[Avodah] AI and Jewish Law

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2023 at 10:24:42PM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> For example, R' Micha Berger wrote:
> > It produces results that usually seem like it knows what it's
> > talking about, because the training texts generally make sense.
> > But that's why at times it fills in the pattern with nonsense.
> > Hence what people call AI "hallucinations".
> 
> Many decades ago, I came to the personal conclusion that the Turing Test (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test) might be good entertainment, but
> I rejected its value for determining whether or not a computer might ever
> be deemed "intelligent". Reasonable responses to a conversation are too
> easy for a sufficiently advanced computer, I felt. My feeling was that
> genuine intelligence could be proven best by some show of originality.

The problem is that intelligence is the presence of a subjective
perspective. An "I". Science is about objective evidence. Scientism is
a worldview which treats only objectively scientificatlly verifiable
facts as real truths. And in such a worldview, the Turing Test is
inevitable. It shifts the focus from a topic science cannot address to
one it can.

In any case, the Turing Test highlights the distinction I was trying
to make between artificial intelligence and simulated intelligence.
It doesn't care about the difference, the consciousness of the process,
the internals. Simulated intelligence is redefined as being the same
thing, since we are only judging outputs. Even originality may be
possible without real intelligence; it would just be a really good
simulation.

Sec II of my post Ruach Memalela talks about the first-hand experience of
thought, and how it relates to Unqelus's idea that "nishmas chayim" is
a "speaking spirit"
<https://aspaqlaria.aishdas.org/2006/12/20/ruach-memalela>:

   By my own experience, conscious thought happens two ways: the internal
   monologue we call a "stream of consciousness", and by setting up
   thought-experiments to run through. For example, there are two ways to
   think through the question "Does an elephant have hair?"

   Streams of consciousness, hereafter seikhel (for reasons that will
   become evident later), are a common tool of an author's trade because
   it's thought in the form of words. A solution based on this mode of
   thought might run something like this: Elephants are mammals, all
   mammals have hair, and so unless elephants are the exception to the
   rule, they must have hair. Elephants are well known and discussed
   animals. Could they be an exception to the rule and I don't know it?
   Nah, they must have hair.

   On the other hand, when I someone, and realize he has red hair, I don't
   simply pick up another fact about the person, I have the experience of
   seeing red hair. I can remember and reproduce the image of him and his
   red hair in my mind. The knowledge isn't reducable to words, it
   involves qualia, attributes of internal experience. And when I imagine
   what he would look like with black hair, I manipulate an image, not
   simply reason with concepts reducible into the words of my seikhel.
   There is a shared feature to seeing and hearing something when it
   happened, remembering the event, and imagining what the event would be
   like. When I remember my son's face, I do not simply remember facts
   about it translatable into my seikhel, the flow of words in my head. I
   actually recreate the experience of seeing it. When I remember last Yom
   Kippur's Kol Nidrei, I reproduce the experience of hearing the Chazan
   sing it, the congregation singing along.

   This is the "koach hadimyon", "the ability to make likenesses". It is
   usually translated as "imagination", but this translation is
   anachronistic -- the word "imagination" changed meaning since first
   coined by Aristotilians (such as the Rambam). Dimyon is the laboratory
   of my thought experiments.

   Solving the elephant problem through dimyon, you can remember elephants
   you saw, or saw pictures of. The detail may be blurry, so you may have
   to manipulate the picture a bit. Finally, a version of the picture
   which has a tuft of hair at the tail, maybe (if your memory is good)
   some downy hair around the eyes and ears, strikes you as the most
   familiar, the most real. And again you could reach the conclusion that
   elephants have hair.

   Note that both require being aware of one's thoughts: there is no
   stream of consciousness without a "listener" hearing the thoughts.
   There is no dimyon without an observer (and listener) watching the
   theater. This is a kind of self-awareness essential for the idea of
   "free will" to be meaningful. Free will is the ability to choose one's
   actions and reactions, which is impossible if one can not perceive
   which thoughts to choose among.

   And therefore, the ru'ach, the seat of will, must be self-aware.
   Conscious thought comes from the awareness of our thoughts, including
   our awareness of that awareness itself, and so on in an infinite
   regress. Free will comes from being able to monitor one's thoughts and
   edit them based on judging what one monitors.

Section IV talks about the Turing Test


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 You are where your thoughts are.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp           - Ramban, Igeres haQodesh, Ch. 5
Author: Widen Your Tent
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF