Do Computers Think

Found in Channel : Philosophy — Damilare @ 12:28 pm 1 Comment »

“Computers cannot think, but computers think”, that was the stupid (lets leave it at stupid for now, till we judge) response to the question during my discussion with Big Seg and Funmi on our way from Wasimi. Funmi, a final year law student of OAU had critically accused me of concluding hastily. But I quickly escaped siting the erroneous nature of man. I responded by saying “I am not a thinking-thing, but a human being prone to mistakes and errors” Big Seg then came in by drawing me to my statement. “What is a thinking-thing?” was the question. Trust me now, before saying PHP, I had said Computers! Then the main argument began. Do Computers Think?

I had never given it a real thought, maybe because I am not a ‘real’ philosopher. I had always centered my thoughts around Computers, Machines and Robots helping man to build the world, just like Man helps the creator (If any) to build the world. The fundamental question, “do computers think?”, never crossed my mind, except for sometime last year in an epistemology class when Prof. Sophie Oluwole dabbled briefly into AI.

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