Dreaming of Conscious Artificial Intelligence? [The Scientific Indian]

Published: August 2, 2007, 12:12 pm

A while back I read an essay on Artificial Intelligence at TR by David Gelernter wherein, besides other things, he discusses where AI research stands at present (the short answer, nowhere). Like all discussions on AI, it inevitably led to the question of Consciousness. As always, I promptly got confused about it. What is it? Is it an epistemological impossibility? However much we try, will we be never sure if we have understood even a little of it? I fear that I'll go diarrheal (verbally, with this blog post, you understand) if I continue thinking about Consciousness. I'll let you read Gelernter's essay and ponder over it rather than rub your nose in my confusion. It's clear from the essay: Gelernter isn't in the AI camp and has no love for questions that do not lead anywhere. Artificial Intelligence Is Lost in the Woods he tells us plainly. In the later part of the essay, Gelernter suggests a useful framework (a pre-scientific theory, he notes) to think through what he calls

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