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Re:Why AI is a dangerous dream - interview with Noel Sharkey by Tichy on Friday September 04, 2009 @04:49PM (#805667)
"When a computer beats on a drum it has been told by some human to beat a drum."

Well yeah, it seems likely that if a computer ever becomes really intelligent, it has been built by a human. So?

Re:Why AI is a dangerous dream - interview with Noel Sharkey by jacquesm on Friday September 04, 2009 @04:57PM (#805689)
If it is an intelligent computer it will not need to be told what to do, it will motivate itself, but we may not even recognize its actions as motivation because the concepts are not clarified, we only know what motivates us, we can not begin to imagine how a sentient AI would be motivated, maybe it will tell us, maybe it won't, who know... That motivation does not necessarily have anything in common with a human motivation, there are plenty of alternatives. It might not want to beat a drum, even when told to.

For that to happen though we have a bunch of formidable hurdles to cross, and in spite of all our processing power and data storage capability we have not yet been able to simulate the intelligence of even an insect or a small mammal.

Whether an AI is built by humans or aliens or comes in to being through some freak coincidence is irrelevant.

As long as it takes a human with their intelligence to tell a computer what to do it has not achieved intelligence, merely the capability to follow instructions very precisely.