More on Machine Intelligence, I Suppose

   I don't think computers will ever be able to become intelligent- gain true sentience- become alive. Not the way we're making machines. When I was thinking last night about the computer's lack of sensation (outside of  maybe webcams,) I realized that to the machines, what we type into them would be a form of sensation. It lets them "see" or maybe "feel" but definitely "know" something from the outside world, doesn't it? That led me to the realization that as of now, computers are basically just stimulus-response. Of course, I always knew that this was the real reason computers could not become self-aware-- a modern computer becoming self-aware is as ridiculous a notion as a punch-card computer becoming self-aware, if not even more ridiculous because the modern machine is more advanced, which would lead to a sense of credibility and the idea that it is science instead of magic behind it.

   Looking at a computer mind from the anatomical viewpoint of a human mind, the computer can sense things and generate involuntary (programmed) motions- the extent of a computer's brain is the mesencephalon, or midbrain, a part of the brainstem. An android would have a cerebellum of sorts to measure out movement, in the form of maybe gyroscopes or something (there's all kinds of ways to built robots.) But that's pretty much it. All of these machines lack other basic brain bits- cerebrums, for one, from which come consciousness. The cerebrum takes up most of the brain. It is true that memories are stored here, and that computers do have the capacity to remember, but we can't extend this metaphor too far. I suppose the RAM would be its short-term memory, with the ROM as its long-term, if we were to, but that's beside the point. Our memories form a part of what we do, while what computers do is dictated by their programming, which although stored in the memory is a completely different thing to them. It would be ultimately impossible for this framework to form a conscious entity.

    Where would the "I" of a robot be? Would an android dream of electric sheep? Would a computer have no mouth but feel the need to scream? Would batteries truly not be included? Would Rossum's workers be universal? These are iconic references I'm making here, people.

   ...

   I mean... if you really are all... people.
Mmm.