/Intelligence and consciousness are a bit difficult to define in a way agreeable to all.
Boy that's the stuff there.
/I prefer the term consciousness to self awareness, which seems to be only one aspect of consciousness.
Indeed, but it's valid to specify one or the other.
/Ignoring definitions, Deep Blue beating Gary Kasparov certainly indicates that behavior which seems intelligent can occur without consciousness. A person with no knowledge of the algorithms programmed into Deep Blue would consider the system intelligent.
Certainly.
/Deep Blue proves that AI behavior which mimics intelligence is possible, suggesting that AI intelligence cannot be dismissed as impossible.
Certainly.
/On the basis of the above, I would say that intelligence is possible without consciousness, but it is difficult to imagine the converse.
I see you've never met my mom's new husband.
/I see no reason why it is not possible to develop an AI device with no consciousness.
Certainly you must be correct, depending on your defnition of intelligence.
/An interesting related question is whether consciousness is a necessary byproduct or merely an accidental byproduct of the complex intelligence we attribute to humans. Could intelligence evolve without consciousness? Off hand, I do not see any reason why the two must occur together.
Again it depends on your def of course but I saw a doohickie on the science channel this one time regarding neandrothols. The hypothesis was I believe just as you said, that the ability to focus and perform tasks was as far as neandrothol ever got. They were imagining neandrothol as a "mind full of minds" if you will, each of the inner minds only able to manage certain tasks. One that let them focus intently on sharpening the edge of a stone for ten hours, one that wanted to mate, one for hunting, etc. So yeah good point there. I'm not sure if such a being would be "self aware" but I'd think them definately conscious.
/When I compare Deep Blue to a human playing chess, I visualize the human having thots like the following.
- /I am playing chess and I expect to win (or lose). I wish I were doing something else or I am enjoying this game. Focus! If you let your mind stray too much, you will lose to this dope. I wonder how many are rooting for me and how many for my opponent.
/To me, the human mind has two distinct components. One component (the intelligent part) does the thinking, planning, and directs the necessary motor activities to accomplish some task. The other component sets goals and seems to be watching the worker doing the job. I think of my life as analogous to a movie. One component is the main character in the movie, while the other is directing and watching the movie.
The part that directs and watches may be the one that ties it all together and moves from conscious to "self-aware"?
/I think the above suggests something about my concept of intelligence and consciousness without attempting a formal definition of either term.
Hmmm.. so "self awareness" now seems to me like a "tying together of multiple processing sections" or kind of "hive mind" all within the same mind. So first, intelligence. Hmm. Does intelligence have to be adaptive? What does that mean? I mean, I'm not sure "deep blue" is intelligent, because it cannot alter its code.
/BTW: I do not think that true AI is possible using current computer architecture. I do not think that more memory and more CPU power will do the job using anything like current systems, even ones with a lot of parallel processors.
Totally agreed. Seems to me that some sort of genetic/evolutionary architechure will have to be developed.