Anderson On AI

Poul Anderson makes the points that:

although robots have electronic speed and precision, no robot in any civilization known to the Polesotechnic League has full decision-making capacity;

a biological organism thinks not only with its brain but also with glands, fluids and chemistry reaching down to the molecular level, with instincts brought forth by a billion years of natural selection;

the organism's infinitely flexible purposes come from within, not from external programming;

the limits of robotic design have been extended by self-programming so that consciousness can arise if desired;

however, the limits of machines remain narrower than those of the makers of machines.

Can computer self-programming generate consciousness? Human beings self-program when learning. However, our learning is based in current organism-environment interactions, not merely on any earlier external programming. Also, consciousness necessarily precedes learning.