by Scott Wilson

Created on: April 05, 2009

Let's take this question to its extreme for a moment. Can we ever create a machine that thinks, learns and behaves like a human?

Given the advances in technology over the past century, it is tempting to say that we will indeed be able to create such a robot in the not to distant future. We did, after all, leap from the first powered flight to space flight in only 66 years. Why couldn't we create a truly intelligent robot in a similar time frame?

One argument against a 'sentient' robot is that human beings are somehow endowed with an intelligent soul that cannot be replicated in a machine. I'm not comfortable with this argument though, as it seems we are stepping ever closer to a world defined in physicalism. The dualistic (mind/body) notions of humanity and intelligence may become a thing of the past as we discover the Higgs boson (or 'God particle'), find a unified theory of physics, comprehensively define the mental in terms of the physical and eschew traditional notions of soul for more scientific alternatives.

So is there another natural limit? A factor that defines human thought and intelligence that cannot be reduced to an algorithm and placed in a machine?

I believe there are two such factors: (i) a mathematical theorem known as Godel's Theorum and (ii) qualia

There is a strong logical argument to suggest that certain brain processes are not computational or algorithmic in nature. Roger Penrose (Shadows of the Mind) presents perhaps the strongest case against the artificial creation or simulation of true intelligence. He provides an application of Godel's Theorem to human thought to explain that there are some thought processes which are not computable. This is a complex argument and I won't attempt a summary here, but for further reading check the abovementioned text.

The second, perhaps more accessible, argument against sentient robots is that computers 'think' in numbers whereas humans don't.

Robots are created from machines, computers and our best attempts to simulate the learning process using quantitative methods. Humans, on the other hand, appear to be able to compare qualitative information and still reach generally rational conclusions about different and similar qualities.

It's as though robots can only think in numbers as primary units, whereas humans can think in colours, sounds, physical sensations, tastes, odours, and even more abstract concepts such as emotions, as primary units. We don't reduce these memories of sensory experiences down into

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