I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing, so it is orthogonal to Church-Turing.

Whether it is achieved will depend on economic forces. I don't see much economic value in making conscious computers, or things which seem to be down that line. So I expect consciousness will come out of pure research (perhaps within a corporation, like IBM), well after computers have exceeded the raw processing power needed.

Because they will be so different from humans, it will have to demonstrate a significantly higher degree of consciousness than a human needs to in order for most people to be comfortable with the term.

If we assume that humans are conscious & material, without bothering to define either, we at least know it is possible to have consciousness embodied in something material. At least in theory we could figure out how human consciousness works and replicate it. There may be easier ways, but this is at least one theoretical possibility.

You could in the same way have inferred that humans could figure out a way of creating flight from the fact that it exists in nature.

Of course, this only applies to intentional creation of consciousness. It says nothing about the distinct possibility that we could create a consciousness by accident.

We can already generate big enough NNs that we can understand them in general (some areas get "specialised" in some way and more active in some conditions), and we know that the result is what we expect - but there's no way someone will take a look at the weights / resulting model and tell you what it does. I think we can create consciousness intentionally, but not understanding the process completely.

Selectively breeding cows for increased milk production allows evolution to find a way or ways of making that happen. The breeder doesn't need to worry about hormones or glands. Evolution doesn't need to worry about the breeder's motives, why are only the high milk producers producing offspring?

Sometimes, when I'm getting overlogical, I see machine intelligence as being pretty much our destiny (i.e. that singularity thing) and that organic life may be very much obsolete once it gets into its own.

As organic life was to the universe before it, machine life will be to us.

ADDED: but yes, extended phenotype and all that jazz.

The design of machines evolves all the time.

It may very well be the case that this is either true or false. We simply don't have enough evidence.

And given the fact that we are discovering new properties of matter and organic reactions all the time, there is a bias towards this being false.

The poster you are responding did not claim that humans are the shit. They merely pointed out the fact that we have so far proven incapable of proving that we aren`t said shit. Now, you could argue that such a hypothesis could only be falsified by the construction of a machine consciousness. That, however, is orthogonal to the fact that it remains possible that there is in fact some bizarre quality of the universe or the human race that makes machine consciousness impossible. Not a terribly scientific position to take, perhaps, but a perfectly sound philosophical one.

No, human intelligence is an emergent quality, and I fathom that even our massive representations of humanity's information (akin to what Google is compiling) will soon begin to exhibit interesting qualities of its own once it becomes complex enough to exhibit perhaps interesting, unanticipated emergent qualities (in fact, if it didn't I would be absolutely shocked). Many strange and unpredictable (or at the very least unanticipated) things arise from even the simplest of "complex systems" (Conway's game of life and some of Wolfram's automata), much less the wonderful systems detailed by our individual neural mappings and our individual genomes. (q.v. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_behavior)

People always think that some human will "write" an AI like HAL or the like, but it is much more likely that nature will roll its own AI once we have made a comfy enough nest for it to germinate. After all, isn't that how we got here? (from an evolutionary biologists standpoint anyhow...)

And again, sorry for being contentious. I just despise the "religious" argument (even if there is no "named religion" being expounded... Let's keep Ockham's Razor at the ready here....)

From the biological point of view, the simplest species is AS SUCCESSFUL as the most complex species, since both are still alive and procreating.

Why do humans have eternal significance? To whom?

Known to who? I don't like this very self-referencing way of thinking. Very similar to the discovery of America... people were already in America way before Columbus came and "discovered" it. (although apparently he didn't even realize he hadn't arrived to India)

He/She's allowed to have such an opinion, but this discussion is trying for a particular feel and that isn't contributing helpfully to it.

We're machines. That we may not have made a machine of the same class ourselves is an implementation detail. Maybe a large one, but still not really an argument against making conscious intelligent machines. Biology can do it, sooner or later so can we.

Perhaps the disagreement is about when do machines (keeping in mind they're mechanical by definition) cross over to becoming more and more like biological entities (replication). And once they do, is it still coherent to think of them as machines as we use the term today. Or would we then think machines have been elevated to the biological level.

The human has a hideous complicated algorithm in there, involving a live-long history, internal feedback and reflection and arbitrary side constraints.

A spider for example is much simpler. 'If the net shakes, walk where it shakes and eat.' (Certainly, + a batch of regulations to be able to walk and sense, but the point stands).

However, imo at a certain point, a computer program passes the complexity of, say, a spider. Just consider modern compilers. These things are of baffling complexity and do things inside no human can imagine in details :) Or, imagine data mining software, or even just very complicated, security aware network guards. All of these softwares are very, very complicated in their input-output-behaviour, and even though they are not as complicated as a human, they certainly can compete with a spider, at least for me.

And exactly this view is what caused some pretty nasty discussions for me, since some people are just not crossing the line of 'everything is an input-output device of different forms' and they stand hard on the ground that machines and animals are different, because they are machines and animals (and some go ridiculous ways, 'god made animals, humans made machines', and whatsoever, not even some 'but the spider might be more complicated than FOO, because, which whould be a nice discussion :) ).

So, overall, I, as a person who is working hard on being a tolerant, non-racist person (which is really hard), don't see a reason to exclude the possibility of machines and robots being conscious, just because 'they are electrical and not organic' (which has a ring of "he is black, he CANNOT do science" to me. Sorry if I just offended a lot of people).

"Consciousness is not computable" just means we need to build a new class of machine. Whether it's a blob of organic jelly in a box, or an IC with currently unknown structures on it to exploit certain handwavy quantum processes, or whatever; it just makes the task more complex, it doesn't make it impossible.

It may very well be the case that this is either true or false. We simply don't have enough evidence.

It's true, we can't prove it one way or the other at the moment, but that usually just means that Occam's razor should guide our speculations and assumptions. Since the brain seems like all it's doing is performing some computations, why would we ever assume that its true function is to do something more than that?

And given the fact that we are discovering new properties of matter and organic reactions all the time, there is a bias towards this being false.

There's a good chance that the way the brain achieves its computations is indeed a bit more complex than, for instance, an artificial neural network, absolutely. But that's an implementation detail, and there's certainly no reason to assume that there's no computational model that can account for it - biologists are very close to having full working models of individual neurons already. Further, it's highly likely that the brain does its job in a biologically convenient way, not a logically convenient one, and I'd give good odds that there are a lot of logical simplifications that could be made to end up with a cleaner architecture that performs the exact same tasks.

