Can a Computer Have a Mind?

Since computers have been created, there have been many improvements to where they are now and I still believe there is much more to be done with computers. Although computers have their own brain they still do what humans tell them to do. Computers can solve problems and look up certain data, but it is all based upon what it is told to do by the operator. This leads me to the topic of what is still missing. The piece that is still missing from computers being able to replace human senses is the fact that they are not able to think on their own. As mentioned earlier, can operate by producing outcome, but they have to be told what

Through this, Searle argues that if a human and machine receive the same input and then respond by the same output, how are they any different from one another? When given the same purpose, humans and machines have the same response, therefore machines may have a mind. Gilbert Ryle created The computational theory of mind that claims “Computers behave in seemingly rational ways; their inner program causes them to behave in this way and therefore mental states are just like computational states”. He continues on by saying that “If logic can be used to command, and these commands can be coded into logic, then these commands can be coded in terms of 1s and 0s, therefore giving modern computers logic. Through this, how is one to tell if robots don’t have minds if they use logic just like humans do. When the purpose of humans and machines are the same, they may process differently in order to complete that purpose, although they may have the same output. Because humans and machines receive the same input and return the same output, they both have minds in addition to functions and processes in order to do that.

Students may easily lose their attention and concentration with easy access to such incredibly rich store of information. With such new technologies as television, internet and social networks, people nowadays tend to multitask more often as they have easy access to large amount of information. However, such easy access may sometimes be a distraction. Study report “Your Brain on Computers” shows that heavy multitaskers perform up to 20% worse on most tests compared to performance of light multitaskers. Working efficiency of people, who multitask, are claimed to be significantly lower. The same is with concentration. As a result, they are not engaged in working process. Students tend to be easily distracted with this situation. For example, combining doing homework with operating on Twitter, phone or YouTube results in poor engagement of a student into deep thinking process, according to Winifred Gallagher, who is the author of Rapt. He also points out that nowadays high school and college students have decreased capacity of serious thinking because of multitasking and distraction. Moreover, Tyler Cowen, economist and famous blogger, claims that nowadays information tends to come in shorter and smaller portions and that explains why our generation encourages short reading. Since online information is always presented in short written passages, the web prevents user from concentration and contemplation. As an illustration, Nicholas Carr, the speaker at MIT and Harvard,

Turing, a physicalist, believed that artificial intelligence could be achieved in the future. Turing argued that the mind was merely due to the physical aspects of the brain and so a machine could one day be created that has a mind of its own, i.e. artificial intelligence. He created a test called the Turing Test to determine whether a machine has artificial intelligence. In the Turing Test, an interrogator asks two subjects a series of questions. One of the subjects is a person, the other is the computer. The goal is for the person to imitate a computer and the computer to imitate the person. If the interrogator is fooled into thinking that the computer is the human then the computer, according to Turing, is concluded to have the ability to think and thus, have a mind. Turing argued that machines passing the Turing Test were sufficient for ascribing thought.

People do not think computers. Computers do not think. They run programs, that is, a series of commands are done sequentially (one after another). Humans have brains which work in a very different way. They do not process tasks sequentially but very many processes run at the same time. We are consciously aware of a very small amount of the brain's activity. The stuff we are aware of may be described as thoughts, feeling, and emotion thinking.

One of the examples that support my argument that the machines can be conscious is the example of a sheep that was genetically made by human beings using the genes and DNA of an original sheep. That was actually a machine as it was synthetically made by human beings, but it had the ability to survive, produce heat, think, and do all the activities that an original sheep is capable of doing. So this machine comes under the category of being conscious. Dolly sheep was made on 5th July 1996 with the help of cloned embryo and DNA of another naturally produced sheep. She was also a

Even if a computer was programmed with all the information ever known to man, how could it be capable of conscious thought?

