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The idea of a thinking machine is an amazing one. It would be like humans creating artificial life, only more impressive because we would be creating consciousness. Or would we ? It's tempting to think that a machine that could think would think like us. But a bit of reflection shows that's not an inevitable conclusion.
To begin with, we'd better be clear about what we mean by "think". A comparison with human thinking might be intuitive, but what about animal thinking? Does a chimpanzee think? Does a crow? Does an octopus ?
The philosopher Thomas Nagel said that there was "something that it is like" to have conscious experiences. There's something that it is like to see the colour red, or to go water skiing. We are more than just our brain states.
Could there ever be "something that it's like" to be a thinking machine? In an imagined conversation with the first intelligent machine, a human might ask "Are you conscious?", to which it might reply, "How would I know?".
http://theconversation.com/what-does-it-mean-to-think-and-could-a-machine-ever-do-it-51316
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(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday January 09 2016, @06:15PM
Thinking is like pornography: I know it when I see it.
Ahhh, sooo close to the answer...
When an electronic device says "Thinking is like pornography: I know it when I see it, and oh by the way, porn makes me horny" then you'll have a machine that can at least mimic human consciousness.
And no, the electronic device you're presently using to read "Thinking is like pornography..." doesn't count. It's just doing what it's told.