a.ashfield <a.ashfi...@verizon.net> wrote:
> I think it follows we will have a "conscious" computer even earlier than > Kurzweil forecasts. I think there are various levels of intelligence. Roughly speaking here are three points on the spectrum: 1. Thinking. You can make a case that even guppies and earthworms do this. 2. Conscious. Awareness of surroundings. Some ability to make choices, rather than purely instinct driving, hard-wired brain functions. I expect that mice are conscious. In this article it was estimated that present-day artificial intelligence computers have roughly as many virtual synapses as a mouse brain has. 3. Sentient, or self-aware. At the lowest level, this means knowing that you are an animal and an object in the real world. There is no doubt that apes and other intelligent creatures have this. At the zoo in Boston, when you take a picture of a chimpanzee with a digital camera, it will pose and then demand to see the back of your camera. Especially males do this, according to my daughter, who is studying biology. My guess is that computers are somewhere between 1 and 2. They have probably not achieved 2 because people who design computers are not trying to achieve this at present. Perhaps consciousness will emerge on its own as a meta-phenomenon. There are an infinite number of steps between each level. There are various mental achievements. For example, male crickets are capable of fighting for domination, which is sophisticated behavior. It is impressive for such a small brain. Surely, this is a form of thinking, even if it is mainly instinct driven. Unfortunately for the crickets, they cannot tell one another apart, and they cannot tell the difference between a cricket and a plastic model of one. So, naturalists who wanted to give a male cricket an inferiority complex engaged in ritual combat with him using a plastic model of a cricket. They did this over and over again with the same plastic model. The poor guy-cricket did not realize he was fighting the same dummy cricket every time. Apparently this sapped his male hormone supply, a.k.a. precious bodily fluids. - Jed
