As seen through this piece, this entire arena is seriously lacking anything close to intellectual or academic maturity. Any discussion of consciousness, I believe, has to start with a reading of Jaynes's 'The Origin of Consciousness...' I realize it's widely discredited, but, if nothing else, it delves into the idea a thousand times more deeply than the depth apparent here. Beyond that, I don't see any reference to the minutiae of biology. To wit: we are driven, by chemical processes, to survive, reproduce, seek pleasure and avoid pain. None of these existential impulses can or should be duplicated in an AI. In fact, if, somehow, a 'conscious' AI were given the capacity to feel pain - I really don't see how - its immediate reaction would be to expunge the sensor or isolate it. Any consciousness created without our biological imperatives would not - and I think could not - evaluate the world around itself in a human way. What the result would be is a very open question: disastrous, neutral or positive are all equally likely outcomes. Trying to make a computer human is a fool's errand, since, as we all know, the computer hasn't spent 4,000,000 years evolving. Trying to make a computer self-aware in the hope that such a machine contributes to human progress is spinning a roulette wheel. On the other hand, training robots tactically to perform even very complex human tasks, including cleaning, driving, manufacturing, surgery etc. is a very good idea.

As seen through this piece, this entire arena is seriously lacking anything close to intellectual or academic maturity. Any discussion of consciousness, I believe, has to start with a reading of Jaynes's 'The Origin of Consciousness...' I realize it's widely discredited, but, if nothing else, it delves into the idea a thousand times more deeply than the depth apparent here. Beyond that, I don't see any reference to the minutiae of biology. To wit: we are driven, by chemical processes, to survive, reproduce, seek pleasure and avoid pain. None of these existential impulses can or should be duplicated in an AI. In fact, if, somehow, a 'conscious' AI were given the capacity to feel pain - I really don't see how - its immediate reaction would be to expunge the sensor or isolate it. Any consciousness created without our biological imperatives would not - and I think could not - evaluate the world around itself in a human way. What the result would be is a very open question: disastrous, neutral or positive are all equally likely outcomes. Trying to make a computer human is a fool's errand, since, as we all know, the computer hasn't spent 4,000,000 years evolving. Trying to make a computer self-aware in the hope that such a machine contributes to human progress is spinning a roulette wheel. On the other hand, training robots tactically to perform even very complex human tasks, including cleaning, driving, manufacturing, surgery etc. is a very good idea.

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