The difference between the evolution of the naturual brain and the evolution of the atrifocal brian is that one is a, from our stand point, a purely natural process.
The other, we are trying to take what we know about how our own brains function and map it to a simulation.
The day that a calculator can naturally turn itself into a super computer is the day the computers have equaled the human brain.
how is our creation of any intelligence NOT a natural process??
if we wanna look at it from a religious standpoint, god created us in his image so why shouldn\'t we have an intrinsic need to create ourselves?
and look, we\'re in a bit of a situation here on earth, if you haven\'t noticed. Don\'t you think it\'s possible that we\'re building a new vessel for our consciousness that transcends the limitations of our current biology? go look at the kinds of things DARPA is up to these days and then tell me we\'re not about to be faced with some major decisions about the "ethics" of the things we\'ll be capable of...
I have no doubt that we are rapidly approaching a point of having to redefine alot of terms; conciouness, awareness, intelligence, due to what we are doing with computers.
From the last papers I have read, the real limitation is not in the creating of the "brian" or the algorithms that go into desicion makings. These concepts are well understood and somewhat easy to grasp; they have been around for 50 or so years.
The what is not in question, the how is. Computations per seconds and thoughts per second are completely different.
I have no doubt that very shortly, probably well before your graph would suggest, we will produce a reasonably self aware machine. While I have no problem with this, there might be religous objections.
What is human? Is sexual reproduction that only way of creating more humans? What is the difference between creating intelligant computers and clones? Especially if we are able to construct "bodies" to put the intelligant computers in.
Cloning and intelligant computers pose the same questions from different angles:
If we are able to create a soul without a container (intelligant computer) or a container without a soul (clone) what does that mean for those of us who are both soul and container?
There are alot of ways to define life, the best way is something that has a state of either alive or dead, and can reproduce. There are, in theory, no restrictions on how a living being can reproduce. This could all just be a mute point.
Personally, I would say that if either can be created decoupled from the other, that would point really to one of two things (and I do not know which one I would honestly chose, but I can tell you which one I hope is true):
1.) We are pure conduits of another engery or intelligence source that is far beyond our comprehension. The manor in which we create new souls or containers, while they might apear different to us, from the "futher out" perceptive are the same, and therefore don\'t really matter.
2.) We are nothing more than a punch of atoms randomly combined to create something that seems to have intelligence enough to know what it is, and to create more of it. How we create more of it does not matter.
...Nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really maters to me.
