Are We Extinct?

9/7/10 p165 “Philosophy Unit Writing Assignments” #1

     In Robert Wrights essay entitled “Can Machines Think? Maybe So, As Deep Blue’s Chess Prowess Suggests”, he makes us think about who we are as humans. Specifically, what sets us apart from the computer? Are we defined by what a computer can do better than us, the humans? Here lies our “identity crisis that computers have induced in our species” and our definition of what it means to be human (Wright 140).

     If being ‘smart’ is what makes us human, then move over Albert Einstein because today’s computer can beat a former world chess champion. If being able to ‘think’ is what makes us human, then watch out because during a ‘blind think test’ to determine if it is Coke (the computer) or Pepsi (the human) who is answering the questions correctly, Coke has been found to be a favorite some of the time. And if ‘face recognition’ is what makes us human, then break out the cigars, because we all may have an added member to our immediate family-Picasa, a photo software that recognizes faces once tagged initially.

     But don’t fret, we humans will not be obsolete yet, we still have many redeeming qualities that have remained a mystery to scientists, philosophers, and theologians. Qualities that have yet to be instilled into the machine. Qualities that make us “human”. These qualities include but are not limited to subjective experience, common sense, and feelings. We may not have the human capacity to maintain a second by second account of our lives in our memories, but we are able to laugh at a joke, make small talk, and evoke emotions when we see the faces of our loved ones.

    So this is where we leave the great thinkers of Artificial Intelligence in our time. We leave them with non-human thinking machines without the human quality, consciousness. In the future, 100 years from now, maybe scientists and philosophers will be able to explain the consciousness that exists in us and apply it to a thinking machine. And it will be able to do all that we do. But will the “crisis” be over…?