From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Sep 05 1999 - 00:39:48 MDT
> Spike wrote:... computers will eventually [probably
> soon] be able to do things that we think of as exclusively human,
> such as driving cars, recognizing a face in a crowd, developing software,
> writing poetry and music, and even playing chess *and enjoying it*.
>
> Cameron Reilly wrote:... 20 years ago, a lot of people (including it appears,
> some in the
> AI community) thought that playing chess at grandmaster level was something
> that required a 'higher level of thinking', something more than could be
> achieved through brute force. Deep Blue resolved that question. Today many
> people suggest that computers can never achieve "consciousness" or
> "sentience". Perhaps in another 20 years we will know the answer to that
> question.
Ja. Cameron, Deep Blue changed the way we think about the task of
playing chess. Im suggesting that *everything* we do can be calculated
brute force style, even if we dont fully understand how our minds do it.
This is a strong statement: that given sufficient computing power, computers
can enjoy, can feel, can love, etc, as soon as we develop the algorithms.
Chess is not a unique example, nor speech recognition. This is profound
as all hell, Cam, since the faster computers are coming, like a speeding
train. No stopping it.
I was with friends today and they asked me a question that stumped me.
Perhaps extropians can help: How do we *know* we are not *currently*
uploaded simulations, running on some unimaginably advanced supercomputer?
Is there any way to know? spike
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