Atleast not on a computer. Life is so much more then just DNA and molecules and stuff. Life has a soul. And a soul can never be created. I read that someone asked that is it right for us to recreate life? And play God? Well, ofcourse we can play God on a acomputer. Maybe we shouldn''t play God in the real world. But on a computer, why not? MindWipe - Just saying.

I think you''re right... I don''t think it is possible for a computer to simulate the so-called ''soul'' that we all have. But that is not what AI needs to do.

AI is all about simulating behaviour to the point where hopefully no-one will be able to tell the difference between it and a living entity. It does not, (as far as games are concerned anyway), need to make moral or ethical judgement, but simply accept the status of its surroundings and act accordingly.

But, having said that, I know a lot of people who claim to be in ''real'' love with their computers...

Some of us are content to believe that we have no soul.

Some do believe that it is all DNA and molecules



-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
and our eGroup:
http://www.egroups.com/group/dwarfsoft

Couldn''t agree more DwarfSoft.

I''m not discounting the possibility of the soul just saying it''s not a necessity.

But then anyone having this argument has already made up their minds long ago and is very unlikely to change them.

Mike

Because it can''t be proved one way or the other, I would not even let that be a factor in AI. People have their own beliefs, religions, wants, needs, and much more, but it can all be brought back to a simple algorithm that mimics human behaviour. We are all about mimmicing, not actually creating intelligence (although this would be nice too).

From what I heard, the soul is basically what empowers us, what makes us live. I never heard it had anything to do with Intelligence or how we think (unless you are talking about soulless creatures who do a lot of evil... I must be watching too much Buffy/Angel ).

And my previous post may or may not have been an indication on what I believe. I haven''t really fully made up my mind .

OT Here, but don''t you really hate it when people try and preach to you about what you SHOULD be doing instead of what you are doing (religion wise). Who is to say who is right? Specifically speaking though, I have only ever had this problem with Mormons (not that I am saying you are bad people ) because they really try and push their beliefs on you. Nobody likes pressure. Even if we do work well under it (Maybe it is just me )

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
and our eGroup:
http://www.egroups.com/group/dwarfsoft

Watch the movie THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR(on video), it''s exactly about that.

I couldn''t agree more w/ dwarfsoft and MikeD. We might not have a soul, as defined by most of the world, something metaphisical, but in my belief, a soul is what defines us. Something unique for anyone of us. It''s much like personality. And personality is influenced by every single insignificant or significant fact in our environment. So, (see Black&White) if you raise a creature/person from its beginning on Earth to a fully-grown/adult state, and you add its learning capabilities, you get something much like a human being. Just like a baby, when it''s born it knows it has to eat, to sleep, to breathe. After just a few minutes/hours it learns that to communicate w/ us it can cry. When it has something to tell us (e.g. it''s wet, it''s hungry) it cryes. Needing to move, it starts crawling. Observing our walk, it begins to figure out how to walk. Observing our speech, it soon learns how to speak itsself etc. So, if you have a fully-grown neural net, you could play God and make yourself a virtual "pet" human. If you arrange the circumstances in a way similar to you development(growth) circumstances, you can get something that resembles you in many ways. So, maybe, our soul consists mostly of our personality, and our personality can be brought to a digital-state.

"Everything is relative." -- Even in the world of computers.

when you boil it all down you get -

anything that can be mathmatically described can be created in a computer simulation

however now the question remains ... what can and can''t be mathmatically described?

-mike

(to many deep thoughs for me.. i think i''ll go sleep now

Everything can be mathematically described, with the right output tools, such as a monitor, printer, etc.

-----------------------------

A wise man once said "A person with half a clue is more dangerous than a person with or without one."

It depends upon your definition of life. The classic definition of life is: to be alive an organism must have motion, self-propagation, consume a resource, growth, and response to stimuli.

A computer virus has all these characteristics. So infact it is possible to create life. So is it alive?

Intelligent? But intelligence doesnt define your concept either, as a dolphin or monkey can be intelligent, but do they have a soul. Leaving the religious implications of the word aside, perhaps what you are trying to define is self-awareness.

And even if it is possible, would we really want to build a computer that is self aware? We use computers as slaves - as a workforce. If it were self aware, could we justify that? Would the computer let us use it in that fashion? Certainly it wouldnt be a useful tool anymore and would create more problems.

Simulations are on the whole, a lot safer.