{"id":98,"date":"2002-05-13T08:54:00","date_gmt":"2002-05-13T16:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=98"},"modified":"2007-12-30T17:03:31","modified_gmt":"2007-12-31T01:03:31","slug":"are-we-just-biological-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Are we just biological &#8220;machines&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some people argue that we are very complex &#8220;machines&#8221;. From this starting point, you could argue that someday we will be able to invent &#8220;machines&#8221; that are intelligent and conscious (eg. AI) just like we are. This makes many people uncomfortable, and those people claim that you could never make such a &#8220;machine&#8221;. In those cases, an interesting question to ask is, &#8220;How do you know that you are <strong>not<\/strong> a machine?&#8221;.  The following is written by Marvin Minsky, in an afterword to Vernor Vinge&#8217;s novella &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0312862075\/\">True Names<\/a>&#8220;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Ridiculous,&#8221; most people say, at first: &#8220;I certainly don&#8217;t <em>feel<\/em> like a machine!&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But what makes us so sure of that? How could one claim to know how something feels, until one has experienced it? Consider that either you are a machine or you&#8217;re not. Then, if, as you say, you aren&#8217;t a machine, you are scarcely in any position of authority to say how it feels to be a machine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people argue that we are very complex &#8220;machines&#8221;. From this starting point, you could argue that someday we will be able to invent &#8220;machines&#8221; that are intelligent and conscious (eg. AI) just like we are. This makes many people&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=98\" class=\"readmore\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Are we just biological &#8220;machines&#8221;?<\/span><span class=\"fa fa-angle-double-right\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","content-layout-full"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}