| Sumario: | Computers may overtake humans in the next century. Although computers' abilities presently pale next to what the human mind is capable of, milestones are being passed one after another. IBM's “Deep Blue” computer defeated human chess champion Garry Kasparov recently, and another machine produced a mathematical proof of a problem that no human mathematician has been able to solve. Computers are becoming ever more powerful, massively parallel computers are increasingly common, and the techniques for representing conceptual thinking are getting more sophisticated. At the same time, however, our understanding of consciousness, the sense of self, and natural motivation have doggedly resisted human efforts to understand them. When this final puzzle has been solved, science will be able to give rise to life-forms that will supercede humanity.
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