Conscious Evolution?

Last Sunday, at MacRitchie while discussing "Bucky's Utopia or Oblivion, the following ensued: Can humans ever design a computer that can actually "think" and operate beyond it's programming? In other words can a computer in future ask an original question?

Apparently Bucky shared that it has happened, that the computer did ask an original question, albeit a simple one. He gave an example of a computer doing two tasks simultaneously. Say it is playing Backgammon, and Checkers. With Backgammon it plays at a higher speed. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. It makes a move. While play checkers, it plays it at a slower pace. Tap. Tap. It makes its move on the checkers board. In the process of playing the two games simultaneously, it will come to a point when it "speeds" coincide. The computer has to ask itself which Game should it play first, what its priority? It then decided that it would make the move on the Backgammon first, as it's program tell it that Backgammon is a more sophisticated game.

Wow....the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI)!!!

A "Task" accomplished perhaps beyond it's programming?

It seemed thus that it may be possible for the computer one day to help man think and ask original questions, solve problems for man?......... HOWEVER Man must be able to design a computer as complex as his Brain.

At the moment, Computer is a differentiator, able to sort, arrange, process information at very high speeds, millions of info per second, and give us the answer we're seeking. In this aspect, the computer will replace man as the super-specialist. The computer will not however replace man as the Integrator, the generalist.

So Bucky said this may not happen so soon, not for a long long time, perhaps NEVER.

Reason? Well Man's own computer which is his brain, contains all the "programming" ever since man walked the Earth, encountered challenges, made mistakes, began to ask questions, reflect, postulate a theory, test out the theory, learned by trial and error, shared his experiences, and thus compounded his know-how capabilities. His Know-how capability wealth, which is stored in his brain memory bank (as subconcious programs) grew exponentially. He differentiated out, and re-Integrated the learnings from his vast wealth of experiences.

However Man's brain was also pre-programmed. And he operated from this program. It was also subconscious.
He was designed with the urge to pro-create, and also with designed in hunger and thirst, he hunted for his food, sourced out fresh water.

Man has been evolving subconsciously, as he still pretty much is today.

Thus, just the super-complex Task for him to be able to create a Computer with a program similar to his Brain, and as powerful and super-duper-complex as his, is unlikely.

Computers can be trained, like in robotics, programmed to learn, with the learned information stored in its memory chips, and there is much progess in this field of AI, however it's still programming, it's still the brain.

Similarly animals brains learned. By the process of training, animal were programmed to behave in certain ways, like the circus elephants, the horses, the dogs, etc. Once trained, these animals operated from their "trained" subconscious programs.

Majority of human beings are similarly doing so, operating from their subconscious program, without quite being aware of it. As Bucky called humans: "Honey money seeking bees"
That being so we're still pretty much a product of programming, evolving subconsciously.

We need to shift, into Conscious Evolution. Being aware..... Using MIND (as distinct from brain)
That's the real challenge.....facing us today