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argument an exchange of ignorance

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Re: Are Machines Aware of their knowledge?

A machine can be defined as anything from a pencil to the most complex human mind. The human brain is a machine itself. Therefore it depends on what your definition of machine is, if you want to know if they are aware of their knowledge.

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Re: Are Machines Aware of their knowledge?

Well, this question most certainly requires some thought. Although theoretically machines should just simply follow instructions given to them (i.e. computers), the instructions that they may be given (in the form of software) may tell them to be self aware. But then you have to think: is this self-awareness simply artificial or not? Most people would answer artificial, but then there comes a problem. How could we differentiate between our own self awareness and the machine's? For all we know, our millions of neurones may simply be following a long, complex 'biological' program, just like the computer's millions of transistors are busy processing the program we feed it. Of course, you can say that a machine only crunches numbers, and humans crunch a lot of data, but then think about it: doesn't the information that goes through our brain just get turned into electrical impulses between the neurones, just like the 0's and 1's inside a computer?

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