It has often been said that with the exponential advancement of technology, computers will one day reach up to human intelligence if not surpass it. 

A lot of people, however, see a philosophical issue with this. Its hard to imagine computers being like humans because they don’t think they calculate. But what’s not to say that humans aren’t calculating too, In a more complex manner? (Remember the human brain  constitutes of approximately 86 billion neurons where each neuron is connected to thousands of others.) The human brain is after all programmed by evolution ; many of our actions have an underlying animal instinct behind them. Moreover, we can assume that neurons follow the laws of physics to build up an extremely complex machine. 

There is without doubt a difference between human thinking and machine thinking today. But does there have to be?   

Ray Kurzweil gives an ingenious example in his book The age of spiritual machines; Suppose in the future, people become able to download their thoughts and memories, and hence their personalities onto computers. Is the person who then emerges in the machine the same as the person who downloaded himself/herself onto it? The machine person will appear to have identical likes, dislikes, history, knowledge and memory as the original person. But is it of the same consciousness of the original person or should be considered some sort of an “impostor”?

I guess its all food for thought…