar to squirrels, or if you consider machines to be run in code, then so are we as well. As Lex Luthor says in "Superman Returns", "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Similarily, any sufficiently advanced behaviour coding is indistinguishable from consciousness.

Works Cited:

Superman Returns. Dir. Bryan Singer. Perf. Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey. Warner Bros., 2006.

Turing, A.M. "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Communications Studies 1A03 Custom Courseware. Ed. Alex Sévigny. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 2006, 77-85.

What we are. Videorecording. YouTube. 2006.