Wednesday, March 2, 2011

What would actual sentience in a computer or robot look like?

Have you ever seen a big dog sitting in the driver's seat of a big truck or car and could swear that you thought the dog thought it was his car and that he or she could actually drive it? So, in the end it is about belief and perception in a way whether it is the dog in the driver's seat, the chimpanzee raised like a human child, the computer or robot taught to mimic a human brain of a child up to an adult. It is about belief. If a computer or robot believes that it is a human or a human like intelligence then who are you or I to tell it something else. Just like now, if someone told me that I was dead I would say in my mind, "What a fool!" Why couldn't a computer think just like that?

There is a saying, "As a man thinketh so is he."
Maybe there should also be a saying, "As any being thinketh so is the being!"

If a being thinks it is a being it doesn't really matter whether you or I think it is a being as long as it thinks it is alive and a being.  In the end I think this is how we might define sentience in computers and robots.

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