In another thread, which I forgot to check up on in the past couple weeks (stupid moving and waiting for internet access), our good friend the Engineer said:
From this, I learned that a computer is nothing more than a very complicated light switch.
Take a light switch. You turn it on, the light comes on. You turn it off, the light turns off. A transistor is the same thing, but the switch is electronic instead of physical. You could literally make a computer out of light switches if you were masochistic enough. Naturally, it would be excrutiatingly slow, and would require you to do everything, whereas a transistor can sort of switch itself.
Generally, a switch gets flipped for a certain input. A transistor does the same thing, but it doesn't require YOU to stop and think if the input should cause the switch to trip or not, it does it pretty quick.
Everything this computer did could have been put onto a microchip, and a small one at that, rather than take up a cabinet or two of space. Alternately, everything it did could be done with vacuum tubes that would take up a small room, or a bunch of light switches that would probably take up a large room.
(Note: Before you point out to me that transistors and vacuum tubes can be used as amplifiers, please be aware that I am speaking of their uses in logic circuits. In logic circuits, there are only two possible states, on and off. An AND gate can be made with just a few transistors (really just one, but we want to keep the voltage at the proper levels, so it takes a few more to amplify the signal to make up for losses). Same for an OR gate. An AND gate can be made with two light switches in series, and an OR gate with two switches in parallel. NOT and XOR gates are a bit more complcated, but still can be easily done with just a few components. Anyway, a computer uses logic; amplification is not used to "think".)
Do you consider a collection of light switches to be sentient? Not me. Therefore it follows that microchips cannot become sentient either, since we are talking about the same thing, just at a much smaller scale.
That's the basis of my thoughts.
I'm sure we can all come up with various "critical mass" arguments, and point out that individual nerve cells are not sentient (near as we can tell).
So what DOES it mean to be sentient? At what point do we stop telling a computer how to pretend to be sentient, and it just becomes that, and how will we know that it is? Are humans really the only sentient beings on Earth, or are some of the smarter animals also sentient?
I recall an episode of STNG, in which Data asks the Doctor what the definition of sentience is, and the answer she gives him would also apply to fire (as Data then points out). I don't remembe the definition she gave. The point is, is fire alive, or is it simply a chemical reaction? Are people simple chemical reactions, or are they alive? Even the greatest minds have not come up with a useful answer to these questions, and might not ever do so.
So I don't feel so bad, not having an answer.
But I am reminded of a game I was in, in which I was trapped by a sentient computer, and it was trying to convince me that it was alive, and since I didn't believe it, it turned the question around on me. Prove YOU are sentient. Ok, well, I had a bunch of explosives, and had been trying to set them up to blow up the computer (and is why it trapped me) to escape some doom I can't recall, so I told it I could prove I was sentient easily enough. We sentient beings make lots of decisions which contravene our own existance. For instance, a sentient being wants to live, but in the right circumstances, will sacrifice itself. This may be from a feeling of greater good (self sacrifice), or something as stupid as spite. Which I demonstrated by detonating the explosives, killing it and me.
In the Navy, I was a computer tech. Part of my training included (for reasons I cannot fathom) learning how computers work, in detail. We had as our training device a computer made of transistors and magnetic memory. they did make use of a few microchips, but just the ones that were logic gates or other minor functions. None had more than 14 pins, except the 16 pin ones.
From this, I learned that a computer is nothing more than a very complicated light switch.
Take a light switch. You turn it on, the light comes on. You turn it off, the light turns off. A transistor is the same thing, but the switch is electronic instead of physical. You could literally make a computer out of light switches if you were masochistic enough. Naturally, it would be excrutiatingly slow, and would require you to do everything, whereas a transistor can sort of switch itself.
Generally, a switch gets flipped for a certain input. A transistor does the same thing, but it doesn't require YOU to stop and think if the input should cause the switch to trip or not, it does it pretty quick.
Everything this computer did could have been put onto a microchip, and a small one at that, rather than take up a cabinet or two of space. Alternately, everything it did could be done with vacuum tubes that would take up a small room, or a bunch of light switches that would probably take up a large room.
(Note: Before you point out to me that transistors and vacuum tubes can be used as amplifiers, please be aware that I am speaking of their uses in logic circuits. In logic circuits, there are only two possible states, on and off. An AND gate can be made with just a few transistors (really just one, but we want to keep the voltage at the proper levels, so it takes a few more to amplify the signal to make up for losses). Same for an OR gate. An AND gate can be made with two light switches in series, and an OR gate with two switches in parallel. NOT and XOR gates are a bit more complcated, but still can be easily done with just a few components. Anyway, a computer uses logic; amplification is not used to "think".)
Do you consider a collection of light switches to be sentient? Not me. Therefore it follows that microchips cannot become sentient either, since we are talking about the same thing, just at a much smaller scale.
That's the basis of my thoughts.
I'm sure we can all come up with various "critical mass" arguments, and point out that individual nerve cells are not sentient (near as we can tell).
So what DOES it mean to be sentient? At what point do we stop telling a computer how to pretend to be sentient, and it just becomes that, and how will we know that it is? Are humans really the only sentient beings on Earth, or are some of the smarter animals also sentient?
I recall an episode of STNG, in which Data asks the Doctor what the definition of sentience is, and the answer she gives him would also apply to fire (as Data then points out). I don't remembe the definition she gave. The point is, is fire alive, or is it simply a chemical reaction? Are people simple chemical reactions, or are they alive? Even the greatest minds have not come up with a useful answer to these questions, and might not ever do so.
So I don't feel so bad, not having an answer.
But I am reminded of a game I was in, in which I was trapped by a sentient computer, and it was trying to convince me that it was alive, and since I didn't believe it, it turned the question around on me. Prove YOU are sentient. Ok, well, I had a bunch of explosives, and had been trying to set them up to blow up the computer (and is why it trapped me) to escape some doom I can't recall, so I told it I could prove I was sentient easily enough. We sentient beings make lots of decisions which contravene our own existance. For instance, a sentient being wants to live, but in the right circumstances, will sacrifice itself. This may be from a feeling of greater good (self sacrifice), or something as stupid as spite. Which I demonstrated by detonating the explosives, killing it and me.
. 
