The article posted by Jon Katz about the book of Kurzweil received many messages of all kinds of people. Some of them deserve to be reviewed. Jon Paterson says: "Anyone who says that the human brain is a million times more intelligent than a computer is a twit, end of story... This assumes that computers are intelligent at all.
They are no more intelligent than a rock, just more useful for some tasks". Richieb warns:"AI proponents have been predicting this stuff since early sixties. They just keep changing the date. It´s not the speed of processors or the amount of memory that needs to be compared to the human brain, it´s the software. And nobody has any idea how to write it. We can´t even agree on what is intelligence and somehow he expects to program intelligent machines". Andy agrees: "How about this for a law (Andy´s Law). ´He who can program a thing, understands a thing. The inverse is also true: he who understands a thing, can program a thing´. We do not have even a rudimentary knowledge of the nature of intelligence. Until we do there will be no real AI".
Vertigo tries to clear the subject: "Reproducing intelligence in computers may be possible, but only because we define intelligence in our own narrow way... People don´t even understand themselves yet. They may know the outer shell, the molecules, the plumbing, but they don´t know the essence of things. They can only barely see a distorted image of the shallow surface they perceive as the truth. That, they can mimic in computers, and because their own conscience is limited they will not be able to tell the difference... Evolution itself is much more advanced than these futurists can grasp, and I believe the next hundred years will definitely be interesting and bring us things we could have never imagined. But I also think they will not even resemble ´spiritual computers´, which in itself is a contradition of terms". Vertigo also gives an advice: "If I want to ´merge´ with something or reproduce I´d get myself a date and not some piece of metal. If you think otherwise it´s time you get away from your computer and sniff in some fresh air from outside".
About a sentence in the article ("´The Age of Spiritual Machines´ surpasses most futuristic predictions of sci-fi writers ans technologists".), Phaid says: "Wrong. It apes them, and not very well from the sound of things. Sounds like Jon Katz needs to do a bit more reading before extolling the virtues of this kind of literature. It raises some interesting points, yes, so it´s fodder for good discussions, but at the same time it´s not original and doesn´t seem to bring anything new to the table. I´ll check out a used copy sometime". Axel Boldt, from Germany, also has something to say: "The Turing Test is inadequate since it really only measures how well the machine simulates the input-output behavior of a human. That does not have much to do with intelligence; hyperintelligent aliens for example could not pass the Turing Test. Instead, we should try to build machines which can pass the Boldt Test: their input-output behavior should be as interesting as that of the average human". Super Geek philosophizes: "The irony of it all is that man seeks to become more machine by making machine more man".
