I think the big mistake in such ponderings of this, assuming AI's consciousness is even possible, is that it will somehow have a human quality. Devoid of emotion, this will be the most existential consciousness ever to percieve in known history. Emotion is one of the most basic building blocks of living organisms, at least. Candace Pert said there are opiate recepters in single celled life. This implies, say, an amoeba feels pain. Fascinating stuff, really. And yes, I am assuming life and consciousness is related, a debate that will no doubt happen after such a frankeinstien is made.

"Candace Pert said there are opiate recepters in single celled life. This implies, say, an amoeba feels pain. "

Do you have a link to an article on that? Thats really awsome, I want 2 read more. thnx

I object to the phrase frankenstein. Surely AI would pose so many more questions (and answers) than are currently available. It would be great to converse with such a machine.

What is emotion? How many items and what are their properties? Such as Laugh, Cry and ?

Is it necessary for an AI to have emotion or would the understanding of the human emotion will be sufficient?

Amoeba et al certainly react to stimuli; poke them with a probe, and they will curl up on that side, just as a person or bear or bird would.

whether they are conscious of that stimuli or the reaction (pain), is another question.

I'm inclinded to believe that they have some level of awareness, though 'self-aware' or 'pain aware', I cannot say.

We may be able to create life artificially before we can create intelligence. If we have created "AI" in the true sense, and not just the faximilie of such, then I'd say it needs to be be able to learn, and attach that learning to a notion of self that is independant of the learned response.
www.20q.org can reply "myself", but I doubt it has a meme object onwhich to project a meaning of that word.

We may be able to create life artificially before we can create intelligence.

That I agree. I am playing with DNA data to see how I can tell the computer to create a virtual life form from my supplied DNA. If everything works well, one of these days we can find out how to assemble a desired DNA, then copy to make a life. I am a long way off....need more computer power

'You won!': 20Q can guess at heaven but not 'God'.

'You won!': 20Q can guess at heaven but not 'God'.

What is 'God' - no one seems to come to an agreement....:D

kmguru, thats an amazing project. Talk more about it

Have not done much. Busy on setting up a data center. But will start up again after 9 months - due to some serious deliverables. Till then you have to hold your curiosity. I am still looking to reduce the 30,000+ core DNA...otherwise it would be too complicated...anybody has any ideas?

Are you going to simulate a fertilised egg? And how did you get your DNA digitised? :eek:

It can be...but the computer power required will not be available in a decent price for another 10 years. The DNA is in the form of a string ...ACGT... and also represented by digital neurons in parallel...(A...C...G...T) the base set will look like a pyramid...but there will be separate sets of neurons that will monitor each base neuron and adjust the scaling and other conditions...

What I have not worked out is the learning part...the thresholds that needs to be somewhat intelligent to make the results meaningful. The design is a multi-layered, kind of multi-dimensional approach....a lot of work needs to be done....