Can A Computer Become Sentient

[SilverRevlis]

// &this tells the whole class what CC is. It is available to all functions. This starts with the __construct function. It transfers 'Silver, High Wizard' into $content through the built in __construct function of PHP. This is then passed to the get_CC method through the $CC property. It actually works backwards going back to the top of the script.
//Method is a function in class, property is a variable for all functions in class. Private is only in class and public is extra-planar of class.
//Can therefore, a computer hereby become self-conscious? Yes, because if you refer to contents of another folder through it's path the computer can cross-reference.
Thus, if a computer can relate, compare, cross-reference, learn, reflect, remember, calculate, conclude and make new variations then what is the difference between the Self-Consciousness of a Human?
The question, of course, remains can the Soul/Spirit ever occupy such an artificial mechanical body and possess Free Will (through Randomness??) like a Human can?

[alexander]

We've discussed this in AI threads before... there is more to being self-contious then that, juust a smidge bit.

To answer your question directly, those terms used in a programmatic language connotation do not suggest computers to be self conscious, basically you are waaaay overgeneralizing what consciousness is, you are also wrongly assuming that if php allows you to store a variable in memory, that somehow computer can just remember. In a nut shell, the difference between a computer and a human is the architecture of the processing unit, the architecture of memory, and in that how tasks go about being processed... now that nut shell in a nut shell translates into, no computers are not nor are they anywhere near being close to being self-concious...

[C1ay]

Originally Posted by SilverRevlis

The question, of course, remains can the Soul/Spirit ever occupy such an artificial mechanical body and possess Free Will (through Randomness??) like a Human can?

True randomness is not the result of deterministic computational algorithms. The very determinism existent in such an artificial mechanical body would exclude "free will" by it's very nature.

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, SilverRevlis!

Originally Posted by C1ay

True randomness is not the result of deterministic computational algorithms. The very determinism existent in such an artificial mechanical body would exclude "free will" by it's very nature.

While I agree that no pseudorandom entity generator, such as the pseudorandom number generator A = frac((A+B)*C), exhibits true randomness, the OP “the question remains” question doesn’t ask if a deterministic algorithm can “possess free will (through randomness??)”, but if a “soul/spirit” can by occupying a mechanical body. If you accept that true randomness is physically possible at all, then something physical must be able to produce it. A “mechanical body” seems to me loosely enough defined to include many such physical things.

The human body is a physical thing, so can arguably be considered a kind of mechanical body, so the original question becomes tautological – “something in a mechanical body” certainly can possess whatever a human can, because a human is a “something in a mechanical body”.

This is, I’m pretty sure, not the line of reasoning SilverRevlis meant to solicit with his observations and questions. He seems, simply put, to be asking if you could write a computer program, install it on a digital computer, put the computer in a mechanical human body, and get an entity about like a human being. As far as I’ve been able to reason, I can’t see why not - and likely with hardware available in the next couple of decades. Though a scripting language like PHP would be far from my choice to write the program in!

As Alexander notes, we’ve talked about this quite a bit in this forum – one discussion that came quickly to my search was around “"When will computer hardware match the human brain?", according to Moravec, 1997”. Hans Moravec is an interesting and semi-famous writer on the subject.

Somewhere in these threads, I posted the source code to a tiny little self modifying program to show that just because a self reference and modification wouldn’t lead inevitably to human-like artificial intelligence. The root of the problem with believing something like this is that, to date, no self modifying program has lead to anything like human-like AI. Morevec only predicted that the hardware necessary for such a thing would be available soon – producing the software is – understating colossally – challenging.

[alexander]

there is no true randomness in software, there is hardware that can provide truly random results. That said, yes, there are many people who are working on AI and genetic algorithms to modify programs so they run and evolve and become more complex, i agree, i think artifficial intelligence already exists in some forms, and it does, but to then extrapolate and assume that the course will get us to a self-concious program that can make it's own decisions, i think its a bit of a jump and at the very current moment in time with current hardware architecture it is, if not impossible, highly improbable. That is not to say that perhaps an architecture will come along that will provide us with a much better platform to create applications that are a lot more able, in terms of mind processing and self-thought, as well as conciousness, and perhaps even intelligence (note concious is not the same as intelligent, and vise-versa)

[C1ay]

I remember an essay by Ray Kurzweil, The Law of Accelerating Returns, that some may find interesting on this topic. He estimates we will achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2023. IMO capability would still not be consciousness.

[alexander]

totally share that opinion, i too think that having the same processing capacity is not the same as having a conciousness...