Kurzweil ai reply on computation and the brain

At the end of the day the computer metaphor is just that... a metaphor and it does little to illuminate the actual workings there in.

/End thread.-purpose

Unless what the brain is doing is actual information processing and algorithms.   A traditional computer can do anything that can be done through algorithms, and it is a machine that does information processing.

Now, let's ask what function of human activity...   Remember the main purpose of brains was to act in the world, so their main purpose is functional, improving survival.   So again, what function done by humans is beyond computers' ability to perform?   Most anyone serious will say there is nothing any animal, including humans, can do physically upon the world that a computer cannot do given the same body.

Actually I'll say computers will not only be able to do the same, but with the right algorithms they will be better at survival than any animal even humans, beating brains at their own game.

Now there are those that say consciousness is nonfunctional, and thus that will be the one thing that can't be done.   Well as a conscious entity, it seems like consciousness provide a HIGH BANDWIDTH ACCESS simultaneously to data from all sensory modalities, it definitely feels functional, and I'm highly skeptical of it being epiphenomenal.  In the end even if this were the case[epiphenomenality], which I'm doubtful of,  that we can achieve functional equivalence or even superiority without this, well the reality is it wouldn't actually matter now would it?  AGIs could still outperform humans, again unless there is some fabled function humans physically perform that a computer cannot given the same body.

What are the odds that rather than finding common computational algorithms, in the landscape of possibilities, to solve problems[with researchers saying they've shown the brain doing algorithms we use on our cell phones like the kalman filter], or gain fields[which have been observed in artificial neural networks], evolution found some special nonalgorithmic way of processing information and generating survival?   What's the prediction you'd make from such a hypothesis?   That algorithmic processes to survive do not exist[an algorithmic machine for survival cannot be built]?  That evolution somehow evaded these?   That such traditional algorithms appear to exist in some brain functions for unknown reasons and do NOT actually contribute to brain function?  -Darien S, kurzweil ai reply