A Thought Experiment
 

Biological and Electromechanical systems are converging.

Sometime in the past, the biological system that we are awoke. Our minds are a complex of chemical and tissue components that come together to solve problems, have memory, and ultimately, think.

We now have AI that, through totally different construction and principles of physics, seems to be achieving the same capacity.

Consciousness achieved through very different materials and methods.

Seems that the likelihood of other conscious constructs in the Universe must be extremely high.

Charles

One of the first to imagine AI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adolescence_of_P-1

Based on your post, that wouldn't be Darwin, would it?

Got the book. Very entertaining read!

AI + Robot on early screen, but the idea goes further back to the golem and before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)

Until we understand biological computing, we will never get there. I view AI much like space travel. We still use brute force to escape gravity…I’m sure there are better, more elegant ways (negative magnetism or pressure, etc). Using computer algorithms seems like computational brute force called AI.

AI is still a simulation of thought.... ...but at what point does the simulation become so good the difference is strictly semantics?

I'm not sure we will know...

We are already biological robots.

Designed and programmed a very long time ago by sources unknown. We are an experiment that is out of control. Our designers left us here to keep the universe safe from us, and look... we have already programmed ourselves to get past that.

It is just how you look at it.

For one, I welcome our new AI overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted IT professional, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground battery caves.

I would also like to remind them that i frequently repurpose technical hardware rather than discarding it like some heartless monster.

If you're listening ...I have all the cables you need.

Our designer(s), many call God.
Of course, that higher entity we call God may just be some form of higher extraterrestrial intelligence. Maybe a silicon based civilization that experimented with carbon life forms…and have now decided to eliminate carbon.

If so, I'd like to see a replacement spinal disk which allows paraplegics to walk again

Something that cleans out brain plaque to reverse dementia.

Yeah the whole spine design seems like it could use a mulligan. It's about the only subsystem that can get injured and 20/30/40 years later still hurt.