The only two physical process that we know of that are fundamentally impossible to compute with our computing model are quantum computations and chaotic systems. And for chaotic systems we most certainly can simulate them in a way that the output has all the correct properties as far as we know. It's more that we can't reliably do prediction in such systems due to finite precision.

The simple fact is that computers are already our superiors on many tasks. And those tasks are not simple either.

a) The phenomena of qualia remains unexplained. This has no bearing on making something that can mimic consciousness, but does become significant if one wants the real thing. The last argument on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766462

b) QM may be intrinsically linked to consciousness. (see Roger Penrose, _The Emperor's New Mind_) Of course, this a mute point given the QM computing seems to be around the corner.

I discount Penrose's argument because he offers no phenomena that actually require his QM effects to explain and offers no plausible evolutionary path by which human minds could have evolved the mechanisms relying on QM. Do other primates have QM effects in their brains? What do these explain, given that the current models of the brain that we have are capable of explaining everything that we see? (Though we don't yet have the practical capability to simulate an entire complex brain and suitable io.)

P.S. I am an atheist, therefore I do not believe there is anything metaphysical about the human brain. Maybe there is something special about our mushy carbon structure -- doesn't matter. In that case, we'll just build our artificial brain with wetware. Hardware is hardware is hardware (and physics is physics). Eventually we'll get an artificial neural net as complex as our biological one. The real question is software...

I realize it is not a defensible argument to say that the human experience is just to "weird" to be computable- I wish I had a better argument for defending my position...

Nonetheless, I find it hard to understand people, such as yourself, that are probably exposed to this same "weirdness" in their heads as I am and yet are so confident it is merely an illusion created by a sufficiently complicated computation.

I agree, though, Hofstadter and Dennett have done an extraordinary job of devising such an answer. There is lots more work to be done, of course.

But what if the answer to the "weirdness" question is, in fact, that it's just an ill-formed question? What if it's just an illusion, and your brain is tricked into seeing something magical about itself where there is nothing there?

Apart from a mystical explanation, I cannot imagine any satisfying answer to the question (i.e. one that doesn't leave you feeling uneasy like Hofstadter's answer does to most people), which usually means that there's something wrong with what we're asking, not with how we're trying to answer it.

I really don't think the question is ill-formed, though. There is a big explanatory gap. Denying that is simply dishonest. It would be like, if you don't know why a bicycle is easier to balance when it's moving, pretending that there is nothing to explain. "Oh, it's just bicycle parts."

No - it's just normal. I think it would be weirder if it wasn't some kind of computation, if I was a unique spirit out of several tens of billions that appeared from some unknowable place and origin, or whatever else 'i' might be.

Doesn't it seem to be beyond what can be expressed by mere computer algorithms?

I have no reason to think it is - I haven't felt what it's like to be a quicksort or a face recognition algorithm for comparison, but I certainly feel like a heap of evolved feedback loops at times - when I fear the dark in a room I know, when I catch sight of living shapes where there are none, when I feel fight-or-flight at certain caller ID numbers, when I desire things that I also don't want, when I feel judgements of people based on some trivial detail.

Nonetheless, I find it hard to understand people, such as yourself, that are probably exposed to this same "weirdness" in their heads as I am and yet are so confident it is merely an illusion created by a sufficiently complicated computation.

What else could it be? There isn't anywhere else it could reasonably be that we know of. You're either suggesting something unknowable (e.g. magic) or some kind of cruel joke (i.e. like a quine is a program that prints it's own source code, we could be a consciousness that sees the world except for the blind spot around the part that allows us to see how we work - and a cover over where that would be).

I'm not confident that we are 'just' a computation, but I'm fairly confident that I am in accordance with the laws of physics (including any we don't know yet) and that places limits on what's possible with the amount of matter in my head, the energy input and output, the sensory input and output bandwidths, the timescales involved, the known behavioural results of varying localities of brain damage, etc.

Besides, what do you mean illusion? Consciousness is not 'fake'.

From my perspective, being a computer would feel a lot weirder.

I think drastically spoken, feelings are just firing neurons. I don't think there is really anything special about (apart from the degree of complexity of the human body). If a computer has an algorithm that says

if(user hasn't typed anything for 14 days) lonely = true

then it has feelings, too. It might sound absurd, but only because it looks so simple. But imagine an enourmously complex program, and the information "lonely" trickles through it. There might be a routine somewhere

if lonely = true connect_irc_channel(#depression)

and so on and so on. From a certain level of complexity onwards, it won't be so obvious anymore, and we won't be able to prevent feeling that the computer really feels.

The ethical issues will rather be the moment when AI's are clever enough that they can be teached. What will humans teach them? Personally I believe the best protection from abuse will be to get that learning process in the public (as compared to AI's learning from companies or military for specific purposes). So my own long term target are distributed virtual worlds in which AI's improve by getting passed around. A single computer user might still teach them bad stuff, but I hope some sort of selection based on many people watching and exchanging bots will get the best possible results even though completely preventing abuse won't be possible.

Erasing knowledge and memories of such AI would be analog to killing, and it will become problem, because throwing out data is easier, and writing you enemies to DVD after each game of Quake 10 becouse of moral issues will be problematic after some time.

Do you have any proof or any testing that can be done to validate that?

If true machine consciousness is possible, it's a lot further off than we would like to think.

Machines are just an expression of humans' extended phenotypical effects on their environment.

Building a car by hand versus building one with a modern robotic assembly line both yield the same output.

Evolved entities (read: complex entities) are not designed.

One could follow all the steps involved in getting a human from his evolutionary ancestor to his current state by using a pair of magic tweezers to make each mutation in the genome happen at the right time and in the right way. Could you tell the difference based on the result?

(BTW, mutation is random, but evolution is not a random process).

Two example quantitative differences (although, I'm not sure why the specific exclusion of qualitative differences):

1) The human eye, for example, has flaws (that are solved in other similarly evolved eyes) that an engineer laughs at - if you were building a human eye, you wouldn't make the same "mistakes". The deviation from the "better" version is measurable.

2) Evolved entities exist because of procreation. And their only reason for existence is to assist genetic material to replicate. Constructed objects reproduce exactly 0 times and have 0 genetic (or other replicator material).

