http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8012496.stm
Hm. Imagination leads intellect to somersaulting ideas of what this will do, eventually. Scepticism asks unwanted but valid questions. Will this thing equal the creation of thought? Mind? Cognitions? Ratio?
Reflective self-realisation...?
What is mind?
What is intellect, and intelligence? I know people with a slow intellect who are very wise, and I know intelligence beasts who act very dumb.
What is - life...? Where does the sim end, where does real life set in?
Can a proclaimed intelligent, self-aware life form like homo sapiens even ever give a valid answer to these questions while always being doomed to form such answers from the unavoidable perpsective of his self-understanding and self-definition? can one eye ever hope to see itself? If it cannot, how could it ever define an "eye" out there - by which standard, by what scale is it to judge this if it never has seen what it understands to be as an "eye" - itself, that is?
No matter the answers, they will hardly ever be final. But fascinating the questions are nevertheless.