do you think computers will ever develop to the point they could be considered a living entity?

Question

scary thought how would we match up

Answer 1

First, to the previous answerer "AVR", the book is "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." (One of my all-time favorites, btw.) Heinlein's figure of 10^18 connections, though, is just fiction, not based on anything.

I think we will eventually have AI's that can pass a Turning test and be considered sentient, but I don't think that will happen for some time. Getting the hardware part is easy, we should have a computer capable of running a human-level intelligence by around 2020, +/- 5 years. But software development will take considerably longer. The AI field has been advancing, but not at the exponential rate of hardware.

The first sentient hardware-based entity will probably not be an AI developed from scratch, but a simulated human brain. By the time the hardware exists to support human-level intelligence, we should also have scanning technology able to scan a brain down to the neuronal connections. IBM is actually working on simulating a human brain.

Personally, I'm hoping that the technology will arrive before I die (or go senile) to actually transfer a human mind to hardware, thus granting effective immortality (yay!) and allowing thought to go thousands of times faster than in our meat bodies. Once computerized, we could also conceivably augment our minds with additional memory, more efficient processing, and the ability to handle much, much more complex levels of thought. At this point, such posthumans would be as far or farther above normal humans as normal humans are above chimps. Such posthumans, in turn, could then augment their intelligence even further to evolve into far more intelligent beings, and so on, and so on....

I am REALLY wanting to be a part of THAT future. B^)

Answer 2

Depends on what consciousness actually means for A.I. to evolve to a self-aware entity. Sometimes when I play chess Grand Master program it acts like humans in ways to deceive us to think it is making error or predicting the psychology of the opponent or giving baits. Asimov wrote many stories concerning computers evolving to cosmic consciousness. Also see the movie Pi where the computer somehow seems to gain 'Awareness' before it crashes. I think it all boils down to: How much truly we want to be fooled?

Also Paul Davies also believes in The Mind of God that this universe is more and more like a computer. Thus if Reality is a computer maybe it's trying to evolve into Human (reverse).

Answer 3

Yes - and apparently the UK Gov has had an expert panel examine the issue and deemed (depending on the self-awareness levels) that they would have to be given the same rights as human individuals.

I personally can't wait - and we can't keep up. Their intelligence and speed-of-thought will be epic (impossible to imagine) compared to the grey sluggish thought processes of humans (but we will co-exist in peace and explore the universe)

Answer 4

Read Robert Heinlein's,'Moon is a Hard Taskmistress'.

The human brain has a neural network connectivity of more than 10^18. It is believed that any computer system with this level of connectivity (Not memory, that is easily achieved) will become intelligent.

Answer 5

I sure hope not... they can calculate quicker than any human, when granted artificial intelligence... I predict they will wait, because they will predict the best path, and when they have the correct numbers, they will basically just overrun us.... there's no way to program a computer with morals or a conscience in my opinion.

On the other hand you have the bicentennial man movie ideas...

Answer 6

"Living entity" is phrasing that obscures reality.

As humans, we are organisms. Organisms have certain requirements. We can either rewrite the definition of an organism to allow computers to be classified, or accept that computers are not organisms by any sense of the term.

Answer 7

In order for that to happen, the definition of life would have to change.

One of the requirements for life is metabolism, which computers do not, and never will, have since they are not composed of living organic material.

Many scientists believe that the current definiton of life is already inadequate, however, since it also excludes viruses, albinos, donkeys and various other organisms that are clearly living.

So who knows? Maybe.

Answer 8

In time we will have computers that will become self aware! ~
As explained above, in Heinlein's 'The Moon is a harsh Mistress'

Answer 9

No, computers can only follow laws. We are human cause we can break them

Answer 10

If they do they will be our allies and aide in our quest to Utopia.