A Discussion of the Project
We will be examining our Wumpus World robot as it relates to intelligence, consciousness, minds, and how our experience making the robot impacts our view on the feasibility of strong AI.
Determining our robot’s intelligence requires that we must first give a definition of intelligence. Intelligence is a trait that includes being self-aware and the ability to adapt to new information change its behavior as a result. When we take this definition into account, we can conclude that although the robot has problem-solving capabilities, it does not meet the requirements to be intelligent due to the lack of self-awareness.
Following the fact that the robot lacks self-awareness, the robot is also not conscious. In order for something to have a consciousness, there must be some awareness of an internal or external existence. The program that we have written does not have the ability to perceive any type of existence and as such we must conclude that the robot does not have a consciousness.
Similar to our conclusion of the robot’s ability to have a consciousness, we can conclude that the robot is unable to have a mind
Because there is no physical basis for the robot, just a bunch of logic written as code, there is nowhere for the mind to be stored in a way that follows materialism. On the other hand, if we follow a dualist perspective, we should see effects on the world by the mind in the same way that other minds influence the physical world. The robot was created using a reductionist philosophy and the actions of the robot can be fully predicted and comprehended using such a philosophy. This also discounts a dualist type mind since such a mind should not be deterministic and should not be able to be broken down in a reductionist way. Our file with some fancy lines of text does not have a mind.
Upon completion of this project the feasibility of Strong AI, an agent that is intelligent and conscious, seems unlikely. The robot displays minor problem-solving capabilities as well as some ability to react to its environment. However, we did not create, nor did we come close to creating something that is truly intelligent or even remotely conscious. By looking at only this project, it seems nigh impossible to create something with the complexities that a strong AI would have. Given the amount of time that we worked on the project, there is no real basis in which we can disprove the possibility of a Strong AI in the future.
Our robot is more like a traditional machine and is highly deterministic. Given the same set of inputs, the same outputs are also given. It does not know anything except the game. It will be completely useless in any other situation.