Can a Machine Know?

CAN A MACHINE KNOW?

As technology advances rapidly, machines have replaced humans in many aspects of daily life. People had to rely on horses for transportation in the past, but now there are cars, trains, planes, and even space shuttles that one can use to get from place to place. A simple machine such as the calculator can calculate numbers with greater speed and accuracy than the human brain. A machine is a thing that stores information, remembers it and performs according to what it has been programmed to do. However, do they know what they are doing? There is an uncertainty in the definition of Ð''knowing' something. How does one define what it means to know something? Its definition is depended on one's bias. Even though one could argue that machines do know, it is more convincing to say that machines only do what they are programmed to do.

Machines are only capable of storing information and remembering it. All machines were created by human beings. Machines have a memory that allows them to store information, and only does what it is programmed to do. They do not have emotion or thoughts like humans. Human beings' reactions are affected by language, emotion, and possibly perception. However, machines do not have that. They can only react according to how they have been programmed to do so.

One might argue that machines can know in certain areas of knowledge, such as in mathematics. Again, the whole discussion depends on the definition of Ð''knowing' something. Calculators, even though made by human beings, can perform calculations faster and more accurately than humans. In fact, they are never wrong. On the other hand, there is possibility that human beings could make calculation mistakes. Nonetheless, human beings can think. Human beings can use certain formulas and equations to find more things. The major difference between human beings and machines is that humans can think and machines can not. Machines like calculators only function and able to do work when one plugs a number in and makes it perform the calculation. They have to be operated by human beings. Therefore, machines can not and do not know.

Movies such as, I Robot and Terminator, show machines that are able to think just like us, human beings. Machines are depicted as no longer just storage devices but something that can think. Nonetheless, they still do not have emotions like human beings do. They can neither cry nor experience sadness, and they cannot feel happy. Also, they have an objective and once it is achieved, they must be told what to do next. In areas of knowledge such as the Arts, machines can mass produce the copies of a drawing. Nonetheless, they can never produce a drawing with emotion and feeling. They do not know what the drawing looks like nor do they know the feelings conveyed through the drawing.

There is difficulty in judging whether a machine knows or not. Every one has a different perspective of view. The biggest difference between a robot and a human being is that one's personality is developed and affected by the environment around him. However, the feeling the robot has is not actually a feeling. Simply, it is programmed to do so. The feelings the robot has are the some possible feelings we have that are programmed into it by the programmer. Even if someone is dead, and the machine is programmed to laugh, it will. For example, suppose there were a boy and a machine. The boy was taught to laugh when his mother dies. The robot is programmed to consider the boy's mother as his own mother and the boy as his brother. He reads the boy and the mother as its brother and mother, but does not know why. The programmer also programmed the robot to laugh when its mother dies. The boy, when his mom dies, will probably cry even though he was taught to laugh when his mom dies. He does so because of the love from his mother. He can feel the sadness and can not laugh even though he had been trained to do so. Nonetheless, the robot will laugh when its mom dies.

Recently, NASA has sent a spaceship to Mars with an artificial intelligent machine in the spaceship. It was programmed