The question has incredible implications for neuroscience, philosophy, religion, and there's a hardcore group of programmers/neuroscientists trying to figure it out by doing it.

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/03/out_of_the_blue.php

Imagine if they could build a brain that could actually think? To bring sentience of an electronic variety? What if we could build souls with programming? We will soon find out.

Blue brain ... interesting read.

It's been said that humans only use about 10% of their brain capacity. What's rather scary, is that an electronic one will - by design - function at a much higher level. If it takes (by today's technology) " ... the 2,000-microchip Blue Gene machine is capable of processing 22.8 trillion operations per second—just enough to model a 1-cubic-mm column of rat brain ...", then what happens when you string enough chips together to fill a room (like this (http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefMedia.aspx?refid=461537301))? At what point does it become self aware?

It's been said that humans only use about 10% of their brain capacity.
Complete and utter bullshit.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp

The idea of artificial intelligence scares the crap out of me. Would it have a soul? Would it feel emotions, compassion, etc., or would it just be purely logical?

Complete and utter bullshit.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp


Yeah, that is a total myth Frogger. All parts of the brain are used in some manner or another.

As for the creation of artifical intelligence, I think it's just going to be a part of our evolution as humans... I'll explain more when I have time, I gotta go right now, lol.

It sounds cool.

But if its intelligent and acts exactly as our brain acts then it could very likely have the ability for emotions. That would suck being stuck in a black box.

I didn't read all of it admittedly. So I might have missed something. But the creator of the thing said it would act just like our brain with all that implies.

I think the thing is going to get pretty mad once it understands that all it can do is hang out in the black box it was built in and be forced to think what people want it to think.

I dunno, our brains aren't too mad about being stuck where they're at, why should an artificial one be?

I dunno, our brains aren't too mad about being stuck where they're at, why should an artificial one be?

We arent stuck in a box.

I find this whole thing very fascinating anyways, I always have. It's pretty amazing to think that we could be ten years away from being able to simulate a human brain "and all that it implies." I think that all this technology is just going to be a natural evolutionary step for us as a race. We will soon find tecnology being a part of us, and I mean that in a literal sense. Perhaps one day we will be able to trannsfer our brains into machine, and thus live forever. The implications are quite astounding.

Thats a freaky thought, to have you're brain stuck in a computer.
I'd hate to be hacked and be turned into just another random form of data.
Maybe, forgotten someplace in someones attic, closet or garage.

The thought of being so utterly helpless and left to rot in a memory chip doesn't appeal to me in the least. I'd rather just die then to simply exist as a program.

I can see why a thinking computer would be beneficial. The ideas it could generate would be beyond our current imagination. I just wouldn't want to inflict that kind of existence on anything capable of emotions.

Then again, maybe it could think of a way to build a body for itself.
At a reasonable price of course.

But then there would be additional questions to answer.
Like. If the brain itself is just a bundle of programs working together to create something capable of emotions. Would each new Blue brain be a completely different creature?
Able to be as original as people are independently.
Each one with it's own talents matching it's personality.

It doesn't sound like something we should consider to forcibly manipulate.