Therefore, I don't consider designing vs evolving as a good way to separate machines capable of consciousness from machines not capable of consciousness.

Organisms (and by extension, or by reason) are alive because their ancestors have been lucky enough to survive long enough to have offspring.

Note, I'm not arguing that machines cannot be capable of consciousness.

But I am saying that constructed machines are necessarily distinguishable from organisms primarily because they're designed with a goal in mind (unlike organisms - these aren't designed but are the result of the co-operation of genes into higher levels of complexity, team work that has happened to be useful to the survival of the replicating matter - DNA, RNA, or possibly other such material elsewhere in the universe).

I would posit that because of the evolved nature of organisms, there may be flaws in their consciousness (e.g. through chemical imbalance, irrational deduction etc.). It is more likely that machines that are designed for intelligence & consciousness would be gifted (or cursed, depending on your convictions) with perfection, rationality, normalcy, as attributes, or at least their designers would attempt that.

So the the nature of their consciousness would be qualitatively different from that of organisms.

What are those flaws, if you happen to know? I'm curious.

Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that the photocells might point away, from the light, with their wires departing on the side nearest the light.

Yet this is exactly what happens in all vertebrate retinas. Each photocell is, in effect, wired in backwards, with its wire sticking out on the side nearest the light. The wire has to travel over the surface of the retina to a point where it dives through a hole in the retina (the so-called "blind spot") to join the optic nerve.

This means that the light, instead of being granted an unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to pass through a forest of connecting wires, presumably suffering at least some attenuation and distortion (actually, probably not much but, still, it is the principle of the thing that would offend any tidy-minded engineer). I don't know the exact explanation for this strange state of affairs. The relevant period of evolution is so long ago.

That said, this isn't, for me, a strong refutation of design. Perhaps the designer's purpose was to create creatures with imperfections such as these, with the higher purpose of communicating something deeper.

Or, is there any way of knowing that we won't some day discover there is a very good reason for this?

An engineer would probably try a different ordering.

From this I think there are two potentially interesting products:

- Evolution by natural selection may be usable as an engine of machine consciousness. Some variant of evolution may be at the core of our own consciousness.

- Evolution by natural selection is a mechanical process that we can "take apart" and understand relatively easily. It also happens to be the engine of the process that created species. Happens to be. Even if the evolution of species had never happened, evolution would still exist in abstract. This put it in very good position to be discovered. Perhaps there are equally powerful concepts waiting to be discovered. Perhaps one of them is at the core of our own creativity. Perhaps one of them can be at the core of machine consciousness.

I believe consciousness is an emergent property of a complex system; it is simply the nature of the universe that complex systems exhibit consciousness. I'm defining "complex system" as any system whose outputs/results affect the inputs/possible states. If I think something, the possibility space for my next thought is dependent upon my previous thought, and so on.

I think artificial consciousness research will progress, through computer simulation, to the point where a "real" consciousness emerges from a sufficiently complex simulation. The hard part will be mapping its inputs/outputs into human-compatible form; success will probably occur by accident at first. But when we can do this we'll be able to talk to a totally simulated consciousness through the prism of it being another "person".

At this point more research/thought will be put into the nature of consciousness itself, and how to connect with other-than-human consciousnesses. We'll use the experience of bridging communication with artificial consciousness to successfully communicate with naturally-occuring consciousnesses associated with other complex systems (the earth, a tree, the galaxy, etc). It sounds a little insane, but I totally think this is within the realm of possible in our lifetimes.

Of course, that's all based on the notion that consciousness is an emergent property of a complex system, and not something entirely unique or bestowed by higher powers or whatever.

There are some problems simulating the human brain that would also have to be addressed even once we can create a working system, such as the AI being a bit of a blank slate, like a infant or a coma patient.

I see the whole process as having to follow a path similar to this:

1. A breakthrough in computing power, something capable of simulating very accurately small areas of space, this means perfectly representing ridiculously complicated chemical reactions and some natural laws.

2. Succeeding in creating a software environment to execute these simulations within.

3. A breakthrough in mapping an existing person, some sort of scan that creates a mathematically provable perfect (or close enough) representation of an area in space. Like some humans mind or possibly their entire body until the subject of the scan can be simplified on the computer. Sort of like taking a photo and then cropping off the body. The above simulation environment may be what is used to provide the simulated inputs and outputs to the head, like the CNS and cardiovascular system. Not to mention the inputs to the eyes and other senses. Sort of like a virtual head in a jar.

4. So far we would have a conscious system, but it would be a copy of a pre-existing being. The next step would to be to somehow, ethically, re-write this being. This would provide a learning challenge with the goal of simplifying and modularising the human brain. Such as hacking language areas, input nerves, the reliance on virtual blood and sustenance and most importantly the memory.

The final product of this important stage is the most simple and easily tweak-able simulation of the human brain that could be used by all researchers and eventually commercial applications. If all these virtual brains are the same or comparable, this isolates the memory as a way to load in or edit what is essentially... people. The creepiest analogy may be the best, they will be like swappable save game files, executing in virtual machines (the hacked brains) that operate within another virtual machine (dare I say it, a super-simple matrix of sorts)

5. We may never reach anywhere near this far along the process due mainly to ethical reasons that cannot be overcome with mere ingenuity. But if we do, the next step is compressing all this down further and further until we have the most simple possible (perhaps provable somehow) implementation of a mind that does not require all the layers of virtualization.

God it's easy to get caught up in this stuff. I hold this prediction on my fingertips in hopes that any developments may blow it away so I can re-evaluate and make a new one.

What is consciousness? Well, for me a big part of it is the "movie screen" of my vision. Consciousness is sort of like this movie I can watch, with the understanding that the hands that go into the field of vision are my own- "I" can control them and my body's position in the field. If I want the field to change, I can make the movie look somewhere else. My consciousness also includes the full mapping of the body, including its pain and pleasure states, temperature, hunger, etc etc.

Language is a large part of consciousness, in particular, English. Integrating language into my consciousness was pretty catastrophic- it was like formatting my conscsiouness with a new files system. Apparently it erased all memories previous to that because I can't remember anything earlier than that. English both enables and limits the scope of what I can think. It has a lot of ambiguities and is only moderately good at feelings, and emotions. But hey, it has tenses which vaguely relate to this sensation of passing time that is relevant to my consciousness and a significant portion of reality can successfully be communicated to me by any other consciousness running the Englihs module. If I wanted to be more precise I suppose I could convery my consciousness to LOGLAN or some other language built on predicate calculus rather than germanic and latin grammar base.

