From: budapest@islandhosting.com   
      
   Hello there. My name's Rob Godfrey; born in London, presently living   
   in France. My latest installation piece is called Commuter and as well   
   as an artwork it's also an attempt to create artificial intelligence   
   (in this context, atificial intelligence is taken to describe a   
   machine that has a near-human level of consciousness).   
      
   I admire the people involved in the field of AI research, yet I   
   believe that the vast majority of researchers are going about it the   
   wrong way. There seems to be two inescapable facts which follow on   
   from each other: 1) no one really knows exactly how the brain works,   
   and 2) in view of this fact it might be a long time, if ever, before   
   that mysterious thing we call 'thought' can be expressed as a   
   mathematical formula, which can then be expressed logically by a   
   computer programme. There's also a chance that 'thought' is an   
   abstract, like the soul, and thus you're never going to get a digital   
   computer to think (how many scientists believe in God?).   
      
   I have a web site for Commuter, which can be found here...   
      
   http://www.spiderbomb.com/commuter   
      
   The 'Soul' and 'Snakes' pages on the above site explain my theories   
   about creating artificial intelligence. If anyone's interested I'd be   
   delighted to discuss my ideas on this forum; in the first instance,   
   though, take a look at the Commuter web site.   
      
   ps. there's also a very badly translated French language version of   
   the Commuter web site, so apologies in advance to any French speakers.   
      
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