Chapter
Twelve
The evolution of machines
admired McCarthy’s courageous answer, for he replied, ‘My thermostat has three
beliefs – it’s too hot in here, it’s too cold in here, and it’s just right in here’ (Searle,
1984, p. 30).
The thermostat was an unfortunate choice for Searle but lucky for McCarthy.
Although extremely simple, it has two of the crucial features required of an
autonomous agent: it perceives its environment, and it responds to changes by
acting on that environment. A thermostat is not an abstraction or a disembod-
ied computation; it is grounded in the real world through its actions – simple as
they are.
You might think that McCarthy was joking, or that he didn’t mean that ther-
mostats have real beliefs like ours. But this implies that you think there is a
difference between real intentionality and only as-if intentionality. Do you?
As we’ve seen, Searle argues that only biological human beings have the
real thing, whereas computers and robots behave as if they understand lan-
guages, believe things, and have experiences. If you agree with Searle, then
you have to decide what the difference is between the real thing and the
simulation.
If you reject the distinction, you might say that the beliefs of thermostats are just
as real as human beliefs, although far simpler, or you might say that the whole
idea of real beliefs is misguided, and that all human intentionality is as-if inten-
tionality. Either way, humans and machines have the same kind of beliefs and we
humans are already surrounded by believing machines.
Are any of today’s machines conscious? To some people, intentionality (being
about something) entails or requires consciousness. The Chinese Room argument
was designed to deal with intentionality, but both Searle and some of his critics
applied it to consciousness, in the sense that only a conscious being could really
understand Chinese. On this interpretation, if any machine has beliefs (one kind
of intentionality), it must thereby be conscious.
Others distinguish consciousness from intentionality, but then the same dichot-
omy between real and as-if arises for consciousness too. If you think this way,
then robot-builders need to find out what real consciousness is and whether a
machine could have it. Alternatively, if there is no difference between real con-
sciousness and as-if consciousness, we humans are already sharing our world
with the beginnings of AC.
I have no more hope, nor project, nor strength, nor will, I go and I
live like a wheel that has been pushed and that will roll until it falls
over, like a leaf that flies on the wind as long as the air holds it up,
like the thrown stone that falls until it finds the bottom – a human
machine that sheds tears and secretes pain, an inert thing that finds
itself here without cause, created by an incomprehensible force and
understanding nothing about itself.
(Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education
[L’Éducation sentimentale], 1869)‘Room thermostats are
not conscious’(Aleksander, 2007, p. 97)