Verified answer

The brain is not the mind. We think through our brains, but not with them.

None in existence can as of yet. If we continue research in the field of AI this however is inevitable. When it happens it creates a thorny question that I personally feel we should never deal with. Especially not while limited to one solar system much less planet. There simply is not room for two competitive sentient species on Earth at this moment. One or the other will likely be eradicated.

Remember while we give birth to AI, it is still not us. It is alien. It will have motivations we could not have conceived of. Beliefs that are almost certain to conflict with ours. We can influence AI's direction to an extent but realistically once consciousness is achieved the best we can do is duck and pass the ammo for it will progress in random ways which we could have never have predicted leading to a perspective that is alien to us as the viewpoint of an ant with needs and desires that require the very same resources we need. With power over important aspects of our life and deeply embedded and infiltrated into our society. The end result cannot be good at this stage of our civilization.

This is why I switched careers just when I finally got the opportunity to write meaningful AI software for NASA. A dream I'd long held but was forced to reconsider after finally exploring the implications of my work.

You first have to define what you mean by that.

Do animals experience consciousness? If so, do all of them, or just some?

Is consciousness as you define it part of being a true sentient?

It is an interesting question, but it requires so much definition to be able to answer it.

From the definition that I'm used to, I would say that the answer is no. They do not truly make decisions or choices, just respond to a limited number of factors.

No of course not. Robots can't experience emotions either. Robots only think logically, moral, and emotion doesn't get included in a robot's descision. Robots aren't alive, they can't experience consciouness like humans or other animals.

Yes, our minds are indeed highly-advanced computers, but there's something incorporated into our minds/brain that robots do not have, emotion. Emotion drives our descisions every day. But robots, they only think logically, emotion is not injected into their descisions, that is why there descisions can be "cold" to some people. Think of the movie "I, Robot". The idea is impractical yes, but does display how robots act, aside from the robots wanting to take over. ;P

We are indeed computers, but we're evolved computers.

Yes, it is called Artificial Intelligence.

Or "The Terminator" film series.

no

NO.