Poul Anderson makes the points that:
although robots have electronic speed and precision, no robot in any civilization known to the Polesotechnic League has full decision-making capacity;
a biological organism thinks not only with its brain but also with glands, fluids and chemistry reaching down to the molecular level, with instincts brought forth by a billion years of natural selection;
the organism's infinitely flexible purposes come from within, not from external programming;
the limits of robotic design have been extended by self-programming so that consciousness can arise if desired;
however, the limits of machines remain narrower than those of the makers of machines.
Can computer self-programming generate consciousness? Human beings self-program when learning. However, our learning is based in current organism-environment interactions, not merely on any earlier external programming. Also, consciousness necessarily precedes learning.
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