IMO it's not entirely clear that any digital system will be able to be sentient. If you're just moving bits around according to some formula, like rocks in sand, can the result really ever be comparable to a human mind? Current science indicates that the human mind, and indeed the universe, should be computable, but I find the notion that any such computation would be "real" to be highly unintuitive, at least.
And certainly you don't get an AI or a working mind or a teaching mechnism by just dumping data somewhere...
What I don't get is, where do we draw the line between a computer, and a sentient ..thing?And certainly you don't get an AI or a working mind or a teaching mechnism by just dumping data somewhere...
Quote
On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
— Charles Babbage
— Charles Babbage
Scientists have already emulated a worm's brain with computers, though this worm only has 302 neurons. Adult human brains are closer to the ballpark of 85 billion neurons, but at how many neurons do we stop treating something like a bunch of bits and start treating it like something that really thinks? Evolution crossed that line, as we're here now, so I don't see why computing can't cross it too eventually, but I have no idea who is going to define at how many neurons or transistors or whatever is the point where we can look at something and say this can be sentient.
