( A five-minute read)

There is little doubt that future A.I. will be capable of doing significant damage.

In the near future, we may indeed need a very new perspective on the nature of consciousness, as quantum mechanics is proving with a narrative of the self-interacting with the world.

Even if we manage through technology to artificially create some kind of limited consciousness it does not mean we understand it as it is an emergent property of very complex neuronal patterns.

It is easy to imagine an unconstrained software application that spreads throughout the Internet, severely mucking up our most efficient and relied upon medium for global exchange.

However, the question is will we see a machine that is aware of itself and its surroundings. That could take in and process massive amounts of data in real time?

This will require intentional behavior from an A.I. Therefore it would have a mind, as intentionality can only arise when something possesses its own beliefs, desires, and motivations.

Though computers and robots are more advanced than ever, they’re still just tools. They are unaware of their own existence and can only perform tasks for which they were programmed.

But what if they could think for themselves?

Brains and computers work very differently. Both compute, but only one understands.

A strict symbol-processing machine can never be a symbol-understanding machine

Conscious machines would raise troubling legal and ethical problems.

Would a conscious machine be a “person” under the law?

Should “conscious” be thought of in the way we think of humans, and even some animals?

IE:  Information received through any of the six senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, or feeling.

Your conscious mind is continually observing and categorizing what is going on around you. It has no memory, and it can only hold one thought at a time and deal with it either positively or negatively, “yes” or “no.”

Is consciousness the accepting new information, storing and retrieving old information and cognitive processing of it all into perceptions and actions.

If that’s right, then one day machines will indeed be the ultimate consciousness.

They’ll be able to gather more information than a human, store more than many libraries, access vast databases in milliseconds and compute all of it into decisions more complex, and yet more logical, than any person ever could.

So where are we?

Is consciousness more about human behavior that cannot be computed by a machine. Creativity, for example, and the sense of freedom people possess don’t appear to come from logic or calculations.

Then again consciousness and the physical world are complementary aspects of the same reality.

When a person observes, or experiments on, some aspect of the physical world, that person’s conscious interaction causes discernible change.

Although it requires brains to become real is consciousness a thing that exists by itself –  there had to be something before the Big bang perhaps space had or has a conscious.

Consciousness alone, however, cannot make physical changes to the world, but dreams or visions can. After all, we experience the world subjectively.

If a computer can’t be conscious, then how can a brain?” A simulation of a brain is still not a physical brain. After all, it is a purely physical object that works according to physical law. It even uses electrical activity to process information, just like a computer.

Some of these questions have to do with technology; others have to do with what consciousness actually is.

We left with the possibility that new biological structures that are, or could become, conscious are yet to be discovered.

The most accurate of brain simulations will not yield minds, nor will software programs produce consciousness. Therefore we will not have machines with what we call consciousness.

Human brainpower transplanted into a mechanical robot–is a quite a leap.

However, we could be confronted with this kind of technology so don’t lose your mind too soon.

All conscious human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.