I wouldn't bet on machine consciousness happening in your lifetime. But consciousness is a cool enough thing that solving 0.001% of the problem is useful too. M

I wouldn't bet on machine consciousness happening in your lifetime. But consciousness is a cool enough thing that solving 0.001% of the problem is useful too. Machine vision, collaborative filtering, machine learning, all of these are attacking a tiny subpart of the consciousness problem, but they're still useful. Don't worry that AI will turn out like phlogiston. The journey will yield its own rewards, and plenty of partial success will also be extremely valuable.