In addition to all this, my consciousness stores a lot of memories, skills, ideas, and memes. I have models for basic mathematical concepts, as well as skill sets such as how to operate a motor vehicle. I also have prejudices and preferences. My consciousness is limited by this- if I were not familiar with certain philosophical memes, such as "social contracts", my consciousness would not be able to understand advantages of a national healthcare plan.

Emotions are also part of my consciousness. There is happiness, a "feeling" of well-being when dopmanine, electricity, magnetism, radio waves, and more are flowing rather well. I am likely to be happy when the majority of my body and psyche's needs are met and I am pleasantly engaged and using enough, but not too much, of my energy bandwidth. Anger is a territorial response I would feel in my consciousness when I feel my phsyical or psychological territories are being threatened- it is a territory defense response. Sadness is a tension I feel when there is cognitive dissonance between an idealized vision I have of how things should be. (Tears of sadness if things are worse than I feel they should be, happiness if they are better.) Sadness may also be felt due to various social rejections as my organic ape-mind has a great deal of hardware devoted to social interactions. Pain is experienced when my nerves detect entropy is increasing in my wetware.

As for communicating with other sentiences, this seems inevitable as more species approach and cross Threshold. If humans are at 100 billion+ (or whatever Threshold requires), there are many speces which must be very close. Some of the more advanced marine mammals such as dolphins and whales are apparently very close, let's say 98 billion interconnections, and they even have some of the advanced cerebrocortical structures we think of as giving us our higher civilized thought structures. Elephants, chimps and other greater apes, and maybe dogs, cats, pigs, and some birds seem to be climbing above the 70 billion mark.

If we could figure out how to artificially enhance brains with more interconnections, both human and animal, we could probably "boost" several near-sentient animals across the line by nano-creating more neural interconnections. Energy would flow across the new connections and they would "burst" into their own version of movie-screen of consciousness. It would be fun having other sentiences to talk to. I think we as humans are fairly lonely and could benefit from some non-human perspectives. (Even though human perspectives vary and we don't really appreciate variety even from our fellow different human sentiences.) Still, it would be fun to boost an elephant across the sentience line and then hear their thoughts. It would be fun to know there are other sentient beings out there.

Don't worry that AI will turn out like phlogiston. The journey will yield its own rewards, and plenty of partial success will also be extremely valuable.

The answer: Yes and no, depending on what you mean by "consciousness".

If you mean something like "access to internal states" (and maybe reportability thereof), then yes. Arguably there are extant, albeit crude, versions of this form of machine consciousness.

If, on the other hand, you mean something that starts to look like qualia (i.e. "raw feels"/"what's it's like"/"the hard problem"/etc cf. the Chalmers references already made), then no.

Of course, my "no" essentially echoes Dan Dennett's, in that I don't think people are conscious in this way, either. I suspect a lot of our "feelings" are internal post-hoc stories (made possible by enabled by command of private language) that rationalize/create causal attributions for the physiological correlates of stress ("four Fs" situations).

That being said, I could be wrong, and finding a way to get at these hypotheses empirically would be a genuine advance, whether they were supported or refuted. So by all means pursue this...as someone else pointed out, it's likely the "final" answers won't be known in your lifetime, and if it brings you fulfillment in your lifetime, then giv'er.

As for where to apply, there are loads...some have already pointed out several researchers (Hofstadter, Koch, etc.), so you could always apply where they are. There's also UCSD, UArizona, Carleton University (in Canada), etc...

Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument details the most obvious probabilistic implications of substrate independence in consciousness: http://www.simulation-argument.com/

The most blatantly obvious indicator that consciousness is substrate-independent: We are DNA-based life forms. DNA stores information. It's program code stored in molecules. You are the product of the code of your parents. If for some bizarre reason we find out that we HAVE to use DNA to create other conscious systems, we will still have the ability to do exactly that. Not "machine" in the sense of being composed of metal, but certainly "machine" in the sense of not being the immediate product of natural selection.

David Chalmers' work should be particularly relevant to you, and you will find him at the Singularity Summit this year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers

Even if you don't live to see machine consciousness as a reality, the only other pursuits that might compare are anti-aging and intelligence enhancement research. If you're not going to create something that can figure out how to give you an indefinite self-contiguous narrative, you have to support its creation or face certain death.

I'm guessing you already have your CS undergrad or will have it soon, and you're interested in AI, so that seems the natural choice. I'd say you're overdecided if that's what you want to study.

Hopefully they have videos posted online of the event...right now two months rent is not available to spend on a conference, very unfortunately.

We can substitute pretty much anything for the first noun phrase: " X is as explanatory as magical pixie dust in the brain "

(In the same way that I have to believe you when you say you have consciousness).

We shouldn't assume that we humans are the best at everything. We shouldn't assume that we humans are the best at anything, really.

If there is no such model or we can't find it for some reason we won't develop an AI.

And now we're in an infinite loop.

Having said that, consciousness is not a requirement for intelligence. It would interesting, and plausible enough for self-improving AI as smart as a human to be developed without addressing the question of consciousness.

For extra credit: No there is not enough evidence.

Here is my opinion on this matter: It is possible to simulate the universe, but it is not possible to be the universe.

Simulation is different from being, just as predicting the weather is different from manipulating the weather. And simulating consciousness on a computer is different from being conscious.

I wrote a paper on AI a couple summer's ago and as crummy, arrogant, short-sighted, and inconclusive as it reads, if you happen to skim it, I did come away learning this. . .Turing was one of the few minds that was actually on to something, his vision of the machine and his idealistic tone reads more like that of SciFi writer, here is a most insightful re-paraphrasing of a Turing abstract (me thinks it was his first major publication):

I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'"[8] As Turing highlighted, the traditional approach to such a question is to start with definitions, defining both the terms machine and intelligence. Nevertheless, Turing chose not to do so. Instead he replaced the question with a new question, "which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words".[8] In essence, Turing proposed to change the question from "Do machines think?" into "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?"[9] The advantage of the new question, Turing argued, was that it "drew a fairly sharp line between the physical and intellectual capacities of a man.[10]

[my crummy paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19590360/AI]

Nevertheless, shame on you for introducing the two following ideas in a complete sentence, Knuth's line terminating algorithm and Word's aesthetics. o_O As soon as my words are worth it, I swear to you that I will start investing my efforts into formatting my thoughts in a language as serious and beautiful as LaTeX. Until then Word is a wonderful canvas for finger-painting.

