Artificial And Biological Intelligence

For those of you interested in reading up about artificial and biological intelligence, there is a nice article on ACM Ubiquity that talks about the past, present and possible future of AI, along with various insights on the matter.

Although it's a lengthy article, it's worth the read. Especially if you're not familiar with AI and its possible implications, it's guaranteed to force you to rethink your whole concept of AI.

Or it will give you some new insights at the very least...

From the article:

... First, if machines with consciousness are created, they would be living machines, that is, variations on life forms as we know them. Second, the material world is not causally closed, and consciousness influences its evolution. Matter and minds complement each other. At the level of the individual, even medical science that is strongly based on the machine paradigm has now acknowledged the influence of mind on body.

At a more abstract level, it is being argued that even if machines can be conscious, now that this property has emerged through increasing complexity of life-forms, humans will eventually create silicon machines with minds that will slowly spread all over the world, and the entire universe will eventually become a conscious machine.