I Think, Therefore I Am

Is the mind computable? Can we build sentient machines? What are the implications for humanity if we can?
The human race may be singular, unique across all of time and space. It may be just one of multitudes. Most likely, however, it is an extremely rare thing, an exquisitely precious consequence of the unfolding of the laws of the universe. Still, one truth that we can assert with confidence is that we are. We are self-aware; we know that we know we exist.
There is within humanity a drive to recreate itself, to be as a god to things we create in our own image. From the Golem of Jewish mythology, to Leonardo's robot, to the contemporary Kenshiro robot, we project our hopes and our fears into cunning mechanism that mirror us. While these anthropomorphic robots are interesting (and perhaps a bit creepy), there is a less visible revolution taking place in cognitive computing, whose advances are not only helping us better understand the operation of the human brain, they are leading us to create the illusion of sentience.

Speaker: Grady Booch