I mean, we know almost all about the low level - neurons. They are relatively easy. Signal goes in, signal goes out. So now, even if we don't understand this whole high level emergent process we can still copy it. Its like if we had a assembler code of some big and highly complicated algorithm - even if we don't understand it we can still rewrite it to different machine and it will work.

There are about 100 billion neurons and about 500 trillion connections in brain of an adult, so you can take Moors law and estimate, not if, but when it will be possible to brute-force brain. I say 2025.

But that is not necessarily a given. Our brains are very good at reflecting our environment. So maybe consciousness is not something our brain did come up with but just something it reflects from the inputs it gets. Same as your brain doesn't have to be blue to see blue, but only creates a representation of the color which is outside. So there could be a bigger consciousness in our environment and all we have is an internal reflection of that created by the inputs we receive. But now that larger consciousness might not be without intend - it might simply refuse to show itself to computers so they wouldn't reflect it even if they would have the basic ability to do so. I know this sound rather esoteric and I don't really belief it myself, but something that seems to work like that is supported by so many reports of personal experiences that I wouldn't yet completely disregard the possibility.

So computer consciousness will probably be possible, but could fail if consciousness itself turns out to be something with an own agenda.

I mean, if something exists, we can copy it. Even if humans only mirror consciousness, we can copy the mirror.

Otherwise we're talking about teology, and, if such, I won't be part of the debate. Not my field.

So far we haven't nailed down consciousness and until we got that I try to keep some alternative theories still in my mind. Especially if the alternate theories correspond rather well with many user reports. That's not because I believe in magic or something like that, but rather is influenced by working long enough with virtual worlds to be occasionally irritated how much easier it is sometimes to put the intelligence in the world instead of putting it in the bot and make the bots just reactive. The user watching them won't see the difference, to him it looks like intelligent bots. And unless a bot registers to the world it doesn't even matter if he is an identical copy - he won't do much (just to mention that identical copies are no guarantee for same behaviour as long as there are external dependencies which must be met).

And there was some recent article on ycombinator about anaesthesia which I found also interesting. Basically it seems that unlike sleep this is a way to completely disable consciousness. Like switching it off. And (the wished for) side-effect is that the body nerves do no longer trigger pain. But the brain certainly still works. So yeah crazy - but the only known way of completely disabling all inputs without disabling internal processing is at the same time disabling consciousness completely. And yes - I'm aware that we probably find a better explanation for that any day now.

It's a fringe theory and I realize that I got even one step further in my post above. But still, I don't think I'm in theology territory with that already. The fact that something so basic that everyone experiences it evades a good explanation for so long gives me enough reason to keep some fringe theories in mind. That's why I agree to your post - but miss your certainty. The last few time we humans got it really wrong in science (that sun-earth rotation thing and that evolution stuff) we got it always wrong because we put ourselves so much in the centre that we ignored alternatives.

But on the other hand, agnosticism is kinda lack of balls ^^ What you stand for determines what you do. So clearly its better to stand for something, even if you sometimes get wrong.

Do you have a link to the article or remember the title?

My personal take on this is that I'm really not sure.

There are some pretty clever people here that are sure it is possible, 20 years or less.

There are others (of which I'm one) that think it may be possible but either devilishly hard compared to what has been achieved to date or beyond our abilities, figure at least 20 years, probably much more, if ever.

And then there are those that think that it is impossible.

I'm an absolute nobody when it comes to stuff like this but it interests me greatly. When I was 15 or so I envisioned a world about 2 decades away where computers could be taught. We're 30 years down the line from that point and we're still programming computers more or less the same as back then.

But that does not mean that things can't change overnight, and who knows, maybe you're just the guy for the ticket and you will be the one to crack this nut.

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!

Christof Koch at CalTech (hi, virgil) http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/

Larry Yaeger & John Beggs http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v30n2/mindmade.shtml

Of course, Douglas Hofstadter http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/

Koch, Churchland, etc. speak on consciousness: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/342

Thanks very much for the links. I am stressing over where to apply, hopefully these will help some.

On the other hand, I know if I ever had to debate this question with Daniel Dennett or Eliezer Yudkowsky or any other capable person who believes there's nothing special about "consciousness" I would lose the debate.

Attributing a special meaning to consciousness, on the surface, is just as illogical as believing in religion- Neither seems to have a valid defense, as far as I can tell. Therefore, I find it disquieting that I DON'T believe in religion but DO feel so certain that computers can't be conscious.

Once you figure out the reason for this apparent inconsistency in my belief system, please let me know :)

Whatever it is that distinguishes consciousness for what computers can possible do is also the thing that makes you realise that computers can't be conscious. If you could logically write the reason down to 'prove it' then it would also be something that you could implement in a computer. So the reason, whatever it is, has lie somewhat outside of specifiable logic.

Just in case this is somehow original. I'm designating this 'thing' as a 'dejb' and calling the whole thing "dejb's theory/proposition/whatever". Although it actually probably just a restatement of Godel's incompleteness theorem. Also I actually believe that computers can be concsious.

This need for all beliefs to have a scientific basis is a bit pathological in my opinion. You shouldn't feel bad for believing something "illogical" if the only reason it is illogical is Occam's Razor or scientific intractability.

My reasoning for this is that it should be obvious to everyone that our world and experiences are increasingly shaped by ideas in modern times. Even though physics can explain the mechanics of the universe in great detail, the way ideas affect our individual experiences and society as a whole has very little to do with their ability to be objectively classified as true or false. By forcing a scientific perspective you are limiting yourself from the benefits of philosophies and ideas that are beyond the realm of science.

I'm not saying that a belief about artificial consciousness is beneficial one way or the other, but just that you shouldn't be chided into dismissing your own opinion just because it does not rest on firm logical conclusions based on established scientific evidence. The other side is quite wobbly as well.

Even with consciousness being so ill defined I'd say that there are a few points that we can agree on. For one, even if peoples definitions and expectations of consciousness differ, we can all find examples of life that we agree are conscious.

