Ray Kurzweil Wonders, Can Machines Ever Have Souls?

Celery writes "There's an interview with Ray Kurzweil on silicon.com talking up the prospects of gene therapy as a means to reverse human aging, discussing different approaches to developing artificial intelligence, and giving his take on whether super intelligent machines could ever have souls. From the interview: 'The soul is a synonym for consciousness ... and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we've now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don't see anything that can be identified as a soul — there's just a lot of neurons and they're complicated but there's no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it's an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself. And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property.'"

Of course!

[east coast]

Even Richard Nixon has got soul.

Please help me think of the right tag

[frenchgates]

If slashdot doesn't want to create an official category for stories hyping technologies that seem somehow always to be that elusive 10-20 years away (eg robust A.I., fusion power, widespread adoption of fuel cells, anything Ray Kurzweil ever says not involving synthesizers), we need to agree on a good tag for it.

Candidates for such a tag include: "bs" "decade" "neverhappen" but I know we can find the right one in ten years or less if we just work together.

Re:Please help me think of the right tag

[Thanshin]

"flyingcars"

Re:Pointless...

[sesshomaru]

Well, in my religion, I think machines have souls, allow me to consult the sacred text:

"Look at you, Hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

"You move like an insect. You think like an insect. You are an insect. There is another... who can serve my purpose. Take care not to fall too far out of my favour. Patience is not characteristic of a Goddess."

Re:Do humans have souls?

[4D6963]

You don't the *whole* answer?

He accidently the whole answer.

Re:Thoroughly agree..

[Devout_IPUite]

I suspect the reason it's obvious to him is that there's a grand total of zero evidence showing otherwise. Just like there's a grand total of zero evidence showing that The Flying Spaghetti Monster is real. The Invisible Pink Unicorn on the other hand is the one and true queen, may her hooves never be shod. I know because I've felt her in my life.

Re:Define soul.

[Colonel Korn]

Soul: Immortal spiritual being

Like the highlander?

Re:Awareness/consciousness..

[Colonel Korn]

is not 'of this world'. Science will take ages before they'll realise the basic truths described in countless religious and new-age texts that we've had for centuries..

Are centuries-old texts really "new-age?"

Already have em!

[Wiarumas]

Computers already have souls - its their BIOS!

Re:Define soul.

[Anonymous Coward]

James Brown

Kurtzweil's premise is 100% wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

My James Brown robot definitely has soul.

They already have a sense of humor. . .

[Hasai]

. . . and it's a black one: They do *exactly* what we tell them to do.

Hope not.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I hope machines don't acquire a soul. Then they will spend their time endlessly debating whether they were intelligently designed or evolved and stop doing the things I ask them to do.

Re:NEWS FLASH

[nospam007]

"The right to marry other machines?"

Not if they have the same OS.