(November 29, 2012 at 3:16 pm)Ryantology Wrote: I think, in a practical sense, we will probably duplicate the effect (or create a convincing facsimile of it) by chance before we understand it in that level of detail, however.
I of course think you are conflating expert processing with something much more subjective in nature. Outward appearances will never provide adequate support for the existence of subjective states. It would be a much easier task to program a machine to fool a human observer than it would be to create the conditions where a contemplation program corresponds to anything near what we ourselves mean by contemplation.
(November 29, 2012 at 3:16 pm)Ryantology Wrote: I think, at the point where an AI tells us that it is conscious, and can convince a majority of people that its thought processes are independent and unique, we have to start giving them the benefit of the doubt (as we do naturally to every other person we encounter) and call them 'conscious'.
Fooling a human observer is beside the point, though an interesting challenge for AI in its own right.
