<story><title>Roger Penrose on Why Consciousness Does Not Compute</title><url>http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/roger-penrose-on-why-consciousness-does-not-compute</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deepnotderp</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m honestly not sure why artificial intelligence comes up every time Penrose&amp;#x27;s hypothesis is mentioned. The point of artificial intelligence is not ( at least in my and several other prominent AI scientist&amp;#x27;s such as Andrew Ng&amp;#x27;s opinion) to create a &lt;i&gt;conscious&lt;/i&gt; intelligence, but to create intelligence that can do many of the useful tasks that we can do. Whether or not it&amp;#x27;s conscious along the way is largely irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;That being said, I&amp;#x27;m not sure why there&amp;#x27;s quite so much vitriol towards Penrose and his hypothesis, the leveraging of quantum effects in photosynthesis and enzymes have been demonstrated and recent studies show that the sense of smell may also be based upon quantum phenomena. So it&amp;#x27;s not all too unreasonable that there might be &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt; quantum going on, even if it&amp;#x27;s not Penrose and Hameroff&amp;#x27;s microtubules.&lt;p&gt;Another interesting quantum hypothesis in neuroscience is Fisher&amp;#x27;s: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.quantamagazine.org&amp;#x2F;20161102-quantum-neuroscience&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.quantamagazine.org&amp;#x2F;20161102-quantum-neuroscience...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marcosdumay</author><text>&amp;quot;Quantum effects&amp;quot; is not the same as &amp;quot;quantum computing&amp;quot;. This is the same bullshit as the D-Wave marketing, just in a different domain.&lt;p&gt;Quantum computing happening in the brain is an extremely extraordinary hypothesis, and requires some very good evidence before it&amp;#x27;s accepted. Quantum effects happening on the brain is a &amp;quot;well, duh, and you&amp;#x27;ll tell me water is wet later?&amp;quot; hypothesis, and requires some good evidence not to believe in it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Roger Penrose on Why Consciousness Does Not Compute</title><url>http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/roger-penrose-on-why-consciousness-does-not-compute</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deepnotderp</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m honestly not sure why artificial intelligence comes up every time Penrose&amp;#x27;s hypothesis is mentioned. The point of artificial intelligence is not ( at least in my and several other prominent AI scientist&amp;#x27;s such as Andrew Ng&amp;#x27;s opinion) to create a &lt;i&gt;conscious&lt;/i&gt; intelligence, but to create intelligence that can do many of the useful tasks that we can do. Whether or not it&amp;#x27;s conscious along the way is largely irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;That being said, I&amp;#x27;m not sure why there&amp;#x27;s quite so much vitriol towards Penrose and his hypothesis, the leveraging of quantum effects in photosynthesis and enzymes have been demonstrated and recent studies show that the sense of smell may also be based upon quantum phenomena. So it&amp;#x27;s not all too unreasonable that there might be &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt; quantum going on, even if it&amp;#x27;s not Penrose and Hameroff&amp;#x27;s microtubules.&lt;p&gt;Another interesting quantum hypothesis in neuroscience is Fisher&amp;#x27;s: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.quantamagazine.org&amp;#x2F;20161102-quantum-neuroscience&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.quantamagazine.org&amp;#x2F;20161102-quantum-neuroscience...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bitwize</author><text>&amp;gt; The point of artificial intelligence is not ( at least in my and several other prominent AI scientist&amp;#x27;s such as Andrew Ng&amp;#x27;s opinion) to create a conscious intelligence, but to create intelligence that can do many of the useful tasks that we can do.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s only one school of AI (&amp;quot;weak AI&amp;quot;). The other school (&amp;quot;strong AI&amp;quot;) says that it&amp;#x27;s certainly worthwhile to create an intelligence that is capable of thought the way humans are -- if only to get a better handle on what &amp;quot;thought&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;intelligence&amp;quot; really are. Currently weak AI is &amp;quot;winning&amp;quot; because the surveillance and online-advertising industries can get more use out of it. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t put strong AI out of reach, nor render it wholly irrelevant.</text></comment>