I suspect that we won't ever get a real thinking machine by deliberately trying to model thought. I suspect that the approach that will ultimately work is one of two: One: a "sufficiently complex" evolutionary simulation system, or rather set of competing systems, will create a concious-seeming intelligence all by itself (though that intelligence will be non-human, and not modeled after human thought, and we might not understand each other well--how do you instill an AI with human concepts of morality?) or two, someone will create a super-complex physics simulation that can take hyper-detailed 3D brain CAT/PET/etc scan data as input then simply simulate the goings on at the atomic level, the "mind" being an emergent property of the "matter." Of course, the mind will probably instantly go insane, even if provided with sufficient quantity and types of virtual senses and body.
And we *still* won't know how the mind happens. ;) ~~James ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
