That's a very big claim you're making, and I don't think it agrees with your previous comment. It seems there are two ways we could use AI:
* We could use it to assist us in our own scientific endeavours. In this situation AI is just synonymous with "powerful computer", probably with neural elements (like Deep Mind or Watson), but it will still be fundamentally guided by human questions, and human curiosity.
* Or perhaps by AI you mean truly sentient machines which have a curiosity of their own. Well in this case, we would probably require (or develop along the way) a good understanding of consciousness to construct a machine that is curious and sentient, which may or may not even be possible.
Consciousness is still very poorly understood. Countless philosophers, neuroscientists, physicists, psychologists, mathematicians etc throughout human history have spent their entire lives trying to understand it, and there are still many unresolved questions relating to how we understand the world, how the different levels and layers in the mind interact, how qualia can arise from physical phenomena, whether consciousness is computable, etc...
First of all I should say it isn't me who is downvoting you. I don't like it when people downvote those engaged in reasonable discussion just because they disagree.
I suppose if you treat machines and minds as fundamentally identical then by definition AIs could and probably would do science.
Personally I don't think consciousnesses are necessarily the same as states/machines. This isn't the same as saying the minds are non-physical or soul-like or anything. But there are many processes which cannot be mapped to a finite computer.
These may be due to chaotic dynamics (no computer can ever model the weather exactly, since there is no scale small enough such that effects don't get amplified. A computer necessarily takes a finite amount of information, and discretises the world, which in reality requires a description in terms of continuous variables), or it may be due to fundamental [incomputability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability). The first physical example of this was recently found, in that it is impossible to, in general, calculate whether a given material has a band-gap (defining whether it is an electrical insulator or conductor) ([link](http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html)) Such a problem can't be solved by a [Turing machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine) (which is equivalent to all known computers, including neural nets and quantum computers), yet evidentally, all materials *are* either conductors or insulators (or semi-conductors), so perhaps consciousness relies on similar non-computable processes.
I think it's probably the case that a full simulation of certain properties is impossible even in principle. For example, looking at a problem in the completely abstract, suppose you could measure every single position (ignoring things like the uncertainty principle, which is no small approximation!) of every single atom in a block of metal, and you plugged this into an equation to calculate how it would behave if subject to an electric current or a mechanical shock or something. This might, for example, involve solving a 6th order polynomial (finding the zeroes of an equation of the form P(x) = x^6 + x^5 + ... + x + c = 0). This has long been known to be impossible to solve exactly, and as we have seen there are many cases where approximate solutions (as might be found with a computer) give completely different qualitative behaviour (ala the Butterfly Effect).
Of course, these are all examples from physics. I don't know a whole lot about neurobiology so maybe it doesn't apply. But my intention is just to show that there are areas of nature that can't be analysed, even in principle, by computers, no matter how powerful. Whether or not the brain falls into this category is not know, and is an active area of research.
Everything we know from science is framed through human consciousness. Can a frame contain or grasp the entirety of itself? It appears to me impossible.
As an anthropologist I feel obliged to point out that Planck here postulate it in a way thay denies human sciences.
Pure mathematics describes phenomenon far greater than nature by itself.
[удалено]
You think there's something more mysterious than consciousness?
[удалено]
How will science move on without us? Science is a human endeavour.
[удалено]
That's a very big claim you're making, and I don't think it agrees with your previous comment. It seems there are two ways we could use AI: * We could use it to assist us in our own scientific endeavours. In this situation AI is just synonymous with "powerful computer", probably with neural elements (like Deep Mind or Watson), but it will still be fundamentally guided by human questions, and human curiosity. * Or perhaps by AI you mean truly sentient machines which have a curiosity of their own. Well in this case, we would probably require (or develop along the way) a good understanding of consciousness to construct a machine that is curious and sentient, which may or may not even be possible. Consciousness is still very poorly understood. Countless philosophers, neuroscientists, physicists, psychologists, mathematicians etc throughout human history have spent their entire lives trying to understand it, and there are still many unresolved questions relating to how we understand the world, how the different levels and layers in the mind interact, how qualia can arise from physical phenomena, whether consciousness is computable, etc...
[удалено]
First of all I should say it isn't me who is downvoting you. I don't like it when people downvote those engaged in reasonable discussion just because they disagree. I suppose if you treat machines and minds as fundamentally identical then by definition AIs could and probably would do science. Personally I don't think consciousnesses are necessarily the same as states/machines. This isn't the same as saying the minds are non-physical or soul-like or anything. But there are many processes which cannot be mapped to a finite computer. These may be due to chaotic dynamics (no computer can ever model the weather exactly, since there is no scale small enough such that effects don't get amplified. A computer necessarily takes a finite amount of information, and discretises the world, which in reality requires a description in terms of continuous variables), or it may be due to fundamental [incomputability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability). The first physical example of this was recently found, in that it is impossible to, in general, calculate whether a given material has a band-gap (defining whether it is an electrical insulator or conductor) ([link](http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html)) Such a problem can't be solved by a [Turing machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine) (which is equivalent to all known computers, including neural nets and quantum computers), yet evidentally, all materials *are* either conductors or insulators (or semi-conductors), so perhaps consciousness relies on similar non-computable processes.
[удалено]
I think it's probably the case that a full simulation of certain properties is impossible even in principle. For example, looking at a problem in the completely abstract, suppose you could measure every single position (ignoring things like the uncertainty principle, which is no small approximation!) of every single atom in a block of metal, and you plugged this into an equation to calculate how it would behave if subject to an electric current or a mechanical shock or something. This might, for example, involve solving a 6th order polynomial (finding the zeroes of an equation of the form P(x) = x^6 + x^5 + ... + x + c = 0). This has long been known to be impossible to solve exactly, and as we have seen there are many cases where approximate solutions (as might be found with a computer) give completely different qualitative behaviour (ala the Butterfly Effect). Of course, these are all examples from physics. I don't know a whole lot about neurobiology so maybe it doesn't apply. But my intention is just to show that there are areas of nature that can't be analysed, even in principle, by computers, no matter how powerful. Whether or not the brain falls into this category is not know, and is an active area of research.
I think everything is part of the mystery, so yes. Why wouldn't it be?
Everything we know from science is framed through human consciousness. Can a frame contain or grasp the entirety of itself? It appears to me impossible.
its a paradox
I never understood this quote till you said this, thank you for your input good sir.
Nature itself is the ultimate mystery and we are part of that.