As a result of not being mind readers, humans have learned, through time, the importance on other subtle, verbal/non-verbal communication/behaviorisms as clues to what another individual may or may not be experiencing. For example, if another being behaves in a certain way, such as saying “I am hungry,” humans have learned that it is more than reasonable to assume he or she is in fact hungry. In all actuality, it is unreasonable to assume that this individual is not hungry and is lying. Furthermore, if a robot or computer behaved so similarly to a human, to the point that it succeeded in passing the Turing Test, then what right does a human have in claiming to know what is or is not going on in this computer’s/robot’s mind? For these reasons, I think that it if a robot or computer could exhibit the required behavior to imply that it has a mind, then humans are in no position to tell state whether that robot or computer does or does not have a mind. Humans cannot even reach an agreement on what the mind actually is, therefore, human’s are not in the position to claim whether or not other beings can have a mind. If another being behaves as if it has a mind, then that is the best possible evidence we can ever have towards proving

Alan Turing, as a Physicalist, saw the mind as the brain, since the brain is the physical object. Applying such views to machines, Turing’s Imitation Game ‘test’ is supposed to demonstrate his claim that certain machines should count as “thinking things” in the same way that we humans do. His argument being that, if a machine could imitate a human well enough to deceive a person that it was not a machine, then it should be considered “conscious.” He found that since most of what we base our foundation of consciousness on (our judgments and interactions with others), if we cannot see the responder in the game (i.e. the computer), and it responds as well as human, then it should also be considered a “thinking thing.” Turing also expected that one day machines would be able to imitate our minds so well, that we would not be able to tell the difference between a real mind or “thinking thing,” and a

Defining intelligence is extremely difficult and researchers now think that there are lots of different aspects to it, including; social, logical, creative, emotional and practical intelligence. The correct representation of the word is arguably a matter of opinion as there are many different definitions. With this argument in mind, it makes the task of arguing a Computers level of intelligence (if any) harder as, ultimately, each person’s definition could be different. A part of being intelligent is the ability for something/someone to be able to think for themselves which most computers aren’t able to do as they are simply programmed to perform certain functions which means that they are not in control of their response. However modern technologies have the propensity to make decisions based on an input from an end user. For example Apples ‘Siri’ service turns voice commands in visual and audio responses.

Artificial intelligence is “the capability of a device to perform functions that are normally associated with human intelligence, such as reasoning and manipulating factual and heuristic knowledge, including the ability to make decisions, understand language, and respond to outside stimuli.” (Hosea, Harikrishnan, Rajkumar 124). Today’s artificial intelligence is in its early stages, there are only a few systems that are able to reach the requirements to categorize these systems as intelligent. Thoughts and emotions are the two things that have

In his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Alan Turing sets out to answer the question of whether machines can think in the same humans can by conceptualizing the question in concrete terms. In simple terms, Turing redefines the question by posing whether a machine can replicate the cognition of a human being. Yet, some may object to the notion that Turing’s new question effectively captures the nature of machines’ capacity for thought or consciousness, such as John Searle. In his Chinese room thought experiment, Searle outlines a scenario that implies machines’ apparent replication of human cognition does not yield conscious understanding. While Searle’s Chinese thought experiment demonstrates how a Turing test is not sufficient to establish that a machine can possess consciousness or thought, this argument does not prove that machines are absolutely incapable of consciousness or thought. Rather, given the ongoing uncertainty of the debate regarding the intelligence of machines, there can be no means to confirm or disconfirm the conscious experience of machines as well as the consciousness of humans by extension of that principle.

On his essay “Can machines think?” Alan Turing, a great mathematician, and creator of the Turing Test presents us with the initial concept of what is now considered artificial intelligence. He states that eventually, as time progresses, machines will be able to think like humans. But, can a machine really think like a human? Can a machine even think on its own, or it is just based on human science and engineering to make computer systems perform tasks that require intelligence when done by humans?

Computers are everywhere today. It would be impossible to go your entire life without using a computer. Cars, ATMs, and TVs we use everyday, and all contain computers. It is for this reason that computers and their software have to become more intelligent to make our lives easier and computers more accessible. Intelligent computer systems can and do benefit us all; however people have constantly warned that making computers too intelligent can be to our disadvantage.

But there are many conflicting views about the technology needed to produce real A.I. Just because computers can get faster doesn't mean they get smarter. People have confused ideal computers with real computers. Although computer scientists and programmers have created plans that are possible in theory, someone needs to write the software that gets the process going, and at the present time, humans have given absolutely no evidence of being able to write such software.