That's a non-starter because -- for me, anyway -- feelings are essential
to any critter I'd call human. Can a computer feel surprise, exasperation,
humor etc? That's the biggest -- indeed, insuperable -- hurdle for those
"scientists" to get over -- proving that the machine feels. A canny programmer
can
input all sorts of yowls and yelps commonly evoked by feelings, but he can't
input the feelings. Hell, I've even seen "talking" dolls that will emit a
giggle
when tickled in the right places.
When I was young, there were carnivals with machines that would "answer your
questions". Inside a glass booth there'd be a wax Swami. The questions you
could ask were limited to those on a kind of keyboard. You'd get a
sound-recording response. Every once in a while it would throw you by asking a
"clarifying" question back -- and your response was restricted to keyboarding
only yes or
no. Me smart. Me not fooled. I knew Swami was screwing me over because he saw
my
Red Sox cap and he was a Yankee fan.
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