RE: Do computers have consciousness?
December 23, 2013 at 11:03 pm
(This post was last modified: December 23, 2013 at 11:07 pm by Angrboda.)
(December 23, 2013 at 10:29 pm)Crulax Wrote: As a computer sciences major I don't see consciousness in computers today but we are not far off. (within 20 years) The problem is that current computers cannot handle the vast amounts of information that would be required to be considered conscious. Think of all the information that your brain is bombarded with sight, sound, touch and so on every second. Computer processors cannot handle all that information at the moment but they're getting there.
Human Brain Project
Human brains, or at least, discrete attentional centers within human brains, don't process all that much of the information either. Sub processes in the brain massage the data into usable chunks, and the attentional centers focus on the pre-digested mental cud. The conscious centers aren't doing much processing at all, they just have a perpetual illusion that they are paying attention to these things. Things like change blindness, and Kahneman's fast and slow thinking systems, make plain that "consciousness" - however many we have - isn't doing much at all. The bulk of consciousness - propositional reasoning and language, is probably all being processed below the level of consciousness in the language centers. The "interpreter module" in the brain isn't itself performing the computations necessary to make up its propositional, linguistic content; its "being fed" pre-computed linguistic chunks.
(December 23, 2013 at 10:46 pm)whateverist Wrote: I don't think the number of connections is the main problem. Programs can perform tasks, even to the point of following extensive decision trees to diagnose disease in humans.
The architecture of brains and the architecture of computers are radically different. Pound for pound of computing hardware, given optimized configurations, the architecture of the brain is much more efficient than the architecture of a computer, and more flexible, as well. It would take massive amounts of computer power to duplicate what even a small brain does because of the architectural mismatch. Computers just aren't well matched to the type of tasks which biological brains and nerves do.