You could create a computer with infinite speed and memory and you still would not have a "smart intelligent" computer. We already have computers that operate many times over faster then the human brain and store endless more memory. In the end AI is about software programming. That means us humans have to program something that recreates what is working in our brains. I suggest real AI is extreme fantasy and people are kidding themselves into thinking it is just around the corner.

To make AI I believe you first have to program the code that defines the properties of a soul/the experiencer with code that determines things that mimic purpose, survival instinct, experiences that are desirable and what is not desirable. Example I have chemicals started in the brain that give me pleasure or pain depending on an experience. I like the experience of tasting good pizza and drinking good beer but would not going to like the experience of drinking piss like Budweiser. Our bodies are pre-programmed to give us these corresponding chemical responses without us even thinking. So for this to work you would need to define the properties of the world environment laws that can be used to determine what is good and bad. (enormous coding effort to just recreate that) Next to make AI I believe you need a software program that can teach itself. That is how our brains work. We start with minimal abilities as a child and interact with the environment, learn and become who we are today.(No one has been able to even really touch this type of code with anything worth mentioning). Next you need to create code that mimics all the sensory input of sight, sound, vision and touch. Each one of those is an enormous coding task in themselves and something past the simple basic video camera. Just because you can create a lens that sees the environment that has nothing to do with the ability for it to translate that into an understanding of what it is seeing. And a computer being able to determine what is enjoyable music compared to what is just noise I think alone speaks to us humans as having a soul and there being ultimate limitations in what you can code with AI. How else do you explain the purpose of enjoyment of music without a soul with people having different tastes to music on top of it? And then there is probably a number of other things I am not thinking of that would have to be coded to mimic a human. For example the need to ask why? and question things or the million of other concepts that exist like this that make us human.

We have done some amazing things in the last hundred years with technology but don't fool yourself into thinking those same accomplishments all combined compare in anyway to a possible future accomplishment of creating real AI or our ability to even reach such heights. AI that exists today is such a joke compared to what the human intelligence can do. If you do not agree with me then you probably have not given this enough thought or understanding of the true effort and task of creating real human AI in a computer.

But this is not about making a 'real human' AI computer. No one said anything about a human computer. No computer needs a 'soul' to be unimaginably smart. Now you CAN say that at some point humans will have nanobots inhabiting brains, and contributing to a person's overall ability for memory/creative enhancement. But not the other way around! If indeed 'coding a soul' is even remotely possible, that is not even in the sights of the most adventurous futurists. They are just figuring out how to eventually build a machine that will figure out how to duplicate the human brain's massive parallelism and marry that to the computer's ever-quickening computational ability. Human brains are not that fast compared to computers in computing, but their massive parallelism so makes up for it that we are still on a par in some ways. But when artificial computing becomes massively parallel...the sky is nowhere near the limit.

The last thing we ever need to think about (and the first thing we never need) is how to give a computer 'Ego'.

True You have a good point that AI does not have to mimic the human to maybe be smart. But it seems to me if the AI can not mimic at least degrees of human purpose, learning and sensory input then it will not be all that intelligent. Its hard to get away from those basic principles and still end up with something smat because all three go hand and hand together and if you leave one out the others are pointless.

I would be surprised if we even see someone program something to the level of an ant intelligence in our lifetime. I have written my share of code in my lifetime and I have some idea what is involved. It takes alot of time to just write code to things you think would be simple. You need to think of a Chinese billion size army of coders and someone with an insane vision to manage all those coders to produce what is necessary to make a worth while AI.

Now enhancing a human's mental ability with nanobots or something else I can not speak for or against. But it does not seem too far fetched to imagine with todays technology augmenting a human's brain to calculate/think faster. In a way it already is done.. Everytime I pick up a calculator to use I am enhancing my thinking ability just that its not implanted in my brain yet.

No commnet.

Wow, at that point I'll figure we have arrived for quite some time.

All the talk about consciousness, intellegence, and so on, assume we have some idea what those things really are. And, why is human intelligence a noble goal? Look at the trouble it's got us in to to date.

kurzweil is pretty well known for his aggressive predictions of the "singularity". I hope he's right and I make it. But, I'm dubious.

But, I think the real future lies in an understanding of the potential of Quantum computing. I like what Seth Lloyd has to say. It makes more sense that anything I've heard to date, and he is getting results (watch the video).

http://www.edge.org/documents/life/life_index.html#lloyd

QUOTE

When a computer is in need of therapy, I"l know were on the right track.