"Suppose we scan someone's brain and reinstate the resulting 'mind file' into a suitable computing medium," asks Raymond Kurzweil. "Will the entity that emerges from such an operation be conscious?" Asking that question is a good way to start an argument, which is exactly what we intend to do right here.

Gelernter, Kurzweil debate machine consciousness By Rodney Brooks, Ray Kurzweil, and David Gelernter
Are we limited to building super-intelligent robotic "zombies" or will it be possible and desirable for us to build conscious, creative, volitional, perhaps even "spiritual" machines? David Gelernter and Ray Kurzweil debated this key question at MIT on Nov. 30. (Added December 6th 2006)

Cyber Sapiens By Chip Walter
...We will no longer be Homo sapiens, but Cyber sapiens--a creature part digital and part biological that will have placed more distance between its DNA and the destinies they force upon us than any other animal ... a creature capable of steering our own evolution.... (Added October 26th 2006)

Why We Can Be Confident of Turing Test Capability Within a Quarter Century By Ray Kurzweil
The advent of strong AI (exceeding human intelligence) is the most important transformation this century will see, and it will happen within 25 years, says Ray Kurzweil, who will present this paper at The Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The next 50 years (AI@50) on July 14, 2006. (Added July 13th 2006)

In Memoriam: Push Singh (1972-2006) By James Hendler
Push Singh was a young MIT post doc making important contributions to AI with his Open Mind Common Sense project, a Web-based approach to acquire common sense knowledge from the general public. He was also one of KurzweilAI.net's big thinkers. He will be missed by us, and by many others. (Added July 6th 2006)

Moot Court Hearing On The Petition Of A Conscious Computer By Martine Rothblatt
A Moot Court Hearing on the Petition of a "conscious computer" to be treated as a legal person was held at the 1st Colloquium on the Law of Transhuman Persons in Florida. (Added June 1st 2006)

Is AI Near a Takeoff Point? By J. Storrs Hall
Computers built by nanofactories may be millions of times more powerful than anything we have today, capable of creating world-changing AI in the coming decades. But to avoid a dystopia, the nature (and particularly intelligence) of government (a giant computer program -- with guns) will have to change. (Added March 28th 2006)

Our Bodies, Our Technologies By Ray Kurzweil
In the 2020s, we'll see nanobots, blood-cell-sized devices that can go inside the body and brain to perform therapeutic functions. But what happens when we have billions of nanobots inside the capillaries of our brains, non-invasively, widely distributed, expanding human intelligence, or providing full-immersion virtual reality? (Added March 16th 2006)

Cyborg Liberation Front By Erik Baard
Should Humans Welcome or Resist Becoming Posthuman? This was a key question debated at the 2003 World Transhumanist Association conference at Yale University by attendees, who met to lay the groundwork for a society that would admit as citizens and companions intelligent robots, cyborgs made from a free mixing of human and machine parts, and fully organic, genetically engineered people who aren't necessarily human at all. (Added January 15th 2004)

Biocyberethics: should we stop a company from unplugging an intelligent computer? By Martine Rothblatt
Attorney Dr. Martine Rothblatt filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent a corporation from disconnecting an intelligent computer in a mock trial at the International Bar Association conference in San Francisco, Sept. 16, 2003. The issue could arise in a real court within the next few decades, as computers achieve or exceed the information processing capability of the human mind and the boundary between human and machine becomes increasingly blurred. (Added September 28th 2003)

Whither Psychoanalysis in a Computer Culture? By Sherry Turkle
In the early 1980s, MIT professor Sherry Turkle first called the computer a "second self." With this essay, she presents a major new theory of "evocative objects": Wearable computers, PDAs, online multiple identities, "companion species" (such as quasi-alive virtual pets, digital dolls, and robot nurses for the elderly), "affective computing" devices (such as the human-like Kismet robot), and the imminent age of machines designed as relational artifacts are causing us to see ourselves and our world differently. They call for a new generation of psychoanalytic self-psychology to explore the human response and the human vulnerability to these objects. (Added October 24th 2002)

Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness By David Chalmers
The vague term "consciousness" poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. Philosopher David Chalmers presents a nonreductive theory of consciousness based on principles of structural coherence (tied to awareness) and organizational invariance (e.g., a silicon isomorph of a human can be conscious) and a double-aspect view of information (physical and phenomenal aspects). (Added August 17th 2002)

