Artificial Intelligence

The imitation of rational thought, as performed by a computer, is not the same thing as awareness. To me, consciousness requires this mysterious quality of awareness. The basic question is: When does a calculating machine (like the brain) become aware? We might suppose that since the brain is a calculating biological machine, then any calculating biological machine is aware. Or perhaps any calculating machine at all, like a computer. But I see no justification for this huge leap. We are led to paradoxes. If a computer is aware, then why not an abacus or cash register? Perhaps the fact that the brain is biological makes a difference. But we still have paradoxes. For instance, one could argue that any organ is a 'calculating machine', in some sense. That may seem like a strange statement, but 'calculation' in the brain is just the processing of intricate patterns of chemicals and electrical impulses, which happen to represent 'information'. Other organs do something rather similar, if you think about it, but they are obviously not conscious. Even though the connection to 'information' is not so clear, the fact remains that with any organ we simply have an organized manipulation of chemicals and electrical impulses, much like the brain, but there is no consciousness. You may argue that the brain is much more complicated, but then why doesn't the liver, for example, have a simple consciousness of some sort? Is it the particular chemicals of the brain? But the basic elements are the same: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and so forth. Why do some combinations of elements have consciousness and others do not? So there is something very unique and mysterious about the brain, which leads me in a spiritual and metaphysical direction, even if that is not currently fashionable. Sorry to be so long-winded, but I love this kind of stuff!

I don't think analog is more conducive to consciouness than digital, as one can simulate analog circuits with digital ones (and vice versa).

If you read Kurzweil, he states that by 2030 or so (can't be sure), we'll have conscious computers. But Kurzweil only seems to refer to the raw computing power and not the software side. We still haven't managed to come up with abstract software methods for simulating conscious, even at a basic level. But this could change with more research.

But mark these words: if (sorry, when) we invent a conscious computer, it'll be the very last thing we invent.

That picture of R2D2 makse AI look cute... but there is another vision of it in the Terminator films...

After all intelligent humans have killed hundreds of millions of their fellows over the centuries.

I'm against AI as like most technology it has a very dark side, which is ignored.

I have worked on analog computers before. The modern equivalent would be to replace the analog amplifiers with digital or precise molecular simulators. To do so might enhance speed of calculation somewhat, perhaps enhance the simulation of organic systems a little better, but programming and design aren't that much different than using some kind of software (DasyLab or LabView) to create modules in a digital environment which do the same thing. The hype in some university lab over analog vs. digital is just grant-sucking hype, like everything else in the research world these days. Nobody really wants to sit down and think about questions anymore; they want to shed the responsibility of decisions off onto a machine or a 'team' or a committee that will forever delay actually considering the questions which they 'intend' to ask the computers.

The scary part of inventing a logical decision-making machine that controls the future of our actions is that we would finally lose the committees that allow us to avoid doing what we know needs to be done.

A machine would just end up telling us that we are freakin' stupid and addicted to our own marketing psychology. It would say, "you don't need to know election results immediately", "you don't need commercial airlines", "you don't need automobiles", and "you have to cut your populations down to 1/6th of what they are now".
"Oh BTW, God is illogical, so get rid of all that paraphernalia called religion."