The head of Columbia University’s Creative Machines Lab, Hod Lipson, is a mechanical engineer who is building a machine that will surpass “everything else we’ve done” with “consciousness on par with a human”.
According to Lipson, intelligent robots might even be able to treat cancer.
One of the most contentious issues in artificial intelligence is consciousness; aside from the technical obstacle to reaching this objective, the definition of the term itself is conceptually nebulous and subjective.
The New York Times reports that despite their best attempts, scientists are unable to definitively link consciousness to any one function of the brain.
The ability to “imagine yourself in the future” is how Lipson characterizes consciousness.
