Kurzweil against an AI critic: (Humans)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 10:36 (5183 days ago) @ xeno6696

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ray-kurzweil-responds-to-ray-kurzweil-does-not-understand-the...Dhw, -As I consider your question more on whether I think it is possible, Kurzweil's discussion at this link certainly makes it seem possible. At the same time I find it hard to say it IS when we don't have a firm grasp on what consciousness IS? Trial by error, again...-As this is one of the many subjects on which I am horribly ignorant, my response is made with some hesitancy, but I'm here to learn.
 
Kurzweil says that thanks to modern technology "we can see how our brain creates our thoughts and see how our thoughts create our brain." Modern technology can certainly show up the activities in the brain, and the respective locations of our different mental processes, but I do not get the impression that Kurzweil actually knows HOW thoughts are created. If he did, would he not be able to build his sentient robot now? I find his statement extremely misleading, and your own comment on consciousness (along with the scepticism of B_M and David) reinforces my doubts.-Kurzweil asks what makes the brain "capable of self-organizing and learning from its environment?" If he is to build a human brain, should he not also be asking what makes the brain capable of consciousness, creativity, imagination, love, empathy, self-doubt, arrogance etc.? You've quite rightly identified my main interest as being whether such a "human" robot is possible, and the discussion you've referred us to seems to me to ignore most of the attributes that actually make us human. There are primitive organisms that are perfectly capable of self-organizing and learning from their environment.-Kurzweil talks repeatedly of "massive redundancies", suggesting that the brain is in fact far less complex than it seems. Since he hasn't solved any of the above mysteries, I wonder ... very speculatively ... if what he calls redundancies might not turn out to be the equivalent of what was once thought to be junk DNA. Or of course there is the possibility that there is more to the human mind than meets the technological eye.