Mark Bruce John Newman David Amerland Ward Plunet I wonder what you guys think of this article? Maybe you’ve already referenced or written about it?
One question I have: does developing a true AI actually depend on us figuring out human consciousness in the first place, or might we end up developing an AI completely distinct from human intelligence?
Specialists in real rather than artificial brains find these scenarios laughably naïve, because we are still so far from understanding how brains make minds. “No one has the foggiest notion,” says Nobel laureate Eric Kandel.
Barring our admittance to cyber-paradise, however, is the neural code. That phrase refers to the software, or algorithms, that transform action potentials and other physiological processes into perceptions, memories, meanings, intentions.
The neural code is science’s deepest, most consequential problem. If researchers crack the code, they might solve such ancient philosophical conundrums as the mind-body problem and the riddle of free will. A solution to the neural code could also, in principle, give us unlimited power over our brains and hence minds. Science fiction—including mind-control, mind-reading, bionic enhancement and even psychic uploading—could become reality.
But the most profound problem in science is also by far the hardest. Neuroscientists still have no idea what the neural code is. That is not to say they don’t have any candidates. Far from it. Like voters in a U.S. presidential primary, researchers have a surfeit of candidates, each seriously flawed.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-singularity-and-the-neural-code/