Well, apart from being a reductionist, I'm also an avid fan of biology. You see, I believe that each and every function of our body is the best of the best on biological terms, and that no function is obsolete. After all, if it becomes obsolete, it is replaced (pineal gland, for example).

What is consciousness? If consciousness is merely the act of thinking for yourself and making choices, than donkeys are quite conscious. If a mule is put in front of two large pieces of hay, each at a identical distance, but one to the left and one to the right, and the donkey is aware that both are the same distance away, eventually the donkey will go to one of the haystags. I don't know which one it will be, only the donkey will. You see, the donkey has the primal instinct to eat (if you are very hungry, do you not feel compelled to eat?), but is faced with a dilemma. Thus either his instincts tell him to go right or left, or there is something else, a room for thought. The donkey is able to think for himself and actually choose which hay he wants to eat.

You ask why sentient beings haven't shown that they are sentient? Well, it's a pickle.. If you believe that each and every creature is as sentient as us. I do not believe in a true level of sentience. I believe that sentience is a feeling created by the brain to aid us in our battle for survival. After all, if you can think for yourself which route to take you will have a much higher rate of survival(!).

Than again, what is sentience exactly?

Oh, I do not agree on the internet. I believe that each and every different computer will have to be set to be a neuron. Ergo, each computer must act like or similar to a neuron in the brain. Now, if 10 computers are doing this, and the being becomes sentient, he will probably take over the net anyway, but the first few computers actually behaving as a brain is very important. We have to stimulate the brain before it can become sentient.

Mr U

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HU, I'd like to step back for a moment if I may, to your statement:



I'm assuming we are talking about the red light laser they use to store information? There are now blue light that can hold 64 gig on a dual sided "blue ray" Now they are thinking about invisable light spectrum drives for the future, however the storage integrity of these discs will be unkown. Now they aren't in the testing stage yet, however there is a company out there (forgive me the name escapes me at present) that has brought out a new coating called armour plating, so this could be in the testing stages sooner than we think.

And yes Truth, I know of Moore's Law, and well brought up as I had been thinking about that today actually. You beat me to it.

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Whoops. Heh heh. Okay I guess I'm wrong about Moore. It's just that the next jump seems less sure; from what I hear around many things aren't changing. We're throwing a few ideas around, but for processors I remember hearing that there really wasn't much effort being put in. Anyway, superb presentation Truth and UT!
Exact sentience? I dunno....it's one of my biggest headaches pinning it down. Maybe tomorrow.
And yes - stimulation. The potential not only has to be there, it must also be activated. Early man may only have had the potential after a generation or so of gene mutation through evolution, but the actual activation may have taken more.

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I know about blue-ray technology, although I hadn't heard about those invisible rays yet. What I was referring to was the fact that we can only make the holes so small, and put so many layers on them. I'll agree that we can still improve vastly, but the real leaps of progress, I believe on data-storage have been made already.
Processors are a different matter, however as we will soon be making a quantum leap with the teraflop, a topic Helios discussed somewhere...

Mr U

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There was a little segment on the news last night where monkeys were genetically enhanced by removing a gene which has something to do with rewards, (think Pavlov here), and the monkeys began doing their tasks more and more without being rewarded at all. Whereas before they would only do a task for a reward. Pretty freaky, huh? Just think if we introduced that to mankind, to the slave race, we would be the AI in a sense. Just a robot performing tasks. And then we would truly live in a society divided by sentient humans and non-sentient humans.

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You can already do that with a huamn though to an extent. Extensive brainwashint tecniques can severely dull the brain to pleasure/pain stimuli.

I was talking about the new 'Cell' processors. Basically a few microprocessors working together as a single processor.

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Personally, I don't feel that we have true AI yet. By that I mean we do not yet have sentient and self-aware computers/machines.

- Rob