It is so encouraging to see maintream press, like the Financial Times, reporting on what I think will become the the key issue of our lifetime – conscious machines.   Although this article pretty much dodges the most intriguing aspects of the debate over AI, rational computers, and consciousness  it does offer some insights into the state of the science in the semantic web, where AI routines are used to create a better search experience.

One researcher suggests that he’s given up on the idea that simply creating a massive neural network and priming it with some info will lead to conscious thought but I still think that hypothesis has not been tested nearly enough because our computing capacity is still far short of what you and I have between our ears in the three pounder we call a brain.    Brains offer a spectacular number of individual neurons, and in turn a simply staggering number of interconnections between those neurons.   It will be another decade or so before we have that processing capacity in computers, but it will certainly happen.   I’ll be surprised if our consciousness and intellectual abilities are as profoundly amazing as we like to …. think they are.    In fact I’d wildly predict that we’ll have conscious machines within 20 years and that those conscious machines will surpass us in every imaginable intellectual and creative ability within months – probably days – of consciousness.    Is this because I’m hugely optimistic about technology?    NO!   It’s because I’m hugely confident we overrate our feeble human abilities, which I’d suggest are just a few shades richer than those of our dogs and cats.