Do you think machine consciousness is possible?
lux: No one's mentioned On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins yet... I'm surprised. Check it out here:http://www.onintelligence.org/Great read on exactly this topic, and one of the more plausible paths to actually achieving machine intelligence. But it's not through the typical path followed by most AI research up until recently. He argues you need to look at how the neocortex actually works, how it communicates with the senses, stores data and learns patterns, in order to create anything artificial that displays intelligence. I'm inclined to agree.Our brains may seem to map to computer-like functions reasonably well (short & long-term memory, processing, input/output, etc), but there are key differences. Hawkins argues that it's all based on input and learning to recognize patterns within that input. A few interesting points I remember:- More feedback goes back to the senses and/or higher levels of the cortex than data is sent in. This seems to imply that the lower levels are recognizing larger patterns and sending feedback to help correct or verify against higher levels.- There's no difference between input from the ear, eye or hand. It's all just patterns at the cortex level. In fact, the output is the same as the input. The feedback process actually helps learn how to utilize our body, and as an extension of that, tools.- A key element to the patterns in the real world is time. Everything occurs over time, so the patterns almost come into the cortex as a sort of melody it interprets.- Memory is imperfect, because we don't need it to be in order to learn. We remember things and draw our conscious attention to them when they don't fit the pattern we're expecting. At that point, we're attuned to learn a new pattern or determine how to react to a missed pattern.These are very different from the components we use in computers, and how we use them. The cortex is almost like a universal biological learning machine. Differences in intelligence between mammals can be attributed to the size of the cortex, e.g., the amount of processing available. Interesting stuff!