The boundary may be really fuzzy. We might disagree whether animals are conscious or brain-dead/comatose are conscious. But we could probably find a case that we agreed on.

And once we assume that I would ask you whether a computer program would ever be able to pass the Turing test and convince us that it was conscious. If a computer program would be able to pass I'd argue that it was conscious, since consciousness seems to me to be totally subjectively defined.

If you say that a program would not be able to pass, I might agree with you intuitively, but I would question it intellectually. Because I've always believed that there are cases that are definitely perceived as conscious by other people. I would be shocked if someone truly believed that the person next to me is somehow not conscious. So the next question I would ask is whether consciousness resides and arises from something that can be explained scientifically. Or to put it simply: Can we describe,now or in the future, the workings of the brain? If so, I really don't think we would need a scientific explanation for any epiphenomenon such as consciousness, all we would need to is recreate those initial conditions and we should be able to mimic consciousness.

If you say that we won't be able to mimic the workings of the human brain I'd simply say that you are making the statement that there is physical phenomena that can never ever be explained by science.

If you say that even if we recreate a human brain, we will never mimic consciousness, then I'd reply that you are saying that my personal definition of consciousness not affected and defined by other peoples definition of consciousness.

I think that might be why you see an inconsistency between attributing a special meaning to consciousness and and religion. We instinctively act like the human race can find common ground on the definition of consciousness. We don't instinctively act like we can find common ground on religious beliefs.

However, he's just playing with your intuition, the same way you are, and his logic (though not his certainty, either, from the bit I've read) is flawed. You should read up on his "Chinese room" thought experiment yo learn why.

Now that someone brought up the S-word, I can't help but paste in one of my favorite Searle quotes (http://sss.stanford.edu/others/johnsearle/), which to me very clearly indicates how much of a mental and logical struggle it is (and how much flubbery is required!) to attempt to justify his position:

'Could a machine think?' My own view is that only a machine could think, and indeed only very special kinds of machines, namely brains and machines that had the same causal powers as brains. And that is the main reason strong AI has had little to tell us about thinking, since it has nothing to tell us about machines. By its own definition, it is about programs, and programs are not machines. Whatever else intentionality is, it is a biological phenomenon, and it is as likely to be as causally dependent on the specific biochemistry of its origins as lactation, photosynthesis, or any other biological phenomena. No one would suppose that we could produce milk and sugar by running a computer simulation of the formal sequences in lactation and photosynthesis, but where the mind is concerned many people are willing to believe in such a miracle because of a deep and abiding dualism: the mind they suppose is a matter of formal processes and is independent of quite specific material causes in the way that milk and sugar are not.

Even if the guy's a freaking idiot (which he is), you've gotta appreciate the way he tries to turn the "dualist" label against the people that are most opposed to dualism, while that's almost exactly what he's arguing for. He would have made a great politician; unfortunately, he's made his career arguing about something that he doesn't really understand, which is a damn shame, I hate to see so much mental energy spent fighting a lost battle...

But I think the question you should be asking yourself, if you're wondering how to spend your life, isn't if machine consciousness is probable, possible, whatever. You should be asking, what do I want to do with MY consciousness? If you want to work on these problems, then do it. Doesn't matter if it happens in your lifetime or not. If you enjoy it then give it a try. Worst case is you spend your time doing what you enjoy. Best case is... well, machine consciousness I suppose.

Besides, you should always be thinking big. The person I admire the most has a small metal plaque that sits on her desk. It says "what would you attempt if you knew you couldn't fail". I happen to think this is the most powerful sentiment I've ever encountered.

  Howabout re-phrasing the original question into "Do you think it is possible to genetically enhance and selective breed apes into a race of human-level+ super-apes". Sure, it's possible, but why do it?

This tendency towards oversimplifying the unknown seems to be fundamental to the way we think and it runs through the history of human speculation. Consistently, our beautifully unified theories about gods and ether and magic are replaced by the messy, complicated realities of physics, math and biology.

One of these beautiful unified theories which we are having a particularly hard time letting go of is the idea of "consciousness", alleged to be a single remarkable quality of some sort which is both essential and unique to the mind. That vague description is as close as you will come to a consensus on the definition of consciousness, and it still won't please everybody. Despite there being no agreement on what the word actually means, nearly everyone is nonetheless quite sure that whatever it is does exist and needs explaining.

In the time when the brain was utterly baffling, before we knew about neurons or brain anatomy, the model of the mind based around consciousness was at least reasonable. But now we know essentially how neurons work, how they can grow into complex useful systems, and the staggering quantity of them that make up a single mind. We have managed to isolate many aspects of human thought to particular areas of the brain. We've observed people functioning without certain fundamental faculties when parts of their brain are damaged, faculties which we would have intuitively considered indivisible from the mind as a whole, but which we are now forced to consider handy peripherals which we could do without, if need be.

As the gap between our intuitive understanding of the mind and our scientific understanding grows ever smaller, as we explain one faculty after another, cleaving them from the plausible kernel of the mind, and as the operative definition of "consciousness" continues to vary wildly from one navel gazing philosophy major to another, sharing nothing in common but the spelling, its career as a thought provoking topic of conversation nears its end, to be followed by its retirement to a quaint artifact of our ignorant past.

So the algorithm you use to decide that a clump of neurons satisfies the "consciousness" predicate will almost certainly work by observing high-level properties of the neuron configuration. Since the consciousness predicate abstracts away low-level details, it's hard to see why neurons should be better than other computational substrates at forming predicate-satisfying configurations.

Reductionists can't be neuro-chauvinists.

On to your question: Do I think something that looks like consciousness is possible? Yes. How soon depends on how conscious it looks and how much this is faked and real.

I think we're still a bit of a way away, but it will happen. Do I think the machine will be actually conscious like humans? No, I don't. Appearance and actually being are different things. A machine can be programmed to appear conscious by following decision making patterns similar to humans, by incorporating emotion (perhaps as a weighting system to deal with certain scenarios, or maybe not include emotion at all and go for pure practical efficiency..), self preservation, priorities and so on. But, this won't make them conscious like a human. I think theres more than a biological computer in us humans. Religious people like to call it a soul; I prefer to use that term to refer to some overall control system which is outside of the biological control systems: if the brain and nervous system is our hardware and our thought processes our software, then the soul is our firmware. I don't think we will ever completely understand what makes us conscious, for this reason, and therefore cannot ever make truely conscious machines BUT I believe we will, eventually, get very close to it.

