Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!sunybcs!bingvaxu!leah!bbw842
From: bbw842@leah.Albany.Edu (Barry B Werger)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Intelligence / Consciousness Test for Machines (Neural-Nets)???
Summary: What is consciousness?
Message-ID: <1085@leah.Albany.Edu>
Date: 7 Oct 88 01:27:41 GMT
References: <1141@usfvax2.EDU> <828@cseg.uucp>
Organization: The University at Albany, Computer Services Center
Lines: 16


How do we know whena machine is conscious?
(The (Anti-)Abortionists ask similar questions, I am sure.)       

This is probably an unanswerable question.  Perhaps when a the system's
programmer is the Observer of the Turing test, a better guess can be made.

To some extent, machines have been programmed to be 'conscious' for a long
time.  Error reporting is a machine - conscious of its failure to perform
properly, or inability to perform a request - telling its operator about its
limitations.  

In a limited way a microprocessor is conscious of its environment.  It monitors
the state of the busses connected to it.  It reacts in certain ways to stimu-
lation from its surroundings (i.e., interrupt lines, clock pulses).  Does this 
count?