Can Computers Have a Mind?
...function differently then the way machines operate. This is not so. In fact, the human brain operates on the same principle that machines do, and that is by means of electrical impulses. The neurons in the human brain transfer information through the firing of neural synapses. And what the neural synapses are firing are electrical impulses, which can also be defined as the transferring of electrons from one nerve to another. The computer operates on the same principle, with the difference that the electrons are traveling between silicon transistors instead of neurons. So the main principle of operation is the same for both computers and humans. Regarding the medium for intelligence, is it possible that it is the biological structure of the brain and the fact that humans are living beings and computers are dead matter a reason that computers cannot be intelligent? I think not, because computers are already capable of exhibiting behaviors similar to the one seen in simple animals, such as worms or snails. For them it is assumed that they are not intelligent, self-aware, and the only behavior they have is the instinctual one, predetermined by the genetic coding – sense food, and then go eat it, when the time comes, search for a mate, run away from moving objects, etc. Their behavior is similar to the programmed behavior of the simple AI agents. They have predetermined rules that they must follow and their behavior is completely predefined by those rules, just like the behavior of simple life. Of course, human behavior is much more complex. And that is precisely what the difference is. Complexity – while the nervous system of a snail is composed of a couple of hundred or several thousands of nerves and nerve connections, the human brain has billions, if not trillions of such connections. Some of those are connected in much the same way as those in other animals, but it is their number that makes the difference. So I believe that that the cause for human consciousness is here not due to the fact that humans are alive, or have a soul or some similar spiritual concept, but due to the complexity of the human brain. If we take this into account together with the fact that simulations of artificial life are already available, and AI projects are constantly producing increasingly complex agents, then it would be only a question of time before sufficiently complex agents are produced, ones that can think and act intelligently. Furthermore, even though the brain is constructed of billions of neurons, they by themselves are not intelligent any more that one can claim a single-cell organism to be intelligent. But when the neurons are connected, and act as a whole, it is then that intelligence emerges. It is the same with compute...