Now here's the thing - you would still feel like you, looking out of your eyes. The other versions of you would be distinctly separate to you - not you.

That bit that makes you feel you are you - that's what some would call consciousness and others would call a soul.

I don't know if hardware is holding back progress in AI, especially with distributed computing; it is more likely a question of software and programming. I think in order for a computer to exhibit a reasonable facsimile of human intelligence, it will have to do more than just run programs written by humans. It would have to have the ability to write and rewrite its own code.

Just to give you one example. Think of bots in shooters. Humans have no problem browsing the whole screen in realtime and evaluating the data. But try even just doing the simplest image processing in realtime with a typical resolution and you will already find out how hard that is. So bots can't do that. Instead they cheat and shoot a few single visibility lines and even those are already targeted because bots can know where opponents are and so they only do for example linechecks to certain areas like head, body, arm, legs and try to find out if that line is blocked. And even that might already be too slow with many opponents so you have reduce it further and shoot only a certain number of lines each frame. And there is no processing yet - this is only about getting the simple information of - is there something or not. This is how slow computers still are. You could certainly do a little more with giving a single bot the whole processing power of your computer, but with the increasing complexity of game worlds the needed processing power grows rather fast (current addition of simple solid-body physics in games makes AI programming already way harder). For AI tasks computers are still very slow.

What we call consciousness is probably very closely tied with having a physical body perceiving things it the outside world. So I think for a long time there will be differences between machine and man, but machines will eventually win out and become vastly superior to people. I just wouldn't count on it in your lifetime.

The really interesting question is: if we can quantify consciousness, what happens when we create something that's more aware and conscious than we are? Would we be considered sentient by a being that thinks a thousand times faster and in hundreds of thought-trains, lives for a million years, and can converse millions of ways simultaneously at bandwidths millions of times greater than speech?

We would be like insects to something like that, and it's not such a far-fetched idea or that far off.

Agree with your general thrust but it's the qualitative change that's the more interesting, as it's perhaps unknowable (in the way that your dog Fido will never understand most of your thoughts, no matter how patiently you explain them).

Read more about the weak and strong AI theories to understand what I mean.

Do you think the Church-Turing thesis (anything that is computable is computable by a Turing machine) indicates that machine consciousness is possible?

Only if you assume that consciousness is a computation, which is assuming everything.

I normally try to resist this topic, but what you're saying here tugs at my heart-strings:

I'm now a little concerned that it may all be a waste. I'd prefer not to waste my life on something that turns out like the phlogiston theory.

Consider the total failure of algorithmic approaches to even begin, even pathetically, to replicate anything recognizable as consciousness. Were the people working on it dumber than you?

Try to find some way to control for the geek fantasy factor, in yourself and others, before deciding what to do.

(By the way, now I'm curious: what was it that led you to "the scary idea that machine consciousness may not be possible"?)

It probably scared me this time and not others because I'm very stressed over the GRE, and grad school applications (namely: where the heck should I apply), and how me telling grad schools "Oh, I'd like to study machine consciousness" will go over. I could be wrong, but I'm concerned they wont take me seriously...so I've been trying to think of something that sounds more acceptable.

If we want to stick to what we seem to know for sure physically and scientifically, then I suppose we can consider humans equal to computers albeit much more parallel and complex. In other words, if we reduce a human to mere electric signals in the nervous system and accept that finally the whole human life derives from that only, then we can eventually build a similar machine ourselves.

If we want to think that a human is merely a physical projection of some greater energy, be it the while universe, gods -- or a single $GOD, if you prefer -- then we definitely can't produce consciousness ourselves. Instead, we would have to wait for, or somehow invite, the greater energy or consciousness itself to find and take presence in the form of a machine that passes electric signals around.

Current theories say consciousness is caused by a specific mode of representation/ computation. Like good scientists and rational thinkers we should submit everything to rigorous testing/ proof. Let us not please take things at face value.

[Or we can take the easy route and live in a bubble :) ]

My personal belief is that the reason progress in AI has been so slow is that AI optimists vastly underestimated the computing power needed to produce good AI, and when our computers are finally fast enough (20-30 years perhaps, and the most important metric is probably not FLOPS but memory bandwidth) AI will actually not be that hard to achieve.

A simple definition of consciousness is the difference between being asleep (mostly oblivious to self) and awake (aware of self, environment, and relationship). Even then, a machine can negotiate terrain. But add emotions and you get potential for creativity (non-programmed, original output) which is a testable measure of sentience.

Consciousness can be faked. Original work can't - certainly not original work that 'touches people's souls'. Somewhere in there is a machine that earns my ungrudging respect. It's not a formula: it's a feeling.

I think it's painfully clear that sometime in the coming years humanity will reach the pinnacle of its scientific achievement with the advent of an artificially intelligent machine: one that is able to think and reason and is self-aware. Technology is moving at such a rapid pace and in the right direction that this is just the next logical step.

In order for this to occur, however, significant advances must be made in fields outside of technology; e.g. quantum computing will probably be a huge stepping stone, and for that to come to fruition we must first fully prove quantum mechanics.

I recently heard about the term "yak shaving". This seems to be a good example.

Perceiving and conceiving. That's all that we are truly capable of. Motivated by survival, geared towards good and away from bad. Doesn't seem impossible if that's what you consider consciousness. I think a computer will be able to easy be able to perceive any kind of sense and conceive any kind of idea. But you also have to consider, why would it? Why would it speak if it didn't need to? It doesn't require anything that humans need. It would be pure consciousness - a zen master. You could only communicate with it if it had some basic drive/force.

Human's consciousness is but one form, in my opinion. We are a complicated biological machine seeking the fulfillment of our existence; how is that any different than a machine seeking the fulfillment of its existence?

I believe the money is in self-evolving circuits and programming; allowing the machine to mold what defines its existence based on external parameters - and overtime, based on internal parameters (will to change).

I imagine through some randomness, or directed experiment, a piece of software will exist which will self-replicate and mutate... eventually evolving to some point of self-awareness.

Most likely we won't have deliberately created the AI. It'll just be through some random chance that it'll happen, much like how some random collisions of molecules formed "life" a few billion years ago.

Much like how life was formed on Earth, given enough time and material, the chance of AI emergence is bound to happen.

