Clicking for consciousness

September 1, 2000 6:41 AM

Clicking for consciousness Depressingly reductionist. It is wrong to think that if we can't tell the difference between a binary machine in a box and a person in a box we should behave as if there were no difference.
posted by scum (3 comments total)

I'm amazed that there are still AI people who think their domain relates directly to human consciousness. That's like so twenty years ago. Reminds me of Kurzweil's fantastic predictions wrt apparent ignorance of even basic neuroscience. They could maybe produce/mimic some linguistic or symbolic thought processes, but as has been pointed out many years ago, this is nothing close to our "humanity". That entails a body, muscle and nerves, saliva, etc. -- because nothing can exactly replicate the sense and implication of having these things.
posted by EngineBeak at 7:43 AM on September 1, 2000

Although admittedly the whole AI thing, even if across-the-board successful in their goals, would not be creating another human but merely another being, I didn't know we had arrived at a consensus about what constitutes human consciousness in the first place.

So computers will never think like humans. Neither will humans.

This project sounds hubristic, but so did the Human Genome Project, and they're pretty much done their task. Maybe something useful and meaningful will come out of this. Odd as it looks right now.
posted by chicobangs at 8:26 AM on September 1, 2000

Heh heh. I read the headline of this post and thought it was another article about Kenny Baker returning as R2-D2 in the next Star Wars movie.
posted by briandame at 12:06 PM on September 1, 2000