[escepticos] maquinas espirituales... o espirituosas

[planetario@...>]

De Skeptic Magazine Online:
SPIRITUAL COMPUTERS
The Boston Globe ran an interesting review on 12/27/98, page L01, entitled:
"Can 'intelligent' machines ever be spiritual beings? High-tech
prognosticator
Ray Kurzweil thinks so," by Chet Raymo. I don't want to download the entire
review (even though someone sent it to me in a bulk e-mailing) as I've been
called on the carpet recently for possible copyright violations, such as for
passing along the Stephen Wright jokes (some of which were apparently by
other
commedians such as Gallagher and Carlin). (What is the law/ethics of this on
the internet? anyone know?). You can track down the review at
www.bostonglobe.com but here is a short summary.
Kurzweil, who apparently has an impressive track record for predicting
computer breakthroughs, in his new book ''The Age of Spiritual Machines''
(he
is also the author of ''The Age of Intelligent Machines," 1990) predicts
that
a computer will pass the "Turing Test" (where you could have a dialogue with
a
computer about deep and meaningful subjects and not be able to tell if it is
a
person or a computer) within 20 years, and exceed the computing power of all
humans on earth by 2060. By 2100, he says, computers will be fully
conscious,
self-aware, and "spiritual" (whatever that means), etc. Check it out. Here
is
Raymo's description of Kurzweil:
"Kurzweil's credentials as computer guru are impeccable. He is inventor of
the
first commercially marketed speech-recognition system, the first computer
music keyboard capable of accurately reproducing the sounds of real
orchestra
instruments, the first system that can recognize all forms of alphabetic
characters, the first system for text-to-synthesized-speech, and other key
developments in making machines behave more like us."
Also, some of you inquired about getting the "con" version of the cloning
debate contra my "pro" Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. Same problem as
above with downloading articles, so check out www.latimes.com The author's
name is Patrick Dixon.

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