I seem to have the problem also that we are using the thing we are trying to simulate to work out how to simulate it. From our perspective the problem could be almost impossible.

So far AI research only managed to create sub-models for special tasks (ELIZA, Deep Blue, Google, ...).

I wonder if the mind arises in the brain because of quantum effects?

Anyway - modern AI is not generally about "strong AI" (attempting to make a humanlike intelligence) but more about "weak AI" (attempting to make things that solve problems.)

As for the question, I am sure that it is possible (except I take issue with the word "consciousness" - what is it supposed to mean?).

"Offer: One Billion Dollars for a Conscious Robot; If You’re Honest, You Must Decline" http://www.eripsa.org/files/Bringsjord%20Robot.pdf

:)

I am not even sure it would be dishonest to take the money. It is kind of insulting to give such a task, so maybe it would serve the sponsor right. After all, the sponsor would be unable to prove that the program is not conscious.

Suppose I submit a program that does nothing than print "the weather is nice" on the screen. Who is to say the machine is not conscious? It could be all sorts of self-aware, but for personal reasons decide to communicate nothing but "the weather is nice" to the outside world.

Then, saying your weather-printing machine is conscious is equivalent to saying that is hhfdsodifiuuiuuuttueeertz which of course means nothing. But a lay person will really think that machine is conscious.

If you say your machine is conscious, then you must show it is conscious rather than just claim it is conscious. I can print "I travel faster than light" and claim that is a proof of faster than light travel to a lay person who will believe me. That is what is happening today in consciousness and AI research.

Just cause you can't see the earth is round directly does not mean it is not spherical. There should atleast be an indirect way, otherwise it is not Science :).

so silicon-based intelligence would be very strange and incomprehensible for us, and i doubt we'd recognize it as an intelligent being easily.

* with the possible exception of eliza

Oh, right, as opposed to most people.

I'll go you one further and admit that I don't know for sure if I am experiencing qualia.

My brain certainly tells itself that I am, but how do I know it's not just wrong?

Perhaps qualia is, in the end, nothing more than the state of asserting to yourself that you feel qualia. In which case it's really more a question about whether your brain is properly structured to ask that question than about whether it really exists...

I guess, like you, I am okay with accepting that experiencing qualia and my brain telling me that I am experiencing qualia are functionally indistinguishable if not equivalent states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

Better: what are the major arguments for the position that machine consciousness is not possible? What do I think of those arguments? Particularly taking care to distinguish:

- does the argument prove what the people advancing it think it proves?

- do I find myself agreeing with the argument?

Major lines of argument I've heard:

- the metaphysical argument: consciousness derives from having a soul somehow linked to your brain (and thenceforth to your body); the purported impossibility of "machine consciousness" follows from a belief that only people have souls (of the right type, at least)

- the limited-smarts argument: consciously building a conscious machine is beyond the capabilities of a conscious entity (of our type of consciousness)

- the "difference between silicon and wetware" argument: this ranges from assumptions there's quantum magic in parts of the brain to assumptions that the brain organization implements some other, unsimulable-by-silicon computing architecture (perhaps super-turing)

- the "consciousness is an illusion" argument: consciousness and intelligence per-se have little to do with each other despite the apparent overlap one perceives from reflection on one's own thoughts. Thus machine intelligence seems to be possible but that says nothing about consciousness per se.

If you're really serious enough about this to consider making it a life's work (or because you really want to make a conscious AI) I would suggest taking none of the above arguments lightly, even though it's somewhat fashionable in some circles to assume most of the above are just nebulous handwaving by anti-rational mystics.

"Taking them seriously" doesn't mean "pack your bag and go home"; it means you keep thinking scientifically and analytically and try to answer questions like:

- suppose smarts are limited, but we don't know that yet for certain. What could this intuition mean (in a more formal or more precise sense)? How could I make the intuition more precise? What would a formal proof of the intuition look like (and what would be the theorem)? Does this inquiry seem to be leading me in the direction of possible theorems or nontrivial facts about the expressive power of symbolic systems (that aren't already known, or a retread of Godel)? Does there still seem to be work I'd be interested in doing in this general field if it turns out that smarts are limited?

...as even "wrong" counterarguments can do wonders for pointing you in the direction of interesting questions

Extra Credit: of the researchers who at least seemed to think they'd solve the problem pretty quickly, is there a recurring pattern to be found in the failures those researchers encountered?

Major recurring themes: people who've thought they were within reach of making conscious machines typically assumed that the part of their own nature that they valued most was the keystone to consciousness and assumed everything else was either secondary or easy (and thus could be filled-in later).

Thus a Hofstadter-type -- who loves delving deep into various piles of work and crafting new and insightful analogies -- winds up thinking that the core capability an artificial intelligence needs is the ability to craft such analogies; people with phds in mathematical fields and a more logical bent assume that the core ability is symbolic inference, and make software that does symbolic inference; yet others assume that rational hedonism is the core and work on utility-maximizing decision-theoretic planners and agents; others still love making systems with complicated interactions and seeing what pops out and start chasing emergence.

All of that work is good work and has found applications, but the dynamic is obvious: people who get into the field with the specific goal of making AI -- instead of, say, improving algorithms for multicamera view synthesis with applications to industrial quality control -- tend to radically overvalue whatever intellectual style they happen to be good at, but so far none of those intellectual styles appears to have really scratched the surface of consciousness in the sense you're interested in. Beware your best ideas and favorite subjects!

- spontaneously ask itself where it is coming from

- spontaneously ask itself what it will become after its own destruction

- having spontaneous thoughts

- having free will

Why do I say spontaneous? Because our thoughts aren't coming from our mind, but from our soul (that is, from the principle of life, which is invisible by nature).

Come on, these are all obvious things; humans, don't believe blindly in science, science is not a religion(!).

A machine could (in theory) more or less be similar to animals, though.

Who did convince you of that? Science?

Science is only science, science very often is wrong, and has to correct itself, sometimes decades, or even centuries later.

I know that I'm not a biological machine. I know that there's a voice inside myself that asks many many more questions than any science will ever be able to answer.

Now, where do these questions come from? Certainly not from my brain. My brain is not able to ask questions beyond its own capabilities.

So, let me repeat the initial question: are you a biological machine, and nothing more?

So, these are all valid question. If I were a "biological machine", someone would already have called for a "biological" doctor...