Live Moderated Chat: Are We Spiritual Machines? By Ray Kurzweil, Jay W. Richards, and William A. Dembski
On July 19, 2001, the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design hosted an online chat with Ray Kurzweil, Jay Richards, and William Dembski, three of the co-authors of the new book, Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I. The discussion focused on the nature of consciousness, free will vs. determinism, complexity, and implications of the eroding boundary between humans and intelligent machines. (Added July 24th 2002)

On the Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness By David Chalmers
There's a variety of proposed neural systems associated with conscious experience, but no way to directly observe or measure consciousness. Chalmers suggests though that there may be a "consciousness module" -- a functional area responsible for the integration of information in the brain, with high-bandwidth communication between its parts. (Added June 26th 2002)

Are We Spiritual Machines? By Jay W. Richards, Michael Denton, Thomas Ray, William A. Dembski, John Searle, George Gilder, and Ray Kurzweil
Computers are becoming more powerful at an accelerating rate, but will they ever become conscious? In Are We Spiritual Machines?, critics of strong artificial intelligence (the view that computers will go fully conscious) square off with one of A.I.'s leading proponents, Ray Kurzweil. (Added June 18th 2002)

Consciousness in Human and Robot Minds By Daniel Dennett
AI skeptics offer several reasons why robots could never become conscious. MITs' humanoid Cog robot project may give them pause. (Added June 7th 2002)

A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition By David Chalmers
Computation is central to the foundations of modern cognitive science, but its role is controversial. Questions about computation abound: What is it for a physical system to implement a computation? Is computation sufficient for thought? What is the role of computation in a theory of cognition? What is the relation between different sorts of computational theory, such as connectionism and symbolic computation? This article develops a systematic framework that addresses all of these questions. A careful analysis of computation and its relation to cognition suggests that the ambitions of artificial intelligence and the centrality of computation in cognitive science are justified. (Added June 4th 2002)

AI and Sci-Fi: My, Oh, My! By Robert J. Sawyer
A lot of science fiction has been exploring lately the concept of uploading consciousness as the next, and final, step in our evolution, says SF writer Robert Sawyer, who reveals the real meaning of the film 2001: the ultimate fate of biological life forms is to be replaced by their AIs. Paging Bill Joy… (Added June 3rd 2002)

Intelligence as an Emergent Behavior or, The Songs of Eden By W. Daniel Hillis
Could we build a thinking machine by simply hooking together a large network of artificial neurons and waiting for intelligence to spontaneously emerge? Not likely, but by studying the properties of biological and emergent systems, a carefully constructed network of artificial neurons could be inoculated with thought, similar to yeast's role in making beer. The clue may be in the "songs" of apes. (Added May 2nd 2002)

How Can We Possibly Tell If It's Conscious? By Ray Kurzweil
At the Tucson 2002: Toward a Science of Consciousness conference, Ray Kurzweil addressed the question of how to tell if something is conscious. He proposed two thought experiments. (Added April 18th 2002)

Decoupling Art and Affluence By Harold Cohen
Harold Cohen's AARON has grown immensely as an artist in its own right. In this talk presented at the Thirteenth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI-2001), Harold Cohen explores AARON's remarkable journey as a cyberartist. (Added February 20th 2002)

What must a physical system be to be able to act on its own behalf? By Stuart Kauffman
The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Stuart Kauffman asks: what must a physical system be to be able to act? (Added January 21st 2002)

My Question for Edge: Who am I? What am I? By Ray Kurzweil
Since we constantly changing, are we just patterns? What if someone copies that pattern? Am I the original and/or the copy? Ray Kurzweil responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman's request to futurists to pose "hard-edge" questions that "render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what we are." (Added January 14th 2002)

The Open Mind Common Sense Project By Push Singh
Push Singh of the MIT MediaLab describes a novel approach to achieving machine intelligence by teaching machines how to reason heuristically. (Added January 2nd 2002)

The Central Metaphor of Everything? By Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier's Edge article takes a skeptical look at Moore's Law and its application to trends outside of computer hardware. Will computers become smarter than us in twenty years? Is the computational metaphor actually impeding progress? (Added December 4th 2001)

The Computational Perspective By Daniel Dennett
What does computation mean? Daniel Dennett discusses information architecture beyond the mechanized causation in computers and frames the question in terms of the organization of matter itself. What do models of computation tell us about the material world? (Added November 19th 2001)

Response to Stephen Hawking By Ray Kurzweil
Stephen Hawking recently told the German magazine Focus that computers were evolving so rapidly that they would eventually outstrip the intelligence of humans. Professor Hawking went on to express the concern that eventually, computers with artificial intelligence could come to dominate the world. Ray Kurzweil replies. (Added September 5th 2001)

