Robert Wright "Can Machines Think?"

As Robert Wright wrote in his article, the main question he continuously asked was “Can machines think?” Wright focused mainly on technological advances and the way it could affect our society and viewpoint. He used an example of a chess game played by Kasparov, a man and the Deep Blue, a computer to exemplify that Kasparov was trying to help defend human dignity from computers. The Deep Blue had won the chess match, thus making human dignity less meaningful. “It isn’t just that as these machines get more powerful they do more jobs once done by people” (Beedles 140). This quote from the article is a good example of explaining that computers are not naturally learning new tasks, human are programming them to do so.

Wright says, “The better these seemingly soulless machines get at doing things people do, the more plausible it seems that we could be soulless machines too” (Beedles 140). Human beings began to feel less unique as computer technology expands. Robert Wright states that “the point is simply that as the information age advanced and computers get brainier, philosophers are taking the ethereal existence of mind, of consciousness, more seriously, not less” (Beedles 140). Thus, many researches are bringing up consciousness as a prominent question throughout this article to find an agreeable meaning. The researchers in artificial intelligence state that the hardest thing for computers to do is the simple stuff. Computer cannot make small talk, recognize faces, or even tell jokes. Computers may be faster and smarter but there incapable of showing or expressing emotion, they lack real human qualities. As Wright says, “the lights are on, but is anyone home?”

In Wrights article defining what is and what is not consider consciousness is unrealistic because not one philosopher can agree to the same. Wright provides viewpoints from other philosophers like David Chalmers and Daniel Dennett. Daniel Dennett believes consciousness is no longer a mystery, consciousness is simply the brain, and clearly we’re all machines if we think. David Chalmers believes that with technology expanding so does the mystery of consciousness. Wrights states that some people feel that it would be going against God, because some people believe that he was the one who created it and if so the one that could take it away. This article definitely makes you think about the following questions. What will humans do, if technology and computers can do it all? Will there be a place on this Earth for us anymore? Would are existence even be necessary? Overall, in Wrights article the one thing AI and the philosophers know how to do, is disagree to agree.