I'm An Inventor. I Became Interested In

The Ethical Debates Are Like Stones In A Stream. The Water Runs Around Them. You Haven't Seen Any Biological Technologies Held Up For One Week By Any Of These Debates.

Doing Real World Projects Is, I Think, The Best Way To Learn And Also To Engage The World And Find Out What The World Is All About.

Although I'm Not Prepared To Move Up My Prediction Of A Computer Passing The Turing Test By 2029, The Progress That Has Been Achieved In Systems Like Watson Should Give Anyone Substantial Confidence That The Advent Of Turing-level Ai Is Close At Hand. If One Were To Create A Version Of Watson That Was Optimized For The Turing Test, It Would Probably Come Pretty Close.

My View Is That Consciousness, The Seat Of "personalness," Is The Ultimate Reality, And Is Also Scientifically Impenetrable. In Other Words, There Is No Scientific Test One Can Postulate That Would Definitively Prove Its Existence In Another Entity. We Assume That Other Biological Human Persons, At Least Those Who Are At Least Acting Conscious, Are Indeed Conscious. But This Too Is An Assumption, And This Shared Human Consensus Breaks Down When We Go Beyond Human Experience (e.g., The Debate On Animal Consciousness, And By Extension Animal Rights).

All Of Our Schools Need To Bring 'learn From Doing' Into The Mainstream Education, Not Just Afternoon.