A Jurisprudence of Artilects: Blueprint for a Synthetic Citizen By Frank W. Sudia
Will artilects have difficulties seeking rights and legal recognition? Will they make problems for humans once they surpass our knowledge and reasoning capacities? Frank W. Sudia provides a legal blueprint. (Added August 7th 2001)

The Rights of Your Robots: Exclusion and Inclusion in History and Future By Sohail Inayatullah
Sohail Inayatullah is preparing for a world in which machines become sentient and begin to demand rights--this article discusses how the machines will participate in their destiny. (Added August 6th 2001)

The Rights of Robots: Technology, Culture and Law in the 21st Century By Sohail Inayatullah and Phil Mcnally
Robot rights are already part of judiciary planning--can sentient machines be far off? This discussion of robot rights looks in-depth at issues once reserved for humans only. (Added August 6th 2001)

Intelligence Augmentation By Pattie Maes
Machine consciousness may not be a matter of replicating total human thought capacity--it may come in several small, specialized parts. In this discussion with the Edge's John Brockman, Pattie Maes discusses IA (Intelligence Augmentation) as opposed to AI. (Added August 6th 2001)

Consciousness is a Big Suitcase By Marvin Minsky
Is consciousness reducible to a set of mechanisms in the brain acting in concert? In this discussion with the Edge's John Brockman, Marvin Minsky peers into the suitcase of the mind. (Added August 2nd 2001)

Ethics for Machines By J. Storrs Hall
What are the ethical responsibilities of an intelligent being toward another one of a lower order? And who will be lower--us or machines? Nanotechnologist J. Storrs Hall considers our moral duties to machines, and theirs to us. (Added July 5th 2001)

Can a Machine Think? By Clinton W. Kelly
There are three ways to create an AI: model the mind, model the brain, and artificial life. Which one will work? (Added June 26th 2001)

Answering Fermi's Paradox By Hugo de Garis
Does a vast array of superintellligences already exist? Hugo de Garis thinks that SETI is shortsighted in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They should set their scopes on artilects. (Added May 22nd 2001)

Ambiguous Words By George A. Miller
Understanding how humans process the subtlety of language is crucial to recreating the ability to understand natural language in computers. Dr. George Miller investigates the cognitive processes of resolving the vagueness in human language. (Added May 15th 2001)

Robot: Child of God By Anne Foerst
Sometimes computers act as if they are possessed--does that mean they may have souls? Probably not right now, but Anne Foerst explores the possibility of soulful robots. (Added May 9th 2001)

Humans and Machines Converge at ACM1 By Amara D. Angelica
Humanoid robots aren't perfect, but they may have a thing or two to teach computers. (Added May 8th 2001)

How Long Before Superintelligence? By Nick Bostrom
This paper outlines the case for believing that we will have superhuman artificial intelligence within this century. It looks at different estimates of the processing power of the human brain; how long it will take until computer hardware achieve a similar performance; ways of creating the software through bottom-up approaches like the one used by biological brains; how difficult it will be neuroscience figure out enough about how brains work to make this approach work; and how fast we can expect superintelligence to be developed once there is human-level artificial intelligence. (Added April 30th 2001)

Live Forever--Uploading The Human Brain...Closer Than You Think By Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil ponders the issues of identity and consciousness in an age when we can make digital copies of ourselves. (Added April 9th 2001)

Prolegomenon to a General Biology By Stuart Kauffman
Before artificially intelligent systems can emerge and become self-aware, there is the question: Whence life in the first place? (Added February 22nd 2001)

The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine By Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil predicts a future with direct brain-to-computer access and conscious machines. From Scientific American. (Added February 22nd 2001)

Soul of a New Machine By James Daly
Business 2.0 editor James Daly interviews Raymond Kurzweil on what happens when machines become conscious. (Added February 22nd 2001)

Letter from Hans Moravec By Hans Moravec
In this March 25, 1999 Letter to New York Review of Books, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Hans Moravec counters John Searle's "Chinese Room" argument, which attempts to show that machines cannot be conscious. (Added February 22nd 2001)

Words and Rules By Steven Pinker
An important problem in AI in understanding how language works. In this paper, presented in his Colin Cherry Memorial Lecture on March 23, 1999 at Imperial College, London, Dr. Steven Pinker suggests that we use a combination of memory and grammatical rules to convey information. (Added February 22nd 2001)

How the Mind Works By Steven Pinker
In this William James Book Prize Lecture, presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, August 1999, Steven Pinker, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, attempts to describe how the mind works, using three key ideas: computation, evolution, and specialization. (Added February 22nd 2001)