Questions for GEB Unit XIX

Mårten Stenius URL: http://www.nada.kth.se/~d90-mst/courses/geb/q19.html

Page and figure references are from the English Penguin Books edition, unless otherwise noted.

"Contrafactus" and "Artificial Intelligence: Prospects"

Hofstadter speculates that the thought of emotions explicitly programmed into a machine is ridiculous. (p. 677) But what about implicitly? Wouldn't it be possible that some intelligent program with enough basic similarity to the way a brain (mind?) works Could also show "emotions" (whatever that really is)?

At p. 680, Hofstadter guesses that "... any AI program would, if comprehensible to us, seem pretty alien." My question is, how alien? So alien that there won't be any practical use of it, or simply that we won't see it as human?