Of 2 Minds on Computerized Minds (Score 1)

Not too long ago two of IT's top original thinkers and innovators, Jeff Hawkins and Ray Kurzweil, appeared at an MIT emerging tech conference to discuss artificial intelligence. Both see computing mirroring the functions of the human brain. But they disagree on how fast scientists and engineers will develop technologies that exhibit the most complex cerebral traits of humans: self-awareness, emotion, and even a sense of one's own mortality.

Because of technology's exponential growth, Kurzweil sees emotion-laden, self-aware machines being developed by mid-century.

Hawkins' view on technology patterned after the human brain is more limited than Kurzweil's prognostications, saying such artificial beings will take centuries, not decades, to create. The brain is just too complex to replicate that quickly. In this video, Hawkins says robots that run amok, will remain science fiction for a very long time. In a recent magazine interview, Hawkins discusses his theories on building an intelligent machine.

Here's a series of podcasts of Kurzweil's vision of a computer that reasons and shows emotion.