Genesis, creation, the very beginning; from his inception, man has endeavored to control, to name, to create ultimately in his own image as he was created from God. Man forges his own destiny from the coals of his imagination and the raw iron of his will to create. His tools have changed as time has passed, but his desire, his fire to create; to change his world has not. Time and technology can temper mans creativity, but the desire burns as strong today as ever. Art, literature, and technology; be it paint, paper or steel mans creativity is manifest in everything we do. The crowning jewel for man will be to pass on that spark with which he has been entrusted, robotics, genetic engineering, and their ilk have been trying to create new life from the raw tools with which man is so proficient. It can be said that as Prometheus took fire from the heavens to give to man, so shall man give fire of another kind, and be it biological or made from the cold steel and silicon gateways through which we now travel man will at last, have his legacy. There is a caveat however, with knowledge comes change, with creation comes difference, and with difference comes fear, hatred and discrimination. People have forever shunned that which they do not understand, that which is different from the face they see in the mirror in the morning. Since initial forays into the AI field in 1950 there have been philosophical as well as technical concerns. As technology advanced and the concept of a machine that thinks became more and more plausible the philosophy became more apparent. The basic problem we are confronted with is: Can machines think?In his book entitled Philosophical perspectives in artificial intelligence, Martin Ringle calls for a logical and semantic analysis of the concepts of thought, intelligence, consciousness, and machine, rather than an empirical assessment of computer behaviour (hjhjh,999,2000). Thusly from its birthing AI has been ...
