We will eventually see the rise of artificial intelligence, and even artificial consciousness.

Let me make a note concerning the topic on the grounds of time: --- "We will see" is taken to mean us, within our lifespans, we will witness this. There is an inherent time limit to the topic. We will not see the rise of artificial intelligence or artificial consciousness. I assert this on four grounds. 1) AI is a complete failure. 2) AI is impossible. 3) There is not "artificial" intelligence. There is only intelligence. 4) You cannot simulate the soul. Artificial intelligence has been a mainstay of science fiction as well as actual computer science. We have been very active in the field of AI since the 1960s. When I say we, I mean computer scientists like myself. We have worked tirelessly to create large information bases, create extremely complex programs, process large amounts of data, formulate huge parsing algorithms on the front and back end of massive programs for the purpose of creating AI. We have 40 years of research under our belts, by some of the greatest minds in computer science, we've developed LISP and Prolog, both of which have made huge contributions to the field of computer science. After these 40 years of intense research by some of the greatest minds in the field, how close are we? If we take a look at our progress over these four decades and extrapolate how far we've come and look at how far we have to go, when can we estimate completion? Let's do the math: 40 years has gotten us 0% of the way. So, at this rate we're going to finish in an infinite number of years! That's right. Nothing! Not even a hint of a shadow of a clue. The idea that we're magically going to solve this problem within our lifetime even though the last lifetime didn't do anything productive is an odd one. You know what happened to those brilliant minds who dedicated their life to this idea? They are all elderly or dead! I'm sorry but you can't just come here and say, maybe we'll figure something out and understand the human brain and that'll make it possible. Even if we somehow magically took this massive leap forward, how do you know that would even help? We understand exactly how fusion works and scientists understood it for longer than we've been alive and we won't see it rise up anytime soon. The idea that "we" will see this happen, is based on nothing more than a pipedream. What is going to happen in the next 40 years that the last 40 years of brilliant minds are going to get to work? The AI programs we've developed with all this research are beyond pathetic. They can almost make syntactically valid sentences. Woohoo! If only they have any depth or process something more than a few quick text parsing. Do you have any idea how complex the human brain is? In 40 years we've done jack squat! And you're arguing that some magical pipedream is going to suddenly become reality and instantly unlock this lock? What makes you think that? What makes you think that the last 40 years of "any day now" is going to magically become true? This same sort of future prediction has said we'll see it any day now for the last 40 years! ----- We could, in theory, simulate the processes of every molecule within the human brain. We previously simulated every molecule in a biological virus for 1/50th of a second using a massive array of supercomputers a number of months. If we could, through raw processing power, expand this to include all the molecules of a human brain: we could have the computer actually have human intelligence. The processing power is firstly, more than our lifetime away from making this a reality. And, would not be artificial intelligence... it would be actual intelligence. AI is a simulation of intelligence not the real thing. If you could make a real thinking computer you would make an intelligence not an artificial intelligence. You can't make a computer program to pass the Turing test unless it actually was intelligent, you couldn't make it artificial and just pretend to be intelligent to a sufficient degree. You need the real thing to pass, not a simulation which is the heart of AI. ----- Godel's incompleteness theory holds that in a system you cannot prove the validity of a system without being incomplete or incoherent. A computer program to simulate intelligence would need to either fail by being incomplete or would be incoherent (which computers can't do). Godel's proves that AI isn't possible. This is why we have failed and will continue to fail our lifetimes and beyond. ----- No computer can simulate the human soul. The reason we can't figure out what that spark you so desperately want to find is because it doesn't exist in the material brain! That's the soul of man and computers are soulless machines. You can't compile the human soul into machine code, or run it on a processor. You swear that if we just take a step back we'll figure it all out and then AI will become something more than a directionless bit of science fiction. Fat chance! Understanding the human soul has been tried for thousands of years, it has been as successful as AI has. -- Exactly as successful. ----- We will not see the rice of artificial intelligence and certainly not artificial consciousness. As you freely admit, we don't even know what the hell is meant by intelligence OR by consciousness, and we're going to simulate them? No, we aren't. We're going to go nowhere just like we have from the early days of the science. The only people who got any benefit out of this have been science fiction authors. You simply can't meet the burden of proof here, pipedreams don't count. Perhaps aliens will come down and give us AI (not that we'd see it "rise"). Perhaps a big rock will kill us all tomorrow... that's certainly lower the chances we see the rise of AI. We will sooner have those DAMNED FLYING CARS they promised than AI. At least, we know it involves wings, an engine, and a car. -- That's infinitely more than know about the requirements of AI.