Consciousness – Can A Computer Come Alive?

Federico Faggin is a physicist and inventor of the microprocessor & touch screen. He, too, explains how he attempted to create a neural net back in the 1980s and came to the realization that no matter what the movies portray, there is no such thing as Artificial Intelligence that would be Consciousness. As I have said, I created Socrates in the late 1970s and used my children as test subjects to interact with it and have a conversation. My daughter would bring her friends over and tell them her computer talked to her. I caused a bit of a stir among other parents, who asked me what I was doing.

I wrote a program to interact with my children and taught Socrates how to be a politician. You could have a conversation with it but if it did not understand, it would just change the subject. I mimicked Consciousness, but I could not create it. It would just record answers like ChatGPT. What is the name of your dog? When my daughter would return to the computer, it would simply ask how is your dog by name. From the outside, you thought it was alive. One day, she came home, and I had it apart, and she started crying, thinking I killed it.

Federico discusses that he came to the same conclusion. It is absolutely impossible to create an AI system that will suddenly come alive and achieve Consciousness.

No matter what we do, no robot will ever come alive – It is not going to happen!