I'm Afraid You Can't Do That, Hal

Intelligent computers that either assist humanity or attempt to destroy it are a staple of science fiction. The ever-increasing computational power of today's machines and their growing complexity prompt people to wonder if computers themselves will ever become "human."

David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale, says they won't. Gelernter says that being human requires consciousness and intelligence. Computers will probably become intelligent, he says. Some day, they will be able to convincingly replicate the range of human thinking from the focused and analytical (naturally) to the kind of free association thought involved with memory, experience and insight.

But they won't become conscious, he says. Although they will contain more and more computational power, that alone will not bring the kind of conscious awareness of the universe and the self which human beings have. Gelernter says that there is some kind of fundamental difference between the neurons of the human brain and the processing power of even a digital computer -- at some unknown tipping point, a mass of neurons works together to bring consciousness, but the same massing of computer processors won't.

In essence, Gelernter says, computers which develop intelligence will be like super-intelligent zombies. They will lack the human power of imagination and will be limited to their program parameters. They could be told what to do, and given a list of choices to make in certain situations. But if they encounter something too far outside their experience, they will not necessarily intuit or imagine a response.

Although Gelernter calls these "zombie" computers, they will probably not roam the countryside searching for junked TRS-80s to dine on.

In the comments, he also takes aim at the idea that people may one day be "uploaded" into a vast computer network of some kind, suggesting that whatever lines of code might be generated by programmers to match the human brain would still be just that: Lines of code. They would at best be a copy of a person, but not the person himself or herself.