Binary processors running standard artificial intelligence programs as we know today can't possibly do anything except what they're programmed to do even if they appear to, but what if we rebuild a working brain that works using something similar to neurons as it does in nature? Would that brain become conscious? Well to answer that question we have to understand what conscious is and of course we only have a very limited understanding at the time of writing.
Rebuilding a brain isn't as far off you might think however, they are already emulating part of a bee's brain and using it to fly drones, it's called
The Green Brain Project and is being conducted by the University of Sheffield in the UK, if they go on to emulate the entire bee's brain it will react exactly like a bee in every respect including behaviour, of course this could then go on to emulate more complex organisms and perhaps eventually even man. Despite acting identically the an organism's brain this technology would always still be just an emulation, but could it still feasibly become conscious? Well I think it's unlikely as it's just a traditional processor or processors running a complex emulation program and even if they did improve the processing power of the system by many millions of times to run a fully mapped human brain, surely an emulated human brain is likely to function unexpectedly without consciousness (or what some people may call a soul)? Or would it?
In 2015 however scientists discovered a way to build artificial neurons that are capable of mimicking the function of an organic brain cell, please
click here for more. They are working on shrinking the technology so it can be implanted into humans which could effectively allow them to replace damaged nerve cells and develop new treatments for neurological disorders, such as spinal cord injuries and Parkinson’s disease. Of course one day the same technology could be used to totally recreate the human brain, it will likely take many years, but it is nevertheless feasible. This technology is much more than just an emulation since it works in a very similar way to nature itself and in my opinion has a better chance of inducing consciousness in future. Consciousness may simply appear or enter the working system, or we may not even be close to achieving it and it may be impossible to achieve consciousness in an artificial life form without fully understanding exactly what consciousness is along with a lot more detail about it. In fact we may even have to understand consciousness to a level of being capable of fully manipulating and controlling it, this is in my opinion a much more likely requirement. If we did fully understand consciousness we'd most probably also fully understand death including what happens to our consciousness when we die (something that may never happen in living human existence), we may even be-able to scientifically manipulate what happens.
The problem is even if / when they do have a fully working artificial human brain, how will they know whether it is truly conscious or not? Well unless the system obviously doesn't act human it will again be almost impossible to know unless we understand consciousness much better than we do today. Even if a man made android appears to love and show compassion, is it just a machine that is programmed to do this or is there actually an individual consciousness seeing through the android's artificial eyes?
PS: Regarding the new religion, well in my opinion their belief that AI will eventually surpass humans are premature at best and it's probably more of a way to bring the founder fame and even more fortune. I'm not saying it definitely won't happen, but I still think we are quite a few decades away even if there is a chance.
