Will computers be indistinguishable from humans?

By Juby Thomas, SiliconIndia   |   Thursday, 25 November 2010, 19:54 IST   |    6 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
Will computers be indistinguishable from humans?
Bangalore: Computers have become remarkably useful but are still a far cry from the dream of early computer pioneers of a machine so smart it would be indistinguishable from a human. Will one ever be? Some say it is doubtful, whereas some other computer experts predict that very soon computers will be able to match the intelligence of humans. Still there are engineers who believe that glib comparisons between computers and humans don't do justice to the complexities of either. Some philosophers also argue that consciousness is critical to the human mind, and that a computer could never be conscious. There are also other experts who say computers don't have anything resembling a human body, sense organs, feelings, or awareness after all. Without these, it cannot have human experiences, especially of the ones which reflect our fullest nature. It is true that the aim of artificial intelligence within the video games industry is to create a virtual entity which is indistinguishable from a human player. But it has its own limitations like the speed at which people play games makes it difficult for developers to program any artificial entity within the game itself. The human brain can determine a course of action faster than any complex artificial intelligence as these have to rely on sorting through lengthy lookup tables or decision trees to operate. According to Och, Research Scientisare at Google, Programmers will also need to figure out how to synthesize the intelligence of different programs. Right now a computer might play Jeopardy, but it knows nothing about playing chess. Neither the Jeopardy-playing computer nor the chess-playing one has any sense of how a soccer ball bounces. A computer would have to know a little bit about a lot of things to translate gracefully. Till today both scientist and philosophers have brought out several possibilities and non-possibilities of Computers that are indistinguishable from a human being. All these lead us towards a doubt, Will computers be indistinguishable from humans?